O, Song! Daily Links | Mind-Goggling Papal Brain Dismembered Unhappy Novice

Mind-Goggling Papal Brain Dismembered Unhappy Novice

A Mind Dismembered: In Search of The Magical Penis Thieves by Frank Bures (Harpers): Koro is a mental disorder whereby men become convinced that nearby witches have stolen their genitals. They become convinced that their penis has disappeared, and become very agitated as a result, often resulting in the lynching by bystanders of the person accused of being a witch. Though strangely the penis always seems to turn up when the authorities want to see evidence. Anyway, Bures was curious about this phenomenon and set about trying to understand it by venturing to Nigeria and talking to people who have claimed their genitals have disappeared. This is a good look into how culture-bound our mental disorders are; in Nigeria, they have Koro, but here (but not there) we have anorexia.

Can A Complete Novice Become A Golf Pro With 10,000 Hours Of Practice? by Michael Kruse (St Petersburg Times): Malcolm Gladwell, of course, argued that this is the case in Outliers, and became very rich and famous for doing so. But, as far as we know, nobody has ever attempted to prove him right or wrong by doing the experiment as an adult, by devoting 10,000 hours to a pursuit. Until now - Dan McLaughlin has decided to give it a shot. Now over 1,000 hours into the plan, he hasn’t yet actually played a game of golf. But he really has actually been practising for 1000 hours. [via]

Your Brain Knows A Lot More Than You Realize by David Eagleman (Discover): Freud figured out over a hundred years ago that a lot of mental life was subconscious, and though a fair chunk of his theories were bunkum, this one is not. Often, we’re better at doing things if we do it by instinct rather than by conscious rational analysis; ‘chick sexing’ - that is, determining the sex of a newborn chicken - is still a bit of a mystery, but with a little trial-and-error practice, people can learn how to do it surprisingly accurately. [via]

Mind-Goggling (The Economist): Neuroscientific equipment is now good enough that neuroscientists are starting to be able to read minds, in a variety of different ways - for example, recent research which quite accurately compared visual cortical data from with YouTube clips - and this Economist piece does a good job at laying out what this might mean for us in the future. [via]

Does Inequality Make You Unhappy? by Jonah Lehrer (The Frontal Cortex): Well, duh. We’re social creatures with a pecking order of sorts. If you’re not in a prime spot on that pecking order, you’ll likely be unhappy about it. And surprise surprise, neuro research backs this up.

Papal Orgies by Beachcombing (Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog): In case you thought the papacy has always been a morally impeachable source of godly wisdom: Pope Alexander VI was a Borgia, and his son (celibacy, whoo!) was the inspiration for Machiavelli’s The Prince. And so he organised orgies where the rich and powerful were entertained by naked courtesans running on all fours to collect chestnuts. Accordingly to surprisingly dry contemporary sources, too. [or see QI cover this, from about 4 minutes in]