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Breaking habits
The Miami Herald: You want to lose weight, but you can’t pass by the pastries and pastelitos that pop up at every desk, every cubicle, every dining room table at this time of the year. Before you go all the way, however, consider this. Research has shown that much of what we do in our lives is ultimately determined by habit. While changing those behaviors may not be a piece of cake so to speak, it may be easier than you think. In a bestselling new book, The Power of Habit (Random House, $28) , Charles Duhigg explores why we do what we do and how habits form and change. “What surprised me most was learning that any habit can be changed ... no matter how ingrained,” he said.
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The Shame of the Alcoholic
The Huffington Post: This month in Cleveland a woman was caught swerving her car onto a sidewalk, illegally passing a school bus full of children. A judge sentenced her to stand on the street corner wearing a sign that read, "Only an idiot would drive around a school bus." In Arlington, Tex., a billboard features mug shots of suspected johns, with the words, "This could be you." ... The scientists wanted to see if shameful body language correlated with mental and physical health, and especially with successful sobriety, four months later. This is the time window during which most newly recovered alcoholics will relapse, and indeed more than half the volunteers never made it back to the lab.
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Benevolent billionaires – why do they do it?
The Sydney Morning Herald: They have been hailed as the billion-dollar givers by Forbes in a new list of the world's most benevolent billionaires, but what inspires super-rich people to give most of their money away? Is it guilt, glory or simply the joy of giving? Topping the 23-strong list is Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who according to Forbes has so far given nearly half of his $US66 billion ($A63.5 billion) fortune away. His outlook on life seems to be a motivating factor. “We are impatient optimists by nature: we see the glass as 'half full' and are motivated to confront problems that others consider impossible to solve,” his foundation website states.
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We Can’t Blame Everything on Powerful Men
Scientific American: There’s certainly been no shortage of news headlines proclaiming that we can now add former CIA director General David Petraeus to the list of powerful men who have been brought down by very well-publicized sex scandals. It’s particularly dismaying to see how many of these headlines are broadly asserting, as news outlet headlines often do in these situations, that there must be some sort of inextricable link between power, masculinity, and infidelity. These claims imply (or sometimes even explicitly state) that there’s something inherent about masculinity that leads powerful men to behave unethically, whereas powerful women would never fall victim to such an effect.
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Daydreaming really is the key to solving complex problems
The Telegraph: Daydreaming really is the key to solving complex problems, a new study has found. Some of the most important scientific breakthroughs ever made - by everyone from Einstein to Newton - came about as the geniuses behind them allowed their minds to wander. Now research by modern day scientists has shown that mere mortals can also improve their problem-solving ability in the same way. The study showed that people who returned to a difficult task after taking a break and doing an easy task boosted their performance by around 40 per cent.
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Neuroscience: Under Attack
The New York Times: This fall, science writers have made sport of yet another instance of bad neuroscience. The culprit this time is Naomi Wolf; her new book, “Vagina,” has been roundly drubbed for misrepresenting the brain and neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin. Earlier in the year, Chris Mooney raised similar ire with the book “The Republican Brain,” which claims that Republicans are genetically different from — and, many readers deduced, lesser to — Democrats. “If Mooney’s argument sounds familiar to you, it should,” scoffed two science writers.
