Topics about how people think and learn (especially children), and various tricks and techniques for teaching — not just school learning, but *life* learning.
Ever heard the term “sense of agency” before? I listen to podcasts when I’m driving alone, and one of them mentioned the term recently, in relation to designing computer games. In this context, it’s described as “the degree to which people attribute their circumstances and the outcomes they experience to being within their own control,” …
I can’t understand groups like this so-called “One Million Moms” organization. What is it about lesbians that they fear so much? Why do they let themselves fear so much? That’s a rhetorical question. I know exactly what they fear, and how it gets associated with anyone who’s different: fear-mongering politicians and religious “leaders” whose power …
Continue reading ‘“Ellen Wins: One Million Moms Group Concedes JCPenney Fight”’ »
I’ve always been fascinated by stage magic, and just how the magician would manage to use your own mind against you, so this article was pretty interesting to me.
This article by Ben Hamamoto makes the case that how we see and judge authority is changing, and that the Internet could be responsible: […] with science and health, we do value a certain cold detachment. Public health organizations in the U.S. have traditionally been very careful to appear serious, probably because appearing too casual …
I’ve always stressed that passwords should never be shared with anyone, to everyone I discuss them with — the only passwords that my wife and I both know are the ones to the iTunes and e-book accounts that we both share. Unfortunately there’s a problem when it comes to minors: parents only have a limited …
Continue reading ‘“Password Sharing Among American Teenagers”’ »
I’ve often wondered if there might be a way to harness the placebo effect to actually help people get better. It seems that I’m not the only one, either.
“US, UK research: Thick kids more likely to become bigots“. Ouch. I’ve often thought that today’s conservatives weren’t the brightest bulbs on the whole, and wondered whether there was some causal link there, but to have it bluntly spelled out like that is pretty damning. Maybe these studies should be publicized a lot more. Nobody …
Continue reading ‘“Study links dim wits to conservative ideology”’ »
“…it’s worth doing badly first.” It’s a good idea to keep in mind, especially if (like me) you have a tendency toward perfectionism.
The LA Times recently published a four-part investigation of autism. It’s pretty good, it has more information on it than I’ve been able to find in my own research elsewhere. I’m not a scientist, and I’m operating solely on my own experience and what I’ve read of others, but it seems to me that autism …
Continue reading ‘“Autism boom: an epidemic of disease or of discovery?”’ »
I never noticed, but that phrase really doesn’t mean anything at all. All learning rewires your brain — if it didn’t, you wouldn’t have learned anything. Maybe stories like this one aren’t as important as people think.