Why Spirituality is Good for Your Mental Health

a post by Monique Hassan for the Spirituality & Mental Health blog [brought to us by World of Psychology]



Spirituality, or being concerned about your connection to the human spirit and the light all around us, is beneficial and uplifting for our overall mental health and quality of life. The secular world often looks at spirituality as hocus pocus when dealing with mental health or physical concerns, but the truth is the human body is not a car, it is more than just mechanics.

Technology and science are needed and beneficial, but they are not the solve-all that some people hope they are. We have a growing disconnection from that sacred light and love within our bodies, even our physical environments have grown into more concrete and steel with less nature and beauty. This lack of spirituality leaves a void; which we fill with overeating, anxiety, sex, money, fighting, career or some other placeholder which we shove into that void thinking we are doing just fine.

Spirituality or Religion
To be clear, spirituality and religion are not the same thing although they do interact. Religion is organized, has standards and provides structure to someone on how they should interact with and grow their spirituality. While spirituality is very individualized and resides within our hearts, no one has access to that spiritual core except for the one who created it. We can think of religion as more external and spirituality as internal. One impacts the other, one can feed off of the other or hurt the other, but they are not the same.

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Access to general social protection for immigrants in advanced democracies

an article by Carina Schmitt and Céline Teney (University of Bremen, Germany) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 29 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

Immigration has become a central socio-political issue in most advanced democracies. While research mainly focuses on immigrant-specific policies in the area of immigration, integration and citizenship, we still know very little about the incorporation of immigrants into mainstream social policies.

By analysing cross-national differences in the inclusion of immigrants into general social protection across 27 rich democracies on the basis of comparative indicators from the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) dataset, we seek to address this gap in a quantitative study.

A cross-national comparison of these indicators shows a particularly large variation in the inclusiveness of the access to social protection for immigrants across countries. By drawing on the welfare state and integration regime literature, we assess the power of two contrasting perspectives, namely, the post-national welfare state and the welfare chauvinism models, in explaining this large cross-national variation in immigrants’ access to social security and social housing.

Our overall findings suggest that both the welfare chauvinist and the post-national welfare state models comprise two theoretical perspectives that turn out to be fruitful to interpret cross-national variation in immigrants’ access to social protection.

According to the welfare chauvinism model, we find robust evidence that left-wing cabinets are particularly reluctant to open general social protection schemes to immigrants.

By contrast and in line with expectations derived from the post-national welfare state model, countries with an overall generous welfare state and countries facing large immigration flows tend to provide immigrants with more generous access to social protection.

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The Anatomy of UK Labour Productivity: Lessons from New and Existing Data Sources

an article by Philip Wales (Office for National Statistics, UK) published in National Institute Economic Review Volume 247 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

The UK's recent productivity performance has been strikingly weak. Output per hour worked, which increased by around 2.1 per cent per year in the decade leading up to the economic downturn, increased by just 0.2 per cent per year in the ten years following the global financial crisis.

This paper presents three ‘stylised facts’ on the UK's recent productivity performance through the lens of official statistics:

• the weakness of recent productivity growth;
• the ‘gap’ in productivity terms between the UK and other leading economies; and
• the large differences in productivity between businesses.

It surveys recent work by ONS to help researchers and policy-makers to understand the UK's productivity performance, including new experimental and official statistics, analysis and research.

It concludes by drawing together the key findings of these new statistics, highlighting how further improvements might be made through the greater use of survey and administrative data.

JEL Classification: J24, E24, D24

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Three guys walk into a bar: an information theoretic analysis

an article by W. Russell Neuman (New York University, NY, USA) published in Information, Communication & Society Volume 22 Issue 2 (2019)

Abstract

This study posits a scenario in which three famous information theorists meet each other in a bar and compare notes.

The three include the celebrated information theorist Claude Shannon, the eighteenth century English statistician Thomas Bayes, and the Harvard statistical linguist George Zipf. Each promoted a foundational equation concerning human communication and the updating of beliefs based on new information.

They discover that with some modest mathematical transformations they can demonstrate that each of the equations, although based on entirely distinct phenomena in physics, statistics, and linguistics, has the same basic structural form.

The core of the analysis explores how such distinct phenomena share similar nonlinear structural properties, i.e., non-Gaussian distributions and why an understanding of these properties is important for communication research and the analysis of advanced information systems.

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Does Anxiety Cause PTSD or Does PTSD Cause Anxiety?

a post by Edie Weinstein for the World of Psychology blog



“PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions.” ― Susan Pease Banitt

This question came up in conversation when I was speaking with someone who has experienced severe panic attacks to the point of calling them “debilitating”, requiring inpatient care. As they were sharing about the ordeal, they told me that when they contemplate the time spent seeking treatment and the aftermath, it ramped up both the anxiety and PTSD symptoms. Even as a career therapist with decades of experience treating people with stand-alone anxiety, with no overt PTSD symptoms, I had not considered that remembering the anxiety was re-traumatizing. I have heard clients share that anticipating panic attacks was in and of itself anxiety provoking. For this person and so many others, it is hard to determine the line between the two.

As is the case for many who struggle with this condition, they experienced body memory, flashbacks and tremors, as if the events of the past were recurring. Reminding themselves, “I am here and now, not there and then,” alleviated some of the more intense indicators.

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Some useful reminders of tactics for coping whether it’s PTSD or something else that underlies the panic / anxiety.

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Countries with more butter have happier citizens

REALLY??

a post by Frank Jacobs for the Big Think blog

Butter supply and life satisfaction are linked — but by causation or correlation?

• Haiti and other countries with low butter supply report low life satisfaction.
• The reverse is true for countries such as Germany, which score high in both categories.
• As the graph below shows, a curious pattern emerges across the globe. But is it causation or correlation?

"Give me a good sharp knife and a good sharp cheese, and I'm a happy man". Perhaps not a quote you'd expect from the creative mind behind Game of Thrones, but maybe George R.R. Martin is onto something.

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Regulations, immigration, and firms' offshoring decisions

a column by Simone Moriconi, Giovanni Peri and Dario Pozzoli for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Firms’ offshoring decisions depend on the size of entry costs in target countries. But the institutional and policy determinants of these costs have received little empirical attention.

This column uses data on 2,000 Danish manufacturing firms to explore how costs of entry affect offshoring decisions. Higher levels of labour market rigidity, credit risk, and corruption all lower the probability of offshoring to a given country, while immigrant networks within the firm increase the likelihood of offshoring to their home countries.

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How to Resist Negative Social Contagion

a post by Marie Hartwell-Walker for the World of Psychology blog



Researchers have discovered that people are remarkably responsive to what other members of their social group are doing. “Social Contagion” is the term social psychologists use to describe the tendency of a behavior, attitude or belief to spread among people who are close to each other.

As much as we may not want to believe it, what we think everybody else thinks or does matters to us. Family harmony often depends on a certain level of conformity. We make friends based more on similarity than differences. Advertisers count on our tendency to be influenced by our perception of what is popular with that mythic “everyone else.”

Some social contagion is decidedly self-destructive. In 2008, 17 high school girls in one small town made a pregnancy pact, all of them trying to get pregnant before graduation. A retrospective study that same year found that adolescent girls are more likely to engage in non-suicidal self harm if their best friends are doing it. Another study found that teens with four or more friends who were abusing drugs and alcohol were also likely to abuse substances. The suicide of one or more people in a group often leads to other people attempting or committing suicide, especially if they were already struggling with depression.

Not all conformity is negative. People are more likely to register to be organ donors if members of their family do the same. Recovery groups are built on the idea that replacing a social group of users with a support group of people with the same recovery goals is a powerful support for positive change. Conservation efforts, composting, and belonging to a farm share are also likely to spread among members of a friend group. You know that card on your hotel pillow asking if you’d like to help the environment by reusing your towels? You are more likely to say “yes” if people you know do it.

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The missing English middle class: Evidence from 60 million death and probate records

a column by Neil Cummins for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Within countries, the driving force behind the 20th century’s dramatic drop in inequality were the declines in the wealth shares of the top 1%.

Based on 60 million death and probate records covering a period of 100 years, this column argues that in the case of Britain the distributional gains from the Great Equalisation were exclusively confined to the top 30% of the wealth distribution. This left the nation’s social and political fabric vulnerable to the protest vote of many in 2016 to leave the EU, following the austerity induced by the financial crisis.

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An Introduction to the Neuroscience Behind Creating Your Reality

a post by Brooklyn Storme for the World of Psychology blog



Have you ever wondered why two people can share the exact same situation, yet experience it differently?

Neural pathways are often described as a type of super-highway of nerve cells, the function of which is to transmit messages. Much like a walking track in the bush, the more you walk over it, the more trodden and clear it becomes. The same thing happens when we engage in behaviors such as thinking certain thoughts with a high degree of regularity.

You see the brain consumes between 20-30% of the caloric burn in our body at rest. It uses so much energy because it’s so complex and so it has needed to evolve and adapt in order to automate various processes as a way of conserving energy. This is why and how regular behaviors become habits (or things we seemingly do without a great deal of conscious thought).

Think about something simple like brushing your teeth. You can brush them just fine, no problem but what if I asked you to use your non-dominant hand to do that instead? You’d suddenly have to think about the action of your arm and the motion of your wrist or hand. It would be hard at first because it’s unfamiliar, but if you persevered with it, over time, it would become easier as the task became more familiar. This is an example of neuroplasticity and can be thought of as “re-wiring your brain.”

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Applying a cognitive‐emotional model to nonsuicidal self‐injury

Jessica C. Dawkins, Penelope A. Hasking, Mark E. Boyes, Danyelle Greene and Chantelle Passchier (Curtin University, Bentley, Australia) published in Stress and Health Volume 35 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

The recently proposed cognitive‐emotional model of nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) draws on emotion regulation models and social cognitive theory to understand the onset, maintenance, and cessation of NSSI. We tested the prediction of the model that the relationship between emotional reactivity and NSSI is moderated by specific cognitions about self‐injury (i.e., self‐efficacy to resist NSSI, NSSI outcome expectancies), emotion regulation, and rumination.

A sample of 647 university students aged 17–25 years (M = 19.92, SD = 1.78) completed self‐report measures of the constructs of interest. As expected, we found that emotional reactivity was positively related to NSSI, particularly for people who had weak self‐efficacy to resist NSSI. However, emotional reactivity was negatively related to NSSI for people who were more likely to use expressive suppression to regulate emotion.

Implications for the theoretical understanding of NSSI are discussed.

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Real exchange rates for economic development

a column by Martin Guzman, José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph Stiglitz for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The role of exchange rate policies in economic development is still largely debated.

This column argues that there are theoretical foundations for policies that guarantee competitive and stable real exchange rates. When there are constraints on the available set of policy instruments, the complementary use of competitive exchange rates with export taxes for traditional export sectors would result in effectively multiple real exchange rates.

The empirical evidence suggests that both foreign exchange interventions and capital account regulations can be effectively used for maintaining competitive exchange rates and for dampening the effects of boom-bust cycles in external financing and the terms of trade on the exchange rate, thereby promoting growth and stability.

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Why eating ice cream is linked to shark attacks

a post by Eric Siegel for the Big Think blog

Why are soda and ice cream each linked to violence? This article delivers the final word on what people mean by "correlation does not imply causation."

• Ice cream consumption is actually linked to shark attacks.
• But the relationship is correlative, not causal.
• It's pretty stunning how media outlets skip over this important detail.

Soda and ice cream are linked to violence. What the what? And people have concluded from data that smoking, chocolate, and curly fries are good for you. Why the when?

I'll explain -- but also go much further and show you… wait for it… that figuring out why such things are true doesn't even matter at all for driving decisions with data. Who the how? It's time for the "correlation does not imply causation" clarification proclamation moment of zen clarity. Let's do this!

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The public and private marginal product of capital

a column by Matt Lowe, Chris Papageorgiou and Fidel Pérez Sebastián for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Capital doesn’t flow to developing countries as much as economic theory suggests it should, and this might imply that capital is misallocated across nations.

This column argues that once public capital is removed from the equation, the evidence shows that private capital is allocated remarkably efficiently across nations. It also suggests that the inefficiencies related to the allocation of public capital across countries can be significant and much larger than those related to private capital.

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Unwanted Thoughts? Don't Try to Suppress Them

a post by Therese J. Borchard for the World of Psychology blog



We all do it.

We try to wish our thoughts away. When our mind turns to a stressful work situation, a craving for a cigarette, or a fantasy we shouldn’t be having, we immediately try to remove the thought from the grey matter of our brains. We start a random conversation with the person next to us, we concentrate harder on a work assignment, or we put our index fingers in our ears, and sing, “La la la la, I can’t hear you!”

Consider every long song you hear on the radio. How many begin or end with the lyrics, “I can’t get you out of mind”? The human brain is conditioned to obsess — its negative bias makes us worry and fret. Despite our valiant efforts to shift our thoughts, they follow us into the shower and to work meetings.

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Explaining normative behavior in information technology use

Moutusy Maity, Arunima Shah and Ankita Misra (Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, India) and Kallol Bagchi (University of Texas at El Paso, Texas, USA) published in Information Technology & People Volume 32 Issue 1 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify a model that provides explanations for normative behavior in information technology (IT) use, and to test the model across two different types of normative behavior (i.e. green information technology (GIT), and digital piracy (DP)).

Design/methodology/approach
The proposed model is based on the norm activation model (NAM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model (UTAUT). A total of 374 and 360 usable responses were obtained for GIT and DP, respectively. The authors use the SEM technique in order to test the proposed model on the two sub-samples.

Findings
Findings from the proposed model show that DP users’ personal norm (PN) negatively impacts behavioral intention and actual behavior. These findings indicate that users of IT who indulge in DP understand that use of pirated software may not be a socially approved behavior but they still indulge in it because their PNs are not aligned with social expectations. GIT users’ PN positively impacts behavioral intention and actual behavior, and the relationship is stronger for behavioral intention than for actual behavior.

Research limitations/implications
The sample consists of college students and working professionals based in India who may be savvy with respect to internet use. Future work may evaluate whether the pattern of results that the authors report for normative behavior does hold across other types of normative behavior.

Practical implications
These findings hint at a gap between the moral compass and the final “action” taken by DP users. What managers need to do is to create awareness among their customers about the implementation of DP/GIT and help users engage in normative behavior.

Originality/value
This research contributes to the literature by integrating the UTAUT and the NAM to explain normative behavior of IT use. The authors propose and test a model that identifies cognitive as well as social-psychological motivations to explain normative behavior in IT use, which have been sparingly studied in extant literature, and provides a holistic understanding of the phenomenon. As such, this research contributes to the existing knowledge of understanding of normative IT behavior.

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Religious live-streaming: constructing the authentic in real time

an article by Oren Golan and Michele Martini (University of Haifa, Israel) published in Information, Communication & Society Volume 22 Issue 3 (2019)

Abstract

From the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to the Kaaba of Mecca, many religious sites are webcasting in live-streaming.

This study inquires how religious institutions act to shape users’ worldviews and negotiate meanings via live-streaming-mediated communication. Ethnographic fieldwork accompanied a case study of 25 in-depth interviews of the Canção Nova and the Franciscan Order’s recent media operation in the Holy Land.

Findings uncovered three facets:
(1) Evangelizing youth.
(2) Establishing affinity towards the Holy Land.
(3) Maintaining constant presence of the transcendental.

Drawing on Walter Benjamin, proximity between believers and the divine via live-streaming is discussed and its implication for transforming the religious experience, establishing secondary authority in the Catholic world and propelling religious change in the information society.

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How to Get Past Doubt and Do What You Really Want to Do

a post by Joseph Pennington for the Tiny Buddha blog

“Doubt everything. Find your own light.” ~The Buddha

As far back as I can remember, I’ve allowed my life to be shaped by external forces.

On the outside, it appeared like I was just another carefree soul, living in the moment and going through life like a leaf on the wind. But on closer inspection, I was actually running away from having to make any real commitments and avoiding getting into a position where I had to make difficult or important decisions.

It wasn’t until recently, when I realized it was four years to the date since I’d fallen into the job that I’d despised for what seemed like forever, that I even stopped to realize this.

But on this day, as I stood looking around and contemplating where I’d ended up, I suddenly—and surprisingly—decided that was all going to change.

Before I knew it, I was acting on something that, until then, had been just a vague, albeit persistent idea floating around in the back of my mind.

I was applying to go back to university.

There was little doubt about the decision; it was something I’d be thinking about for a while but had been putting off for as long as possible.

But sure enough, the doubt soon crept in. I loathed formal education the first time around, and this time I was going to study something that was sure to stop any conversation dead with 99 percent of people I knew and make me the best friend of my one quirky aunt who’s deep into crystals and horoscopes:

Mindfulness

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No Stump City: The Contestation and Politics of Urban Street-Trees – A Case Study of Sheffield

an article by Ian D. Rotherham and Matthew Flinders (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) published in People, Place and Policy Volume 12 Issue 3 (February 2019)

Abstract

Issues of sustainable development, liveable cities, green infrastructure, and urban ecosystem services currently receive attention from researchers and decision-makers. Furthermore, the benefits to public wellbeing and health of high quality open spaces and green areas are now undisputed (e.g. Simson, 2008; Booth, 2005, 2006).

However, with increasing pressure on urban landscapes for competing uses like housing-development green-spaces are under threat. Furthermore, austerity-driven cuts to local authority budgets mean loss of core services and skills relating to open-space management and planning. Some local authorities such as Newcastle City Council are withdrawing all expenditure on parks and community spaces. With major challenges in providing good quality urban green-spaces, the loss of most local authority countryside management services from 2008 onwards, reflects bigger problems (see Rotherham, 2014, 2015 for example).

Within this wider scenario has been the growing importance of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) to deliver core environmental and green-space services in many urban areas. These have been seen as possible fixes for the current waves of austerity cuts and many local authorities such as Sheffield City Council have gone down this route.

Nevertheless, real costs (financial and otherwise) of Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) are now emerging (Syal, 2018). There are also issues of public access to information once contracts become ‘commercially sensitive’ and of profit-driven delivery of core ‘public benefit’ services. These changes threaten ‘local environmental democracy’ as part of a wider shift in democratic processes (Flinders, 2012, 2017).

This paper examines wider issues of austerity-driven cuts to green-space services, of PFI projects, and of local environmental democracy. It takes the Sheffield street-trees initiative as an exemplar case-study to interrogate the broad concerns.

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10 for today starts with the plague and is followed by history, science and poetry to name but three subjects

How did the plague impact health regulation?
via the OUP blog by Anne-Emmanuelle Birn

 A street during the plague in London with a death cart and mourners by Edmund Evans.
CC-BY-4.0 viaWellcome Collection
What do we think of when we hear the word “plague”? Red crosses on boarded-up doors? Deserted medieval villages? Or maybe the horror film-esque cloak and mask of a plague doctor?
Unsurprisingly, the history of plague and its impact on health regulation is more complex and far-reaching than many assume. This extract from the Textbook of Global Health looks at the medical and environmental legacy of pandemics, which range from the Plague of Justinian, to the infamous Black Death and beyond.
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The First Battle of the Marne – Major Turning Point of World War I
via About History by Alcibiades

The Battle of the Marne was a major battle between the German and Anglo-French armies, which took place on September 5-12, 1914, on the Marne , during the First World War, ending in the defeat of the German army. As a result of the battle, the German army’s strategic plan for the offensive was foiled, intended to be a quick victory on the Western front causing the surrender of France.
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I assumed the elephant orchestra was a gimmick. But those pachyderms can play
via the New Statesman by John Burnside

Training an animal, Pavlov-style, to do human-designed tricks is one thing, but to have it come, voluntarily, to music practice is quite another.
When I first heard about it, I assumed it was a gimmick; which says much about human prejudice, I suppose. Still, I like to think that my initial scepticism was founded, not on some anthropocentric impulse, but upon its precise opposite.
Of course, I know that animals make music, but an elephant orchestra, complete with drums, gongs and harmonicas? Playing pieces that humans would consider pleasing to the ear? That proposition took me back to the early nature programmes, where the animals had distinctly human personalities. The grumpy pelican. The shy hedgehog. The mischievous chimpanzee. When humans argue about whether, or to what extent, animals have feelings, what they usually mean is: do animals have human feelings? To which I think the answer is: no – and why should they?
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Watch a CNC lathe make a hollow spiral candlestick
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

Legacy Woodworking Machinery has a great series of videos on how they program CNC machines to cut a hollow spiral candlestick.
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The Battle of Manzikert 1071 and the Beginning of Seljuk Dominance
via About History Alciblades

The Battle of Manzikert occurred on August 25-26, 1071, in the territory of the Byzantium Empire, near the city of Manzikert, between the Seljuk Turks and the Byzantine Empire. The Seljuk Turks, under the leadership of the Sultan of Alp-Arslan, defeated the Byzantines and captured Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes, who bought his freedom back at great expense for his country. The victory of the Turks accelerated the establishment of permanent population transfers of Seljuk Turks to Asia Minor. The battle of Manzikert is the decisive battle between the Byzantines and the Seljuks. After this battle, the Byzantine Empire did not recover its former strength. It managed to continue for four centuries, but it never regained the power it once had.
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A Short Analysis of Adelaide Crapsey’s ‘November Night’
via Interesting Literature
On one of American literature’s forgotten poets
The American poet Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914) is not much remembered now, but she left one mini poetic legacy: the cinquain. The word ‘cinquain’ had existed before her miniature verse innovation, but Crapsey co-opted it to describe the five-line unrhymed form which she used in her finest poetry.
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Entering most black holes would kill you. This one gives you an infinite number of futures
via the Big Think blog by Philip Perry
When the past and future are no longer connected, some pretty weird stuff happens.
What’s inside a black hole? In most, there’s something called the singularity—an area of such density and intense gravitational force that not even light can escape. Don’t venture too close. Once you enter the event horizon—the outer rim—it’s all over for you. You’d be shredded to ribbons of atoms that’ll be sucked down into its depths. But there may be one exception. Mathematicians have recently unveiled a scenario even more mind-blowing.
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What’s in her name?
via the OUP blog by Patricia Fara

Pierre and Marie Curie in the laboratory, circa 1904. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
It must top the list of famous misquotes: Shakespeare’s Juliet did not say “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But she did ask “What’s in a name?” thus pinpointing a problem that still vexes women today. When I turned 40, I rebranded myself from Pat to Patricia, a shift that was personally gratifying yet had no serious effects. But some women have had to contemplate more serious consequences.
There is only one female scientist who is famous throughout the world, but she had several names to choose between and has been represented in various guises. Most commonly celebrated as the double Nobel Prize winner who dedicated her life to science and invented the word “radioactivity,” she has also been castigated as a Jewish whore, a steely obsessive, and a savvy media manipulator. When she visited the United States in two whirlwind trips, she showed the President that she could act as a hard-headed negotiator.
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Stunning image of airglow bands around the Milky Way
via Boing Boing by Andrea James

Xiaohan Wang was driving near Keluke Lake in Qinghai Province in China, but stopped to snap this lovely image of airglow bands framing the Milky Way.
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WOW. That is all I can think to say.

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A Short Analysis of John Clare’s ‘I Am’
via Interesting Literature
On Clare’s great poem about the self
‘I am—yet what I am none cares or knows’. As opening lines go, it teeters on the edge of self-pity, and it’s a brave poet who will risk that charge – and a fine poet who can pull the rest of his poem back from the brink of such self-indulgent wallowing that might be expected to follow. John Clare’s ‘I Am’ manages this, making it a fine and especially interesting example of Romantic poetry, exploring the individual self and the poet’s own place in the world. Before we offer a few words of analysis, here’s a reminder of one of John Clare’s best-known poems.
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10 for today: from human brain cells to prohibition

Human brain cells don't continue to grow into adulthood, according to a new study
via Big Think by Philip Perry
We used to think neurogenesis – the growth of new brain cells, occurred throughout one’s lifetime. A shocking new study out of UC-San Francisco finds that instead, no more memory cells grow in the hippocampus after childhood. That's staggering, as this area of the brain associated with really important things such as learning, memory, and emotion. One of the largest studies of its kind to date, the scientists examined 59 human brain specimens, all of varying ages, and found no new neuron formation past age 13.
Neuroscientists have been debating since the late 1920s whether or not neurogenesis occurs into adulthood. From the ‘80s on, the prevailing view was that neurogenesis takes place throughout our lives. That’s because lots of studies confirmed the phenomenon occurring past the juvenile stage in the brains of other species, including birds, mice, rats, and nonhuman primates. In rats, for instance, new neurons are constantly formed around the olfactory bulb, which is associated with the sense of smell.
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Fifty years on: what has plate tectonics ever done for us?
via the OUP blog by Roy Livermore

Horst and Graben: Basin and Range by NPS Natural Resources. Public domain via Flickr
You might think that a phenomenon such as plate tectonics, operating on a timescale of millions of years, would have little relevance to our lives today. In fact, plate tectonics could be the reason we, and the rest of life on Earth, are here at all.
In 2004, John Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister in Tony Blair’s New Labour government, remarked, “the tectonic plates appear to be moving,” referring to the impending downfall of Mr Blair. Since then, the tectonic plates metaphor has been applied to just about every major political transition, including events following the UK referendum on leaving the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US President. In fact, as with most things, the politicians have got it wrong. There is no such thing as a “tectonic plate”: it is not the plates that are tectonic, but the tectonics that is plate-like.
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This is a bit technical but I found what I could understand quite interesting!
And I love the politician comment above!

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5 Forgotten Peoples of the Early Middle Ages
via About History by Alcibiades

VASCONES
An Indo-European tribe settled in the Pyrenees mountains bordering both Spain and France, the Vascones were first encountered by the Roman Republic. Their descendants are the Basque peoples inhabiting the same region as their ancestors. Roman records indicate that the Vascones had used a language so alien, and nothing like they had previously encountered, that to this day it has not been deciphered. Assimilated under Roman rule, the Vascones faced threats from the Franks, the Goths, the Visigoths and Arabs in the Middle Ages, but had managed to not be too influenced from outsiders, due to the isolated geographical region they inhabited.
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DIY doomsday food kits: how to eat well after the apocalypse
via the Guardian by Gavin Haynes

Pile ’em high … eat to beat doomsday. Photograph: Costco
Those keen to survive Armageddon will be pleased to note a bargain in Costco this week. The US retail giant is selling $6,000 (£4,330) “doomsday prepper” food kits. Promising enough to feed a family of four for a year, these 600-can stacks contain freeze-dried carrots, egg noodles, quick oats, macaroni, freeze-dried banana slices and potato chunks, among many other staples. And because there’s nothing more embarrassing than starving neighbours attacking your post-doomsday compound, it is all “packaged discreetly for privacy in shipping”.
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A Short Analysis of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’
via Interesting Literature
On a well-known children’s rhyme
We continue our short pieces about star-related poems today, following on from yesterday’s post about Emily Dickinson’s star-poem. ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ is a well-known children’s poem, and yet, like many well-known things, how well do we actually know it? Who wrote it, for instance? And who can recite the second verse of the poem? Is it a poem, or a song? Clearly these matters require a little investigation and analysis to become fully clear. But first, a reminder of ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ – and we mean the full version, not just that famous first verse.
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I admit to having forgotten the other verses to this poem. A timely reminder?

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Were there ever any real Amazon warrior women?
via the Big Think blog by Philip Perry
The myths and legends of the Amazons are fascinating and telling of the Greek culture they enthralled and through them, our own culture as well.
We marvel at Wonder Woman and other characters that represent female power. Although we view such symbols as a modern-day phenomenon, they aren’t new. They go back to the roots of western civilization and beyond. Greek myth, the stories of Homer and the writings of Herodotus all mention a band of fierce and skilled warrior women. Wonder Woman was based, partly, on these legends from antiquity.
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Advice to Washington from Ancient China
via 3 Quarks Daily: Eliot Weinberger in the LRB
In the second century BCE, Liu An, king of Huainan, asked the scholars of his court to prepare a book that would outline everything a wise monarch should know about statecraft, philosophy, and general world knowledge. The result was the massive ‘Huainanzi’, which runs to nine hundred large pages in English translation. Here are some excerpts, based on the translation by Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major:
If a ruler rejects those who work for the public good, and employs people according to friendship and factions, then those of bizarre talent and frivolous ability will be promoted out of turn, while conscientious officials will be hindered and will not advance. In this way, the customs of the people will fall into disorder throughout the state, and accomplished officials will struggle.
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A meditative online game where you draw gorgeous flowers
via Boing Boing by Clive Thompson

Untitled (the flower game) is a gorgeous game – playable online, or via a downloadable app -- where you draw a gradually evolving flower, using the left-right keys.
It offers two styles of play – an “arcade mode”, where you race to hit as many red targets as possible, and a “drawing machine” mode, where you just use the game to draw gorgeous, symmetrical designs. I’ve been zoning out for fifteen minutes using the latter, and I’m calmer than I’ve felt all week, heh.
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Just watching that gif is enough to calm me!

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A Short Analysis of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Power of the Dog’
via Interesting Literature
Kipling’s fine poem about our canine friends
‘The Power of the Dog’ by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), prolific poet, novelist, and writer of short fiction for both adults and children, extols the dog’s most famous virtue – its undying loyalty and devotion to its owner – but also warns against giving your heart to a dog for it ‘to tear’. Dogs, for Kipling, are not just man’s best friend: they are heartbreakers.
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Prohibition: A strange idea
via the OUP blog by WJ Rorabaugh

“Orange County Sheriff’s deputies dumping illegal booze, Santa Ana, 3-31-1932” courtesy of Orange County Archives via Creative Commons.
American politics is frequently absurd, often zany, and sometimes downright crazy. Among the most outrageous past ideas was the legal Prohibition of alcohol, which was put into the US Constitution as the Eighteenth Amendment in 1920. Prohibition lasted until 1933, when the Twenty-First Amendment brought repeal and tight government regulation of alcohol.
How and why one of the world’s hardest-drinking societies embarked upon a scheme to ban alcohol is a tale worth remembering. Prohibition shows the difference between good intentions and bad results. It also offers a cautionary note to all who would propose government-mandated legal bans to other social ills; such bans may have unanticipated negative results.
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Love and the Platinum Rule

a post by Marie Hartwell-Walker for the World of Psychology blog



The Golden Rule is a good first pass at an attempt at empathy. You probably know how it goes: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Although it is generally believed to have come from the Bible, the maxim is found in many religions and cultures. In fact, in 1993, it was endorsed in the Declaration Toward a Global Ethics by 143 religious leaders from most of the worlds’ major faiths. It has even been found in manuscripts from ancient Egypt and China. It appears that people have been told to use themselves as a way to understand others’ feelings since the beginning of time.

But the Golden Rule really is only a very first pass at empathic understanding. Treating others as we want to be treated doesn’t take into account that the other people in question might not experience things in the same way we do. Sometimes it’s not even close.

Enter what has been called the Platinum Rule. “Treat others as they would like to be treated.” Notice the difference. Instead of using oneself as the test for what someone else appreciates, feels, or values in a situation, it urges us to figure out what the other person would appreciate or feel or value and do that — even if we don’t share their tastes or understand why on earth they react the way they do.

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Hannah Arendt on why some people are immune to fact-checking

a post by Scotty Hendricks for the Big Think blog

Why do people buy into stories that are clearly lies? Hannah Arendt can help us understand.

• People who don't believe facts or news that disagree with their worldviews can be impossible to deal with, and boy there are a lot of them lately.
• Hannah Arendt tells us this isn't all new; it happened before around 1936.
• It isn't easy to convince a person who has given up on facts that they really should face reality again, but it can be done.

A strange phenomenon has infected global politics. Fact-checking, once seen as a dull but effective way to figure out what is true and what is false, is now an extremely contentious business that often utterly fails to convince people that their views are based on falsehoods.

Most of us who care about being accurate and seeking truth from facts are, justly, shocked by this. How can it be that entire political movements are based around falsehoods and eagerly supported by people who claim all attempts at fact-checking are "fake news"?

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The 10 Masks We Wear

a post by Therese J. Borchard for the World of Psychology blog



Rarely does a person emerge from childhood completely unscathed.

Most of us learn to protect ourselves with defense mechanisms and personality traits that ensure our safety in the world. By adopting certain behavioral patterns, we unconsciously or consciously seek security and stability. We wear different kinds of masks to keep us from getting too hurt. However, in doing so, we close ourselves off from authentic relationships and stay stuck in the scabs of our childhood wounds.

By identifying our protective shields, we can begin to heal from past hurts and enjoy deeper intimacy with our loved ones. While our coping strategies are as varied as our personalities, here are ten of the most typical masks we wear.

Ask yourself: Which mask do you wear?

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Urban greenspace quandaries: Can systems thinking offer any solutions?

an article by Jill Dickinson and Paul Wyton (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) published in People, Place and Policy Volume 12 Issue 3 (March 2019)

Abstract

Public urban greenspace provides myriad benefits, including health and wellbeing, ‘community cohesion… and local economic growth’ (House of Commons, 2017: 3). As other ‘Third Place’ (Oldenburg, 1989) types, including leisure centres (Conn, 2015), have closed, greenspace’s popularity continues to increase (Heritage Lottery Fund, 2014).

Yet, public sector funding cuts (Stuckler et al, 2017) have forced local authority prioritisation of statutory services (Dickinson and Marson, 2017). Resulting reliance on the voluntary sector is leading to geographical inequalities in greenspace provision (Molin and van den Bosch, 2014). This shift in policy-focus and funding-allocation, and consequent community-responsibilisation for greenspace ‘place-keeping’ (Mathers et al, 2015: 126) means that neglected greenspaces face a ‘vicious circle of decline’ (House of Commons, 2017: 31) and could lead to the production of ‘contested spaces’ (Barker et al, 2017: i).

Whilst the systemic notion of boundary critique (Churchman, 1970; Ulrich, 1996) has been applied within other contexts, this case study seeks to contribute to the literature by applying boundary critique as a methodology for developing a more holistic understanding of greenspace management, and offering solutions to the quandaries faced.

Full text (PDF 21pp)

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“Robots do not replace a nurse with a beating heart”: The publicity around a robotic innovation in elderly care

an article by Outi Tuisku, Satu Pekkarinen, Lea Hennala and Helinä Melkas, (Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lahti, Finland) published in Information Technology & People Volume 32 Issue 1 (2019)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the publicity around the implementation of the Zora robot in elderly-care services in Lahti, Finland. The aim is to discover opinions concerning the use of robots in elderly care as well as the arguments and justifications behind those opinions. Zora is a humanoid robot intended to promote mobility and rehabilitation. The Lahti pilot was the first Zora pilot in Finland in public elderly-care services. It received much publicity, both regionally and nationally.

Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on an empirical case study on the implementation of the Zora robot in elderly-care services. The data consist of interviews with personnel who operated Zora and comments from the general public about the “Zora” robot. Two data sources were used: 107 comments were collected from online and print media, and the personnel (n=39) who worked with Zora were interviewed. The data were analysed by means of interpretative content analysis.

Findings
The results show that public opinion is mainly negative, but that the commentators apparently have little information about the robot and its tasks. The personnel had more positive views; they saw it as a recreational tool, not as a replacement for their own roles.

Originality/value
There is clearly a need for more information, for a better informed discussion on how robots can be used in elderly care and how to involve the general public in this discussion in a constructive way.

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Leadership as a driving force of history: Evidence from the Forty-Eighters in the American Civil War

a column by Christian Dippel and Stephan Heblich for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The importance of leadership in effecting social change is well recorded in history, but the specific role leaders play in coordinating behaviours is less understood.

This column uses the case of the Forty-Eighters – revolutionaries expelled from German lands who moved to the US before the American Civil War – to analyse the impact individuals with ‘inherent’ leadership ability have in their networks.

The Forty-Eighters went on to play a substantial role in increasing Union Army enlistments in their new home towns, suggesting individuals can have a powerful effect in shaping social norms.

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How Recovering People-Pleasers Can Discover What They Really Want

a post by Hailey Magee for the Tiny Buddha blog


“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you’re not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” ~Paulo Coelho

People-pleasers regularly subvert their own needs for the needs of others. We spend years saying “yes” when we mean “no,” signing up for commitments we’d rather avoid, and occupying our minds with others’ desires.

When we finally clear out the clutter to put ourselves first, we look around at the empty space, bewildered, with endless questions. What do we want? What does true happiness look like for us? What would a life lived on our own terms be like?

For me, these questions once provoked anxiety. I’d spent a lifetime catering to my parents, friends, colleagues, and lovers—anyone but myself. By asking what I really wanted, I was looking my fear straight in the eye: my fear of being responsible for my own happiness. My fear of not getting what I wish for.

These fears are both potent and entirely surmountable—if we’re brave enough to connect with our innermost desires.

When we’re strongly connected to our dreams and desires, we begin to set boundaries with other people so we can reach them, and we slowly start finding the confidence to speak our truth. Our dreams and desires remind us how communicating authentically will change our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, for the better.

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The whys and wherefores of short-time work: Evidence from 20 countries

a column by Reamonn Lydon, Thomas Y. Mathä and Stephen Millard for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Short-time work schemes are a fiscal stabiliser in Europe. Between 2010 and 2013, they were used by 7% of firms, employing 9% of workers in the region.

This column uses ECB data to show that firms use the schemes to offset negative shocks and retain high-productivity workers. High firing costs and wage rigidity increase the use of short-time work, which in turn reduces the fall in employment brought on by a recession.

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Can talking to a bot help you feel better?

an article by Ciara Byrne for Fast Company [brought to us by World of Psychology’s “Psychology Around the Net”]

Amid a growing crisis in addiction and mental health, tireless machines are offering a new form of care—and raising new questions.

One of the world’s first chatbots was a therapist. Built in 1964 by MIT researcher Jerome Weizenbaum, the program, called ELIZA, was designed to mimic techniques from Rogerian psychotherapy where the therapist prompts the patient to examine their own thoughts and feelings.

Weizenbaum gave the following example of a typical conversation with ELIZA:

– Men are all alike.

– IN WHAT WAY

– They’re always bugging us about something or other.

– CAN YOU THINK OF A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE

– Well, my boyfriend made me come here.

– YOUR BOYFRIEND MADE YOU COME HERE

– He says I’m depressed much of the time.

– I AM SORRY TO HEAR YOU ARE DEPRESSED

– It’s true. I am unhappy.

– DO YOU THINK THAT COMING HERE WILL HELP YOU NOT TO BE UNHAPPY

– I need some help. That much seems certain.

ELIZA had no memory or understanding of the conversation. It merely searched for a keyword in the last sentence typed in by its interlocutor and calculated an answer using a rule associated with the keyword. Nevertheless, and much to Weizenbaum’s dismay, many users became convinced that ELIZA understood them.

“ELIZA created the most remarkable illusion of having understood in the minds of many people who conversed with it,” Weizenbaum reported. Users would often demand to be permitted to converse with the system in private. This phenomenon became known as the ELIZA effect. The era of the non-human listener had begun.

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Contextualizing connectivity: how internet connection type and parental factors influence technology use among lower-income children

an article by Vikki S. Katz and Katherine Ognyanova (Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA) and Meghan B. Moran (Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA) published in Information, Communication & Society Volume 22 Issue 3 (2019)

Abstract

This project links research on digital inequality, which focuses on connection quality and its outcomes for under-connected individuals, and parental mediation, which focuses on the influence of parents on children’s technology experiences.

We examine the internet connection type used by families, the technology experiences of lower-income parents, and their perceptions of opportunities that technology use offers their children. We then determine how these factors influence the frequency and scope of their school-age children’s technology use.

Findings show that contextualizing children’s connectivity to account for infrastructural, socio-demographic, and relational influences provides new insights into the technology experiences of lower-income children. One set of findings suggests that direct benefit from increased connectivity is most evident for lower-income parents – those with the lowest household incomes, lowest levels of education, and whose dominant language is not English.

These effects remain after controlling for other socio-demographic factors. The second set of results shows that greater connectivity increases how frequently both children and parents use the internet, but is associated only with a greater scope of internet activities for parents.

Parents’ online activity scope is important for their children’s online experiences, directly predicting the scope of their online activities. High-scope parents were also significantly more likely to see digital opportunities in their children’s internet use, which in turn also predicted more frequent and broader internet use by their children. We conclude by considering the practical implications of these findings for digital equity initiatives targeting lower-income families.

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Misbehaving: being clever and wicked is a form of creativity

a post by Hansika Kapoor for the Big Think blog

Creativity can bring about unchecked harm, but it's up to us how we wield it.

Suppose you forgot it was your partner's birthday, but you know that they would appreciate the smallest of gestures, say a bouquet. It's late at night and no florists are open. The cemetery on your way home has recently had a funeral, and you walk across the site and pick up a good-looking bouquet of roses from someone's grave. You then head home, and the flowers are happily received by your partner.

Would you say that you hurt anyone?

This isn't so much a moral dilemma as it is a creative misbehaviour. More specifically, it is an instance of the dark side of creativity – the side that few people acknowledge or talk about. Variously referred to as malevolent or negative, dark creativity uses the creative process to do something socially unappealing and guided by self-interest. You might not intend to harm someone else, yet harm is often a byproduct of your actions. In the instance above, you found an original solution (stealing flowers from a graveyard) to a problem (upset partner) that was effective (happy partner).

That is what makes up the crux of creativity – originality and effectiveness in behaviour.

But can we call such an act truly creative? For one thing, it violates moral codes of conduct (stealing); for another, it involves deception (omitting the truth about where you got the flowers).

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The Decline of British Manufacturing, 1973–2012: The Role of Total Factor Productivity

an article by Richard Harris and John Moffat (Durham University Business School, UK) published in National Institute Economic Review Volume 247 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

This paper uses plant-level estimates of total factor productivity covering 40 years to examine what role, if any, productivity has played in the decline of output share and employment in British manufacturing.

The results show that TFP growth in British manufacturing was negative between 1973 and 1982, marginally positive between 1982 and 1994 and strongly positive between 1994 and 2012. Poor TFP performance therefore does not appear to be the main cause of the decline of UK manufacturing.

Productivity growth decompositions show that, in the latter period, the largest contributions to TFP growth come from foreign-owned plants, industries that are heavily involved in trade, and industries with high levels of intangible assets.

JEL Classification: D22, D24, L6

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Wellbeing measurements, Easterlin’s paradox and new growth models: A perspective through gross national happiness

a column by Sriram Balasubramanian for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

There has been considerable criticism of the general reliance on GDP as an indicator of growth and development. One strand of criticism focuses on the inability of GDP to capture the subjective well-being or happiness of a populace.

This column examines new growth models, paying particular attention to Bhutan, which has pursued gross national happiness, rather than GDP, since the 1970s. It finds evidence of the Easterlin paradox in Bhutan, and draws out lessons for macroeconomic growth models.

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Feeling Completely and Utterly Alone Because You Have a Mental Illness? This Can Help

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog



You have a mental illness, and you feel incredibly alone. Intellectually, you know that you are one of millions of people who also have a mental illness—people who also have depression or an anxiety disorder or bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

You know that you’re not the only person on this planet to be in pain.

But it doesn’t matter. Because it looks like everyone around you is just fine. You’re the only one who has a hard time getting out of bed, who feels overwhelmed by everything, no matter how small. You’re the only one who feels like an impostor and a fraud. You’re the only one who feels irritable and on edge for no reason. You’re the only one who can’t seem to get through the day. You’re the only one who has strange, sad, uncomfortable and cruel thoughts.

But you’re not. You’re really not.

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Energy scenario: Employment implications of the Paris Climate Agreement

A report by Richard Lewney, Eva Alexandri, Donald Storrie and José-Ignacio Antón Pérez published by Eurofound

This report explores the potential employment and economic impacts of an EU transition to a low-carbon economy by 2030 – on the EU, and on other regions of the world. It analyses the impacts across sectors and occupations, with a particular focus on manufacturing.

The report highlights that the impact of such a transition is positive for the EU as a whole, although with considerable variation between sectors. The positive impact on employment is largely due to the investment required to achieve this transition, along with the impact of lower spending on imported fossil fuels. The consequent shift in production has implications for labour market demand.

The analysis is carried out using the E3ME macro-econometric model, which provides information on sectoral impacts, together with the Warwick Labour Market Extension model for occupational analysis. Further analysis of the employment developments in Europe is undertaken using Eurofound’s European Jobs Monitor.

Full text (PDF 32pp)

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Improving poverty reduction in Europe: What works best where?

an article by Chrysa Leventi, Holly Sutherland and Iva Valentinova Tasseva (University of Essex, UK) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 29 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

This article examines how income poverty is affected by changes to the scale of tax-benefit policies and which are the most cost-effective policies in reducing poverty or limiting its increase in seven diverse EU countries.

We do that by measuring the implications of increasing/reducing the scale of each policy instrument, using microsimulation methods while holding constant the policy design and national context.

We consider commonly applied policy instruments with a direct effect on household income: child benefits, social assistance, income tax lower thresholds and a benchmark case of rescaling the whole tax-benefit system.

We find that the assessment of the most cost-effective instrument may depend on the measure of poverty used and the direction and scale of the change. Nevertheless, our results indicate that the options that reduce poverty most cost-effectively in most countries are increasing child benefits and social assistance, while reducing the former is a particularly poverty-increasing way of making budgetary cuts.

Full text (PDF 15pp)

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Young people’s experiences of political membership: from political parties to Facebook groups

an article by Mats Ekström and Malin Sveningsson (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) published in Information, Communication & Society Volume 22 Issue 2 (2019)

Abstract

In contemporary democracies, citizens’ political memberships are undergoing significant changes. Particularly young people are described as being less interested in long-term commitments in conventional political collectives, instead preferring to engage in cause-oriented activism in loosely organised groups, often sustained by online media.

However, behind these general trends, there is a diversity of collective activities, where people are typically part of several ones.

The shifting forms of memberships have rarely been investigated as such from the perspective of young citizens.

Using a qualitative multi-method approach, this article investigates how young people with an interest in civic and political issues experience and reflect upon their involvements in various collectives.

The analysis focuses on two aspects: the explorations that characterise the participants’ political memberships, and the meanings and motives of joining political collectives.

On the whole, the participants’ involvement can be described as shifting and tentative. This can be related to the idea of adolescence as a formative period of life, where explorations of memberships constitute important processes in young people’s development of values, beliefs and identities.

As for meanings and motives, three themes were found to be central: perceived efficacy, self-identity and peer relationships.

The study suggests that political membership is multidimensional and usefully analysed as a process rather than a dichotomous category. As such, it involves explorations and changes over time. The study highlights the reflexive dimensions of membership, where affiliations to collectives is something that youth try out, work on, account for and reconsider in relation to their self-identities.

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Becoming who you are: An integrative review of self‐determination theory and personality systems interactions theory

an article by Sander L. Koole and Caroline Schlinkert (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and Tobias Maldei and Nicola Baumann (University of Trier, Germany) published in Journal of Personality Volume 87 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

One of the enduring missions of personality science is to unravel what it takes to become a fully functioning person. In the present article, the authors address this matter from the perspectives of self‐determination theory (SDT) and personality systems interactions (PSI) theory.

SDT

1. is rooted in humanistic psychology;
2. has emphasized a first‐person perspective on motivation and personality;
3. posits that the person, supported by the social environment, naturally moves toward growth through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

PSI theory

1. is rooted in German volition psychology;
2. has emphasized a third‐person perspective on motivation and personality; and
3. posits that a fully functioning person can form and enact difficult intentions and integrate new experiences, and that such competencies are facilitated by affect regulation.

The authors review empirical support for SDT and PSI theory, their convergences and divergences, and how the theories bear on recent empirical research on internalization, vitality, and achievement flow. The authors conclude that SDT and PSI theory offer complementary insights into developing a person's full potential.

Full text (PDF 22pp)

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Have Mobile Devices Changed Working Patterns in the 21st Century? A Time-diary Analysis of Work Extension in the UK

an article by Killian Mullan (University of Oxford, UK) and Judy Wajcman (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK) published in Work, Employment and Society Volume 33 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

It is commonly claimed that ubiquitous connectivity erodes the boundaries that once separated work from other aspects of life. Mobile devices in particular enable people to perform work-related activities anytime anywhere.

Surprisingly, however, we know little about how people nationwide organise their daily working time over a period that has witnessed rapid technological change.

Using the United Kingdom Time Use Surveys 2000 and 2015, covering this period of technological change, we studied work extension practices, and the links between work extension, total work hours and subjective time pressure.

We found a significant, though small, increase in work extension, and evidence that it was significantly associated with time pressure in 2015, but not in 2000. Additionally, work extension increased total work hours, which was concentrated entirely in time working with a mobile device.

We discuss our results in light of some taken-for-granted narratives about mobile devices allowing work to colonise life.

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Trade and growth in the age of global value chains

a column by Carlo Altomonte, Laura Bonacorsi and Italo Colantone for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Amid Brexit and protectionist moves by President Trump, many observers are warning about the negative effects that a rise in trade barriers could have on growth.

This column first highlights the important role acquired by deep-water ports as main hubs for trade during 1995-2007 and how they have allowed countries to gain from trade.

It then shows that becoming embedded in global value chains is a powerful determinant of growth, even if it implies that a growing share of gross exports represents value added that has been produced in foreign countries.

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The Key to Acceptance: Understand That Everything Changes With Time

a post by Claire Marsden for the Tiny Buddha blog


“If you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.” ~Byron Katie

I love this quote. Ironic, really, because when I first read it I was furious—furious with my reality and anyone who encouraged me to accept it. In my mind to accept chronic illness was to accept defeat.

I had just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, an incredibly painful condition that had me bedridden most days and unable to care for my then two-year-old daughter, never mind myself. My home became filled with carers and aids and adaptations.

Rather than starting a new career as a newly qualified occupational therapist, I was struggling with the fear of lifelong pain, the shame of unemployment, and the guilt of not being the active mother I desperately wanted to be. I was in no mood to accept such circumstances in life.

So how did I move from a position of resistance to one of restoration? How can we find some wiggle room in situations that may feel utterly immobilizing? Well, chocolate and cake help, but what really started creating space for growth was the Buddhist notion of impermanence and the insight, acceptance, and mindfulness that flowed from that.

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The politics of injustice: Sex-working women, feminism and criminalizing sex purchase in Ireland

an article by Kathryn McGarry (Maynooth University, Ireland) and Sharron A FitzGerald (Tilburg University, The Netherlands) published in Criminology & Criminal Justice Volume 19 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

This article interrogates the discursive framing of recent law and policy debates on criminalizing sex purchase in Ireland and the implications this has for sex workers’ political voice.

Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s work on the political dimensions of justice, we look at how Irish neo-abolitionists, through their Turn Off the Red Light (TORL) campaign, map and delimit access to political space and consequently misframe, misrecognize and misrepresent the ‘problem’ of sex work and sex-working women.

We employ the methodological framework suggested by Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) approach to explore how TORL campaigners exercise and manage frame-setting in law and policy contexts to deny all ‘other’ voices parity of participation in political space. We argue these misframing strategies reflect meta-political injustices of misrepresentation.

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How I Learned to Like and Trust Myself Again (and How You Can Too)

a post by Will Aylward for the Tiny Buddha blog


“Loving yourself starts with liking yourself, which starts with respecting yourself, which starts with thinking of yourself in positive ways.” ~Jerry Corsten

Useless. Hopeless. Broken.

This was how I saw myself.

I didn’t completely loathe myself, but I didn’t like myself either. At best, I tolerated myself.

I felt I had good reasons to.

I’d gotten myself into, as we say in England, a right old pickle.

If you’re not familiar with this charming expression, I had gotten myself into a big mess.

In my early twenties, over a painful period of about eighteen months, I’d gradually buried myself in personal debt with several pay-day loan companies.

The ever-growing pressure to pay off this debt played havoc on my mental health. I often found myself running into the work toilet to secretly have panic attacks, throwing water on my face like a madman, and reassuring myself that I wasn’t losing my sanity. I was suffering, and misguidedly, I’d convinced myself I would have to suffer alone.

To make myself feel better, each week I partied from Thursday through to Sunday, chain smoking and knocking back pint after pint of Guinness. Or anything else that was available. I wasn’t fussy.

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6 Ways to Show Yourself the Love You Deserve

a post by Pernilla Lillarose for YourTango.com [via World of Psychology blog]



When people think about being kind to themselves and practicing self-love, it’s often considered in a noncommittal, “Yes, I really should be doing that more,” sort of way. Then they go about their merry way, continuing the same old behaviors and being anything but kind to themselves.

Fortunately, a number of people do decide they are finally ready to start loving themselves. But what made them ready, and why have they waited so long to start?

What about you — are you ready to start treating yourself with kindness and learn how to love yourself fully, the way you deserve?

Where do you find yourself on the “self-love/being kind to yourself” scale currently? Are you at the bottom, clueless as to what loving yourself even means, or slowly crawling up the scale, wondering why it took you so long to treat yourself with love and kindness?

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Schizophrenia's surprising link to the gut

a post by Matt Davis for the Big Think blog

What's in your tummy might affect what's in your head.

• For decades, researchers have tried in vain to answer the question: What causes schizophrenia?
• At the same time, we've developed a growing understanding of how intimately linked the bacteria in our gut and our brains are.
• New research shows that schizophrenics have vastly different microbiomes, potentially uncovering a cause of — and maybe a future cure to — schizophrenia.

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What Makes a Hero? Theorising the Social Structuring of Heroism

an article by Kristian Frisk (University of Southern Denmark) published in Sociology Volume 53 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

The article discusses four dominant perspectives in the sociology of heroism:
– the study of great men;
– hero stories;
– heroic actions; and
– hero institutions.

The discussion ties together heroism and fundamental sociological debates about the relationship between the individual and the social order; it elucidates the socio-psychological, cultural/ideational and socio-political structuring of heroism, which challenges the tendency to understand people, actions and events as naturally, or intrinsically, heroic; and it points to a theoretical trajectory within the literature, which has moved from very exclusive to more inclusive conceptualisations of a hero.

After this discussion, the article examines three problematic areas in the sociology of heroism:
– the underlying masculine character of heroism;
– the presumed disappearance of the hero with modernisation; and
– the principal idea of heroism as a pro-social phenomenon.

The article calls for a more self-conscious engagement with this legacy, which could stimulate dialogue across different areas of sociological research.

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Two hundred years of health and medical care

a column by Maryaline Catillon, David M. Cutler and Thomas E. Getzen for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

Growth in life expectancy during the last two centuries has been attributed to environmental change, productivity growth, improved nutrition, and better hygiene, rather than to advances in medical care.

This column traces the development of medical care and the extension of longevity in the US from 1800 forward to provide a long-term look at health and health care in the US. It demonstrates that the contribution of medical care to life-expectancy gains changed over time.

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Why Highly Sensitive People Make Amazing Life Partners

a post by Hannah Brooks for the Tiny Buddha blog


“Our relationships are a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves.” ~Iyanla Vanzant

Looking back at my life I see that all of my romantic relationships up until now suffered because I didn’t recognize or value my sensitivity.

For much of my life I thought there was something wrong with me. I was too quiet, too shy, not interesting enough in group settings, too easily hurt, too easily overwhelmed and stressed. I judged myself for being irritable when I didn’t feel rested. I was easily bored with surface conversation and craved deep intimacy, but thought maybe that was silly and unrealistic.

For years, all of this made my love life challenging and downright difficult to navigate.

Though I did find a good match in my first husband, eventually my own self-contempt and inability to accept and honor of my own qualities—the guilt and shame I walked around with much of the time—along with my lack of insight into how to work with my trait, led to my first marriage’s demise.

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10 for today starts in 1914 and ends with a Victorian poem, usual mixture in between

Battle of Tannenberg (1914) – The Almost Complete Destruction of Russia's Second Army
via About History by Alcibiades

The Battle of Tannenberg, August 26-30, 1914 was between Russian and German troops during the East Prussian operation in the First World War.
The Schlieffen plan, which was the basis of the German strategy to win in the First World War, was created from the assumption that the Russian army would delay deployment for necessary mobilization. It was assumed that during this time the German army would be able to inflict heavy casualties in France and capture Paris, and then attack Russia. However, the Russian army unexpectedly mobilized quickly and created an offensive on the Eastern Front, thus putting Germany in a bad position.
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Why animals near the ancient Roman "gate to hell" really dropped dead
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz

digital rendering of the temple
Thousands of years ago in Hierapolis (now Turkey), tourists visited a temple named Plutonium built at a cave thought to be a gateway to the underworld. Magically, large and small animals would drop dead at the entrance to the cave while priest somehow survived. This isn't legend, it's reality. And now scientists have determined why.
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The dark history of women, witches, and beer
via the Big Think blog by Scotty Hendricks
The history of women in brewing goes back millennia where it was a respected profession. How did it help give rise to our modern image of witches?
Billions of people enjoy a nice beer in the evening to unwind. Beer is the third most consumed beverage in the world after water and tea and has been an essential part of the human diet for at least 7000 years. Even for those of us who don’t like the stuff, the history of beer is a curious thing to study. Especially since it is Women’s History Month [it was when this was written] and the history of beermaking is primarily a history of women.
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Thomas Paine: spendthrift, scrounger and polemicist of genius
via Arts & Letters Daily: Jesse Norman in Spectator America

‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ Ronald Reagan made this most unconservative of lines a leitmotif of his 1980 presidential campaign, knowing its radicalism would highlight his energy, personal optimism and desire for change. As it duly did.
The astonishing power over words of its author, Thomas Paine, persists to this day. In a letter of 1805, the former president John Adams said of Paine that

there can be no severer satyr on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief.

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Animal of the Month: 13 facts about frogs
via the OUP blog
The Anura order, named from the Greek an, ‘without’ and oura, ‘tail’, contains 2,600 different species and can be found in almost every continent on Earth. These are frogs, and they comprise 85% of the extant amphibian population on earth. They hop around our gardens, lay swathes of frothy eggs in our ponds, and come in a wide variety of exciting colours, but apart from that, how much do you really know about them?
Don’t be put off by their slimy skin and their associations with witchcraft. Ignore the fact that ‘frog-face’ is an insult, and that some frogs contain enough poison to kill two adult bull elephants. Frogs are amongst the oldest and most diverse vertebrates on our planet, and are truly incredible creatures. Learn more about them with 13 facts about frogs that you may not have already known. Why do some frogs have five legs? Why do some female frogs give out their own mating calls? And why do the French really get nicknamed ‘frogs’?
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A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all’s over’
via Interesting Literature
A classic poem of parting
A. E. Housman (1859-1936) remains a popular poet with many readers not least because he so poignantly captures the feelings of heartbreak and hopeless love in his work. Technically, his poetry was not innovative: he once named the old ballads and the songs from Shakespeare’s plays as among his chief influences. But in English literature he is perhaps the Laureate of the Broken Heart: nobody has said it better. His short poem ‘Shake hands, we shall never be friends, all’s over’ is about parting from somebody we love, because we know they don’t return our love
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Earth Wind Map
via Boing Boing by Rob Beschizza

Earth Wind Map shows the winds blasting over a beautiful, rotatable 3D animated globe. Various modes (click the text on the bottom left) show air, oceanic, particulate and even auroral maps.
Absolutely fascinating. Watching the winds over the UK.

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Friday essay: the myth of the ancient Greek 'gay utopia'
via the Big Think blog by Alastair Blanchard
The persistent dream of a “gay utopia” is one of the constants in gay and lesbian historical imaginings over the last 200 years. But is it real?
In recent years, we have seen significant advances won for LGBT rights through hard-fought legal cases and well-targeted political campaigns. Yet it is worth remembering that for decades, recourse to such methods was not available to LGBT people. The law-court and the parliament were deaf to their pleas. For many, it was only in their dreams that they could escape oppression.
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The fungus that's worth $900 billion a year
via the OUP blog by Nicholas P Money

Bottling Prince Tuesday 2014 by Allagash Brewing. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr
From the dawn of history, human civilizations have prospered through partnership with the simple single-cell fungus we call yeast. It transforms sugars into alcohol, puffs up bread dough with bubbles of carbon dioxide, and is used to produce an assortment of fermented foods. It has become the workhorse of modern biotechnology as the source of life-saving medicines and industrial chemicals. And, most recently, the manufacture of ethanol as a biofuel from corn and sugarcane has launched yeast onto the frontline of our efforts to slow climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
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A Short Analysis of A. E. Housman’s ‘How Clear, How Lovely Bright’
via Interesting Literature
On Housman’s great ‘remorseful day’ poem
The poet and classical scholar A. E. Housman (1859-1936) is best-known for his 1896 volume A Shropshire Lad, one of only two volumes of poetry he published during his lifetime. But Housman wrote a number of other wonderful poems which he decided not to publish. ‘How Clear, How Lovely Bright’, written in the 1880s while Housman was living in London and working at the Patent Office after failing his degree in Classics at Oxford, was one of a number of poems which Housman preserved but didn’t publish. When he died in 1936, his brother Laurence selected the best of these poems and published them as More Poems.
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