1. Next week, Harvard psychologist Joshua Greene is slated to release a new book on behavioral morality, examining the everyday irrationalities and subconscious biases that Kahneman, Tversky and company have popularized over the last few decades (aside: are all titles/covers copying Malcolm Gladwell?). A common behavioral problem, the “trolley experiment”, asks people to make a hypothetical […]
Another Week Ends: Delta Malaise, Self-Deprecating Obituaries, The Hill and Wood, Breaking Bad, Bound Atheists, Fall Conf Schedule and more Dark Knight Rises
1. First up, The New York Times published an eye-opening article about sorority rush in US colleges this week that’s been spreading like wildfire. It visits all the usual themes of the Law of group belonging: self-doubt, attempts at identity improvement, the need to belong, and our single-minded attempts to live up to a certain […]
Born-Again Stress and Hippocampal Atrophy
Scientific American reported last week on another interesting if inconclusive study about the brain activity of the religious, “Religious Experiences Shrink Part of the Brain.” Specifically, the marked variation between believers (of a certain type) and non-believers in the volume of the hippocampus portion of the brain, the exact function of which is not totally […]
Another Week Ends: Transformation Myths, Eating Disorders, Suicidal Standards, Aging Ungracefully, Rehab Albums, St Elizabeths
1. The timing just could not be any better. NYC Mockingbird Conference Speaker Mark Galli has been blowing up this past week, most notably on The Internet Monk. Start with The Evangelical Myth of “Transformation” and go from there – the discussion provides a helpful overview of where Mr Galli is coming from, not to […]