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The Kids Who Beat Autism
The New York Times: At first, everything about L.'s baby boy seemed normal. He met every developmental milestone and delighted in every discovery. But at around 12 months, B. seemed to regress, and by age 2, he had fully retreated into his own world. He no longer made eye contact, no longer seemed to hear, no longer seemed to understand the random words he sometimes spoke. His easygoing manner gave way to tantrums and head-banging. “He had been this happy, happy little guy,” L. said. “All of a sudden, he was just fading away, falling apart. I can’t even describe my sadness. It was unbearable.” More than anything in the world, L. wanted her warm and exuberant boy back. A few months later, B.
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What’s in a profile picture? Just about everything, actually.
The Washington Post: Love is definitely not blind, according to new statistics from the dating site OkCupid. In fact, not much online is: Facebook-friending, Twitter-sending — even professional networking is dictated, to an alarmingly huge degree, by the attractiveness of your profile picture. On Monday, Christian Rudder — OkCupid’s data guru, and the author of a forthcoming book about Big Data — published a blog post that claimed (among many other things) that pictures account for more than 90 percent of a profile’s popularity, far more than minor details like personality or shared interests. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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Photography as a Balm for Mental Illness
The New York Times: To the casual observer, Danielle Hark was living an enviable life, with a devoted husband, a new baby and work she enjoyed as a freelance photo editor. But she was so immobilized by depression that she could barely get out of bed. Her emotional state could not be explained in postpartum terms — she had suffered from debilitating depression for most of her life, and ultimately received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder when her daughter was a year old. “I thought about killing myself for the first time in seventh grade,” said Ms. Hark, now 33.
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Perfect, It Turns Out, Is What Practice Doesn’t Make
The Huffington Post: We've long been eager to believe that mastery of a skill is primarily the result of how much effort one has put in. Extensive practice "is probably the most reasonable explanation we have today not only for success in any line, but even for genius," said the ur-behaviorist John B. Watson almost a century ago. In the 1990s K. Anders Ericsson and a colleague at Florida State University reported data that seemed to confirm this view: What separates the expert from the amateur, a first-rate musician or chess player from a wannabe, isn't talent; it's thousands of hours of work.
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What Are the Benefits of Locking Yourself in a Tank and Floating in Room-Temperature Saltwater?
Pacific Standard: “It’s almost better than therapy,” said the spa owner. We were sitting in the common room, which looked like a minimalist, high-class Chinese restaurant that prefers the word “cuisine.” Freshly washed and nibbling dark chocolate, I had just relayed a rather macabre vision from my first 90-minute “float.” My holistic spaman’s comment was not wholly appreciated. Over the past few years, sensory deprivation tanks—you’re suspended in a few inches of body-temperature, epsom saltwater completely removed from light, sound, and touch—have gone quasi-mainstream. The goal is deceptively simple: Reducing external stimuli to an absolute minimum.
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Is One of the Most Popular Psychology Experiments Worthless?
The Atlantic: Harvard University justice professor Michael J. Sandel stood before a lecture hall filled with students recently and presented them with an age-old moral quandary: "Suppose you're the driver of a trolley car, and your trolley car is hurtling down the track at 60 miles an hour. You notice five workers working on the track. You try to stop, but you can't, because your brakes don't work. You know that if you crash into these five workers, they will all die. You feel helpless until you notice that off to the side, there's a side track.
