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The Book Bench
The New Yorker: In the News: Out on a Limn, Pronoun Psychology The composer Philip Glass will publish a memoir with Norton. Remember the uproar over the critic Michiko Kakutani’s (over)use of the word “limn”? It’s back. Which of your favorite songs have expanded your vocabulary? The writer Sam Kean explains the weirdly smutty cover of the Chinese version of his book. On the heels of Grantland, The Classical. Roger Ebert tantalizes readers with an excerpt of his forthcoming memoir, “Life Itself.” The psychologist James Pennebaker says the way we use pronouns reveals much about us. Read the whole story: The New Yorker
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Vitamins bad for health, experts claim
Mirror: VITAMIN pills can be bad for you – because you’re more likely to indulge bad habits. People on supplements tend to engage in more potentially harmful activities such as casual sex or excessive eating and drinking, a study found. They think taking the pills gives them a “licence to indulge”. Experts say this explains why supplements’ popularity is not reflected in public health improvements. Drug firms say almost half all Brits take vitamins, spending £400million on them last year. The researchers gave placebos to 82 volunteers and told half that their pills were fakes. The rest, who thought they were taking vitamins, felt more “invincible” than the first group.
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Why it feels good to be the Master Chief
msnbc: Leave it to a psychologist at the University of Essex to discover that the secret sauce in irresistible video games is the characters' personalities — especially those that leave just enough creative space for players to pour themselves into. "Games offer a window. They offer you that window to be your ideal self," Andrew Przybylski, a Halo and Angry Birds player himself, says. Previously, Przybylski has shown that players prefer challenges in games to violence.
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Spoiler alert: Why knowing the ending isn’t always a bad thing
National Post: Bruce Willis is dead. Edward Norton is Tyler Durden. Clint Eastwood pulls the plug: As annoying as it can be, finding out how films end may not be such a downer after all. According to research carried out at UC San Diego, spoilers may actually enhance our enjoyment. Nicholas Christenfeld, a professor of psychology at the California university, and his student Jonathan Leavitt recently tested the effect of spoilers using short stories, and their results will be published in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science.
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Four Year Olds Know That Being Right is Not Enough
As they grow, children learn a lot about the world from what other people tell them. Along the way, they have to figure out who is a reliable source of information. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that when children reach around 4 years, they start noticing whether someone is actually knowledgeable or if they’re just getting the answers from someone else. Earlier studies have found that children as young as age three pay attention to whether someone is an accurate information source. If someone gives correct information, they’ll go back to that person for more answers.
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Gerard Depardieu reportedly urinates on a plane; are alcohol and the bladder a bad combo?
Los Angeles Times: In what could be turning into a nasty trend, French actor Gerard Depardieu reportedly urinated on the cabin floor of an airplane. A passenger interviewed on French radio said that Depardieu, who reportedly did the deed on a Paris-to-Dublin flight after being told by crew members to wait in his seat until after takeoff, appeared to have been drinking. This isn't the first time an alcohol-laced peeing incident has reportedly taken place on a plane, travel blogger Mary Forgione points out: Just this month, skier Sandy Vietze reportedly urinated on a young girl during a JetBlue flight.
