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Hunger and Hoarding
Suzanne Collins’ futuristic trilogy, The Hunger Games, takes place in Panem, a totalitarian nation of obscene wealth and pervasive poverty. Its twelve districts are all impoverished, but District 12, the coal-mining region formerly called Appalachia, is the poorest of the poor. Citizens struggle to eke out a living in the mines, but hunger is the norm and the unfortunate routinely die of starvation. Panem is the opposite of a welfare state. There is no dole, no safety net—certainly no 47 percent. Indeed, there is no institutional sharing at all.
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Meeting Your Spouse Online May Lead to a Better Marriage
Scientific American: I met my husband at a party in a bygone era. He had no online profile. Neither did I. We didn’t trade email addresses, as neither of us had one of those either. He seemed like a good guy–and a party was as good a venue as any for meeting a future spouse. He still seems like a good guy and I rather doubt I would have done any better if I had dated online (assuming that had been an option). But I guess I’m old fashioned, as a new study suggests that, on average, we can do better if we find our spouse using a computer. In the decades since that long-gone, offline era, people have increasingly been using the Internet to search for compatible partners.
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Perfect Pitch May Not Be Absolute After All
People who think they have perfect pitch may not be as in tune as they think, according to a new study in which people failed to notice a gradual change in pitch while listening to music.
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Online Dating Really Can Lead to Love
Science: Millions of people first met their spouses through online dating. But how have those marriages fared compared with those of people who met in more traditional venues such as bars or parties? Pretty well, according to a new study. A survey of nearly 20,000 Americans reveals that marriages between people who met online are at least as stable and satisfying as those who first met in the real world—possibly more so. When online dating started gaining widespread attention a decade ago, many people considered it creepy. But after the exponential growth of dating websites such as Match and OkCupid, online dating has become a mainstream activity.
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Can’t We All Just Get Along? What Psychology Tells Us About Political Gridlock
LiveScience: The U.S. government is broken. That is how Diane Halpern, a cognitive psychologist at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif., opens her talks on the psychology of political partisanship. The divisions between the Republican and Democratic parties are so pronounced and polarized these days that Halpern says the current political climate is one that is characterized by hyperpartisanship. With the parties unable to agree, legislative measures are increasingly being held up in Congress, leading to more acrimony and political gridlock.
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Women are better at remembering new faces (and here’s how we do it)
NBC News: So you're at a party, and you see a new face in the room, someone you haven't met yet. You introduce yourself, and it turns out -- you totally have met this person before. (Maybe even a couple times before.) You are probably feeling very awkward. And you're also probably a guy. A new study shows that women are better than men at remembering new names and faces, something past research has also shown. But this new paper, just published in the journal Psychological Science, also suggests the reason why women are so good at it: In the first few moments that we meet someone, we tend to take in more details about the new face in front of us.
