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How Right and Left Shape Right and Wrong
The Wall Street Journal: “The wise man’s heart is at his right hand,” says Ecclesiastes, “but the fool’s heart is at his left.” Islamic law says that Muslims should use their right hands alone for eating and drinking, because Satan uses his left. We may think that the preference for “right” over “left” is purely cultural, but, in fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that it is shaped by our bodily experience. Experiments find that right-handed people—and something like 90% of the population is right-handed—unconsciously prefer people and objects placed to their right; meanwhile, left-handers prefer people and things to their left. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
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Men ponder food and sleep as much as sex
MSNBC: Men think about sex every seven seconds, right? Not according to a new study that finds men ponder sleep and food as much as they do sex. The median number of thoughts about sex by college-age men was 18 times a day to women's 10 times a day, the study found. But the men also thought about food and sleep proportionately more. "In other words, there was nothing special about sexual thoughts," study researcher Terri Fisher, a psychologist at The Ohio State University, Mansfield, told LiveScience. "Males thought more about any of the health-related thoughts compared to females, not just thoughts about sex." Read the whole story: MSNBC
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Why We Celebrate a Killing
The New York Times: A MAN is shot in the head, and joyous celebrations break out 7,000 miles away. Although Americans are in full agreement that the demise of Osama bin Laden is a good thing, many are disturbed by the revelry. We should seek justice, not vengeance, they urge. Doesn’t this lower us to “their” level? Didn’t the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. say, “I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy”? (No, he did not, but the Twitter users who popularized that misattributed quotation last week found it inspiring nonetheless.) Why are so many Americans reluctant to join the party?
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Want to truly know yourself? Ask a friend
Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: How well do we know ourselves? "It's a natural tendency to think we know ourselves better than others do," says Simine Vazire, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis and author of a new paper on the subject in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science However, Vazire and colleague Erika N. Carlson report that our own self-understanding is marred by blind spots caused by our own wishes, fears and unconscious motives. Friends, the authors suggest, see things in ourselves that we do not. Hence the need to consult a friend to gain a fuller understanding of ourselves.
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Now, to Find a Parking Spot, Drivers Look on Their Phones
The New York Times: SAN FRANCISCO — It is the urban driver’s most agonizing everyday experience: the search for an empty parking place. It is part sleuthing and part blood sport. Circling, narrowly missing a spot, outmaneuvering other motorists to finally ease into a space only to discover that it is off limits during working hours. In this city, it is also a vexing traffic problem. Drivers cruising for parking spots generate 30 percent of all downtown congestion, city officials estimate. Now San Francisco professes to have found a solution — a phone app for spot-seekers that displays information about areas with available spaces. Read the whole story: The New York Times
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Immigrants pack on the pounds in America
OTTAWA CITIZEN: Moving to the U.S. could be bad for your waistline, according to the results of a study linking fatty foods with the desire to belong. Within 15 years of moving to the United States, immigrants approach American levels of obesity -a finding previously linked to the ubiquity of cheap, high-calorie fast food and larger portion sizes. But investigators now suggest it's not simply the presence of such dishes but also immigrants' notion that eating them somehow validates their "Americanness." Read the whole city: OTTAWA CITIZEN
