A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Measure - New York Times

A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Measure - New York Times: "If psychotherapy has anything to offer -- and this should always be in question -- it should be something aside from the dominant trends in the culture. And this means now that its practitioners should not be committed either to making money or to trivializing the past or to finding a science of the soul."

Apparently psychotherapy is being severely contested. It's been interesting seeing a spate of popular coverage on current trends that seem to be splitting into various different directions. This NYT article is certainly worth a read.

gethuman database

gethuman database

This is hilarious but kind of amazing actually. Kevin Drum from Washington Monthly's Blog wrote about the article in the NYT where it was discussed. In short, it's a grassroots effort to reveal all the secret codes to get a live human being when you need customer service! What fun...

Salon.com Life | Getting over happiness

Salon.com Life | Getting over happiness

This article is an interview with Steven Hayes who is a proponent of commitment therapy. It's interesting because it advocates moving away from feeling happy as a goal to striving for meaning even if it means going through accepting feelings and acting on values. I'd buy the book if I had more time...

"What people mean by happiness is feeling good. And there are many ways to feel good. And many of the ways we feel good actually limit the possibilities for living the way we want to live our lives."

More GYWO

So I'm on a cluster computer without the "Blog it now" button, and I don't think we're able to install the google toolbar here, so I'll have to generate a post from, like, scratch.

Alternet did a nice feature on David Rees who does the Get Your War On comic. As always, it's entertaining and worth a look for that sort of acrid, juvenile humor that sometimes is exactly what you're looking for.

It's freezing in Jersey, so I'm trying to stay warm. Take care, all!

Cheney's Got a Gun

Cheney's Got a Gun

We knew that the humor was coming on this issue, and this cartoon set to the tune of Aerosmith is pretty funny. And the animals are cute...

SAN FRANCISCO / Pillow fight erupts amid shrieks, giggles / Big crowd lured by Internet postings, word of mouth

SAN FRANCISCO / Pillow fight erupts amid shrieks, giggles / Big crowd lured by Internet postings, word of mouth: "The rules for the affair were simple: Tell everyone about the upcoming pillow fight, show up with a concealed pillow, and don't hit people without pillows."

Reason number 12452 that SF is cooler than Princeton...

The Kiss of Life - New York Times

The Kiss of Life - New York Times: "According to some cultural historians, it is only within the last 800 years, with the advent of effective dentistry and the triumph over halitosis, that the lips were freed to become an erogenous zone."

Surprisingly interesting article -- who would have thought in our society today that kissing is anything but universal amongst humans. See, everything is socially constructed...

On a side note, we have a perfect example of confused correlation and causation in the final paragraph. The morning kiss is a proxy for happiness or sense of well-being or not-rushedness, not the cause in and of itself of higher incomes or fewer car accidents.

The campus crusade for guys

Salon.com Life | The campus crusade for guys: "Amid national panic over a growing academic gender gap, educators have begun to ask, might it be time to adopt affirmative action for boys?"

This article is an interesting look at the increasing gender gap on college campuses. I tend to agree with the narrative arc of the story, that it isn't a huge concern. Phyllis Rosser of Ms. Magazine who is quoted in the article points out that there hasn't been any decline in bachelor's degrees awarded to men, simply an increase in the numbers of women getting degrees. Paired with a statistic earlier in the article discussing the fact that men don't receive significant economic gains from a bachelor's degre while women earn 24 percent more than they would otherwise, this makes sense. (The numbers are that way because of the relative prevalence of well-paid blue collar work more available to men without degrees than women).

But I'm aware that I'm inherently very skeptical about anything focused on the supposed war on boys. The biological arguments about skills like reading and sitting still being "girl" skills that put boys at a disadvantage are just flat out stupid.

An Affair to Remember

This article was forwarded to me on a listserv that I'm on here at school. I think that it is a really important and powerful look at Brokeback Mountain and the ways that it's been represented to gain mainstream appeal.

The article's a spoiler by the way, so don't read it if you've not seen the film. Go see the film asap, then read.

The New York Review of Books: An Affair to Remember: "The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it."

Incidentally, Daniel Mendelsohn quotes how off SF Chronicle's Mick LaSalle is in the piece. LaSalle is frequently terribly off in his movie opinions, although I must admit that I totally uncritically accepted his review when I read it, probably because it was positive, and we usually disagree about whether the Chronicle's little man should be jumping out of his seat or sleeping. Mendelsohn points out that in this case, the problem is a more fundamental understanding of the film's texture and meaning, our understanding of the complexities of gay identities and masculinity.

31 Days in Iraq - New York Times

31 Days in Iraq - New York Times: "In January more than 800 people -- soldiers, security officers and civilians -- were killed as a result of the insurgency in Iraq. While the daily toll is noted in the newspapers and on TV, it is hard for many Americans to see these isolated reports in a broader context. The map, based on data from the American, British and Iraqi governments and news reports, shows the dates, locations and circumstances of deaths for the first month of the year."

This is yet another piece of incredibly depressing material, a visual display of casualties in Iraq. It is however an effective presentation of visual information. I think that is an extremely well done graphic, and it's a great "map" that reminds me of what used to be my favorite feature in Harper's years ago.

So apparently hello has a screenshot function that lets you capture the top window or the entire screen as an image. This one here is to highlight a new thing that Gmail lets you do. You can respond to the ads in the right column. As you hopefully will be able to see from the image, the ads that went alongside my email record of my last blog posting are sort of are like salt in the wounds... So now I can (sort of) tell Google. Yippers.