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Why do humans laugh? (Hint: It’s rarely because something’s funny.)
Slate: On Jan. 30, 1962, three schoolgirls started giggling in a boarding school classroom in the northeastern corner of what is now Tanzania—and touched off a very strange epidemic. The three couldn’t stop laughing—and soon the uncontrollable cackles spread to their classmates. The laughing attacks lasted from a few minutes up to a few hours; one poor girl reportedly experienced symptoms for 16 straight days. Victims couldn’t focus on their schoolwork, and would lash out if others tried to restrain them. When 95 of the school’s 159 pupils had come down with what came to be known as omuneepo, the Swahili word for laughing disease, the school shut down.
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Preschoolers’ Innate Knowledge Means They Can Probably Do Algebra
TIME: Give a three-year old a smartphone and she’ll likely figure out how to turn it on and operate a few simple functions. But confront her with an algebra problem and ask her to solve for x? Not likely. For decades, child developmental psychologist Jean Piaget convinced us that young, undeveloped minds couldn’t handle complex concepts because they simply weren’t experienced or mature enough yet. Piaget, in fact, believed that toddlers could not understand cause and effect, that they couldn’t think logically, and that they also couldn’t handle abstract ideas. ...
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Clashing Over Office Clutter
The Wall Street Journal: All nine employees of TheSquareFoot.com in New York City have neat, clean desks—except one. Co-founder Jonathan Wasserstrum's desk and the floor around it are strewed with paper, files, tech gear and old boxes. "I like being near my stuff rather than fishing for it in a cabinet somewhere," he says. Being near Mr. Wasserstrum's stuff is harder for Justin Lee, the company's other co-founder. At times, "some of his crud will spill over onto my desk," Mr. Lee says. Other co-workers at the online commercial real-estate leasing and brokerage company sometimes print new copies of documents to avoid handling food-smeared paperwork from Mr. Wasserstrum's desk. ...
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Infants Are Sensitive to Pleasant Touch
Infants show unique physiological and behavioral responses to pleasant touch, which may help to cement the bonds between child and parent and promote early social and physiological development, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Previous studies with adults have shown that when the skin is stroked, a specific type of touch receptor is activated in response to a particular stroking velocity, leading to the sensation of “pleasant” touch.
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Why being too busy makes us feel so good
The Washington Post: One man says he works 72 hours a week because everyone else at his office does; he’s thinking about cutting back on sleep so he can be more productive. A woman says the last time she had a moment for herself was when she went for her annual mammogram. Another says she has decided that life is too hectic to have kids — ever. Then a woman bursts in, apologizing for being late to this focus group convened precisely to discuss the fast pace of modern life. She got stuck in traffic, she explains. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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The Lost Art of the Unsent Angry Letter
The New York Times: WHENEVER Abraham Lincoln felt the urge to tell someone off, he would compose what he called a “hot letter.” He’d pile all of his anger into a note, “put it aside until his emotions cooled down,” Doris Kearns Goodwin once explained on NPR, “and then write: ‘Never sent. Never signed.’ ” Which meant that Gen. George G. Meade, for one, would never hear from his commander in chief that Lincoln blamed him for letting Robert E. Lee escape after Gettysburg. Lincoln was hardly unique. Among public figures who need to think twice about their choice of words, the unsent angry letter has a venerable tradition. Its purpose is twofold.
