Depression Dysfunction Operas Never Saving Morality
Todd Marinovich: The Man Who Never Was by Mike Sager (Esquire): Trained from birth by a maniacal sports father for the role of NFL quarterback, Marinovich ended up playing 3 seasons of NFL, but ended up a junkie. Fascinating story, and I know nothing about NFL (which would be, at most, the fifth most popular game that gets called football in Australia). [via]
Why Do So Many Women Have Depression? by Kira Cochrane (The Guardian): Cochrane mostly seems to settle on “because they are trying to juggle looking great, having kids, and having a high-powered job, and all three at once is impossible”, but the answer’s more complicated than that - it’s not only upper middle class women with kids and fading looks get are depressed, and not all of the people who live that lifestyle are depressed. If psychologists knew the answer, there’d be less depression, wouldn’t there?
How Soap Operas Could Save The World by Drake Bennett (Boston Globe): Soap operas are perhaps the most effective form of social control ever invented; there seems to be a direct causal connection between what happens in soap operas and the behaviour of watchers (though not in the direction of infidelity and craziness).
Electoral Dysfunction: Why Democracy Is Always Unfair by Ian Stewart (New Scientist): Stewart looks at the maths involved in different voting systems, and why, mathematically, no election can be truly fair. The more I read about the voting systems of other countries, the fairer and better the Australian system looks. Of course, then I remember Senator Steve Fielding.
Psychopaths And Rational Morality by Jonah Lehrer (The Frontal Cortex): We have a tendency to think that the people who are capable of acting rationally should be tried for their crimes. However, if you’re a psychopath, you are almost too capable of acting rationally, but incapable of acting empathetically.
Listening To (And Saving) The World’s Languages by Sam Roberts (New York Times): Because of the usual worldwide political turmoil and US refugee policy, an unusual amount of people who speak languages in danger of going extinct live in New York City. [via Language Log, with typically wise commentary]
