As millions more become politically engaged in these dark times, there has been a fair amount of Columbusing (discovering what was already there). “This is the beginning of a movement” or “first they came for the immigrants and we said not today.” It is not the beginning, many black, latinx, native, LGBTQIA activists have been…
Three events which presage the world to come and require us to choose which conflicting values we prioritize. Up to now there has been a building uncomfortable stalemate on some of our social tensions, the Trump/Bannon era will escalate these tensions, and require us to be far more active in how we live our values….
I started with a provocative headline, but I have come to believe that this is a necessary approach if we want to design policies and systems that bend the arc of our moral universe towards justice. Let me start with a thought experiment. Say you have a large building which, for some weird historical reason,…
It is four years since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, and we’ve had the benefit of extensive investigation and reflection. Many of the open questions in those horrible moments and days after the shooting have been answered, but we are ignoring the uncomfortable truths these answers present us with. There are lessons to be…
A recent op-ed in the Guardian, entitled “I’m not LMAO at ridiculous student emails” lodges a familiar complaint: students don’t know how to communicate with professors in a professional manner, flaunting reasonable social codes and ignoring professors busy lives outside the classroom. Such ignorance and lack of decorum will surely hinder these students future efforts…
Here is the original post, 27 million views and counting. Here is Virginia Hughes with an explanation based in part on my contributions. Here are some general resources on perception and illusions Michael Bach has a great website with many illusions, demonstrations and explanations. I keep a bunch of illusion and perception bookmarks that you…
The internet was finally broken yesterday, not by a West or a Kardashian, nor by Beliebers, but rather by disbelievers. #TheDress, in which some people see blue/black, some people see white/gold, some people see blue/gold, and some people, no … seriously? It’s blue and black. How could you? Are your eyes working ok? The disbelief…
This post is occasioned by Ben Schmidt’s wonderful tool for exploring gender differences on words used in student evaluations on RateMyProfessor. 1. RateMyProfessor is a huge, but awful data set. Why awful? First, I’d bet that well under 1% of the students who take a course rate the professor on RateMyProfessor. For example, I went…
Hello loyal readers, Today and tomorrow I will be conference blogging (and livetweeting) from the American Psychological Association Annual Convention. Please tune in over there, here is the blog, and my first post on the diversity of psychology. More to follow, stay tuned.
My David Brooks posts tend to be blockbusters (tens of hundreds of viewers!) so I am leaning in and going full listicle for this rant about his latest column, which in Brooksian fashion puts a modern social scientific sheen on old conservative ideas of blaming poor people for laziness lack of character and recommending solutions to social…
