From Christian Science Monitor.      (more…)

Even Dark Lords have a soft spot. I don’t know why I find puppies adorable; I just do.

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As seen at Marginal Revolution, a study of turning the hearts of the children to their fathers:

An initial study involved 80 undergrads spending five minutes thinking about either their fifteenth century ancestors, their great-grandparents or a recent shopping trip. Afterwards, those students in the two ancestor conditions were more confident about their likely performance in future exams, an effect that seemed to be mediated by their feeling more in control of their lives.

Three further studies showed that thinking or writing about their recent or distant ancestors led students to actually perform better on a range of intelligence tests, including verbal and spatial tasks (in one test, students who thought about their distant ancestors scored an average of 14 out of 16, compared with an average of 10 out of 16 among controls). The ancestor benefit was mediated partly by students attempting more answers – what the researchers called having a ‘promotion orientation’.

Conformism and non-conformism are symmetrical expressions of a lack of originality. (more…)

Agatha Christie’s Christmas Story Star Over Bethlehem starts out sounding like a piece of mid-priced sentimentality, but then it gets really good, really quick. All is not as it seems. (more…)

Two tawdry things that apparently go well together. (more…)

“…demeaning and nonfalsifiable.”

His Majesty finds this a refreshing blast of pessimism.

“Kids who leave high school either take up post-secondary education, and enter the most politically engaged space they’re likely to occupy in their entire lives, or they start earning paycheques—a moment at which government policy becomes frighteningly real, as if a monster in a children’s book had suddenly leapt off the page and started devouring the furniture.” (link)

Heh.

Not only will it be like this, it must be like this. (more…)

Next up–are all balding, blond 22-year old guys Mormon, or just 90%?

My good Aunt Dahlia has rather been putting the screws on in this question of me doing something about Iran, which I gather in some tangled way is interfering with the nuptials of somebody or other or something. She has even started in on dark mutterings about her cook, Anatole, to the extent anyone can mutter who takes elocution tips from braying alarm clocks. Rather shirty, she got. Fortunately my man Jeeves has his resources. One rather raises an eyebrow at the assassinations, though. Will the honest fellow stick at nothing?

“The dear leader likes to look at things.
updated every other day and sometimes on the weekends too.” (link)

But they’re already getting unfavorable performance ratings.      (more…)

A metaphor for our current political leadership.    (more…)