Monthly Archives: December 2008

Happy New Year – Meet Your Future Self

As the New Year dawns, we’re awash as usual with media chatter about resolutions.  And, as usual, all of this flutter and hype is exactly wrong (to say nothing of boring).  No need to go on and on about why resolutions … Continue reading

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Annals of Ironic Gullibility

Stephen Greenspan is a psychologist and professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Colorado, and author of the soon-to-be-released book, Annals of Gullibility: How We Get Duped and How to Avoid It.  Here’s a snippet from the publisher’s description: … Continue reading

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The Laws of Emotion: An Interview with Dr. Nico Frijda

Professor Nico Frijda, psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Amsterdam, is regarded as a founding father of contemporary emotion research.  With the publication of his magnum opus, The Emotions, his work set a major benchmark for future research on both … Continue reading

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Weekly Noggin Raisers #3

Channel N features a video of a lecture by surgeon and author Sherwin Nuland, who describes his experience undergoing ECT for depression Neurocritic provides an intriguing, to say nothing of unusual, glimpse into the psychodynamics of sneezing My Mind on Books has a worthwhile review … Continue reading

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Dan Gilbert: Exploring the Frontiers of Happiness

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, delivered a presentation at TED about his research on the ever indefinable topic of happiness. Gilbert contends that our beliefs about what will make us happy are frequently wrong, and in … Continue reading

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The Noble Lineage of Indecision

I’m presently reading The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand, a fascinating, Pulitzer Prize winning book about the development and influence of pragmatism–the only true homegrown American philosophy–beginning with the Civil War through to the Supreme Court decision that laid the foundation … Continue reading

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Tis’ the Season for Merry Obsessions

I listened to a story on NPR about the 25th anniversary of the movie A Christmas Story, which has summarily displaced It’s a Wonderful Life as America’s favorite holiday movie (you can catch it somewhere on cable TV at every hour … Continue reading

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