Society & Culture

Steve Biddulph – Ten to Fourteen Year Olds

We hear it everywhere - girls are growing up too fast. When I mention this to audiences of parents, their heads nod like they are going to fall off. Taxidrivers know it. Teachers know it. Doctors in emergency rooms almost weep when they say it, after dealing with twelve-year-olds who have drunk so much they [...]

What Is Snapchat and Why Do Kids Love It and Parents Fear It?

You may have heard about Snapchat, the mobile app that allows users to capture videos and pictures that self destruct after a few seconds.  When a user sends a message they get to decide whether it will live for between 1 and 10 seconds. After that it’s history, probably. via What Is Snapchat and Why [...]

Google Unleashes New Weapon And Millions of Dollars To Fight Child Porn

Finally the question of child pornography on the Internet is gaining some real traction and Google, with its huge investment, is to be congratulated for helping to bring that about. via Google Unleashes New Weapon And Millions of Dollars To Fight Child Porn - Forbes.

Racial empathy gap: People don’t perceive pain in other races

For many people, race does matter, even if they don’t know it. They feel more empathy when they see white skin pierced than black. This is known as the racial empathy gap. To study it, researchers at the University of Milano-Bicocca showed participants all of whom were white video clips of a needle or an [...]

SPARX: The game that treats depression finds a publisher, planned for this fall

SPARX — a fantasy role-playing game designed by the University of Auckland to teach young people with depression how to manage and overcome their condition — has found a publisher and distributor, it was announced today. The game first came to the attention of the public when a clinical trial involving it was published in [...]

Breakfast Drinks Claims Shonky, Choice Says

Several popular liquid breakfast products including Sanitarium's Up & Go and Kellogg's breakfast drinks make dodgy nutritional claims, consumer group Choice says. via Breakfast Drinks Claims Shonky, Choice Says.

Why is it so hard for some of us to keep things confidential?

Why is it so hard for some of us to keep things confidential? Psychologists suggest it has to do with our personality and what we've learned from our parents. The world is full of secrets. They range from the fascinating (who is the Mona Lisa?), to the dangerous (what is North Korea planning?) to the quirky [...]

How Engaged, Could Your Kids Be?

I believe that being genuinely engaged does wonders for your wellbeing. One of the determinants of engagement is a level of independence, or autonomy. Schools go to great lengths to give students (and teachers) the impression that they encourage independence. However, in the scheme of things, most of what occurs at school is prescribed for [...]

There Seems to Be a Universal Brain Response to Music

At Stanford University, nine men and eight women with no formal music training listened to obscure classical music (four symphonies by late-baroque composer William Boyce) while lying inside fMRI machines. The researchers used a type of imaging that let them examine all different areas of the brain over the entire time that the participants were [...]

Reading novels makes us better thinkers

Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It’s a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The compulsion to quell that unease can inspire snap judgments, rigid thinking, and bad decision-making. Fortunately, new research suggests a simple anecdote for this affliction: Read more literary fiction. A trio of University of Toronto scholars, led by psychologist Maja Djikic, report that people [...]

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