Führer Sleep Meds Distracted Humanitarian Crowd
To Sleep, Perchance To Dream, Perchance To Remember by Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science): Psychologists a) made people complete a difficult maze; b) let them have a catnap; c) asked them if they dreamt about the maze; and d) made them do the maze again. Results: if you dreamt about the maze, you were much better than non-dreamers at doing the maze the second time. So that’s the age old question of why we dream sorted, then.
Mind Over Meds by Daniel Carlat (New York Times): Towards the end of last century, psychiatrists became psychopharmacologists - they basically mostly became about prescribing drugs rather than talking to people about their childhoods. Carlat, a psychiatrist, tells the story of growing to realise that - especially considering that much of a medication’s effect is placebo - maybe talking about childhoods isn’t so bad after all.
A Nation Distracted by Maggie Jackson (Utne Reader): Attention! Now focus! This article is 7 pages long. It’s about attention and distraction, and how to focus. It’s long. I get that. But basically if you let yourself get distracted by other stuff, you’re not going to achieve much. Stop it with the dog with the puffy tail, okay? [via]
The Sound And The Führer by Liel Leibovitz (Tablet): All those Hitler parodies were recently taken off YouTube due to a copyright claim; Leibovitz meditates on why the memers of the internet chose that scene of that movie about that man - Hitler may as well be a pseudonym for Satan in this day and age - and what it says about us. (Question: if you bring Hitler into the argument when you’re discussing Hitler, do you run afoul of Godwin’s Law?) [via]
Is Male Circumcision A Humanitarian Act? by Jesse Bering (Bering In Mind): According to this simultaneously erudite and smutty article (typical for Bering), sometimes: at least, it seems to provide more protection from AIDS. And cuckolding.
Three’s A Crowd by David Marquand (The Independent): History may not repeat, but it definitely rhymes: the Australian election of 2007 had numerous comparisons to the Australian election of 1929 (leader losing his seat, Labor government elected right before an economic collapse). Similarly, the 2010 UK election, argues this fascinating article by Marquand, resembles the 1924 election, whereupon a previously two-party system now becomes a three-party system. [via]
