The Evolution of Empathy ~ Greater Good Magazine

We are so used to empathy that we take it for granted, yet it is essential to human society as we know it. Our morality depends on it: How could anyone be expected to follow the golden rule without the capacity to mentally trade places with a fellow human being? It is logical to assume that this capacity came first, giving rise to the golden rule itself. The act of perspective-taking is summed up by one of the most enduring definitions of empathy that we have, formulated by Adam Smith as "changing places in fancy with the sufferer."

The Compassionate Instinct ~ Greater Good Magazine

First consider the recent study of the biological basis of compassion. If such a basis exists, we should be wired up, so to speak, to respond to others in need. Recent evidence supports this point convincingly. University of Wisconsin psychologist Jack Nitschke found in an experiment that when mothers looked at pictures of their babies, they not only reported feeling more compassionate love than when they saw other babies; they also demonstrated unique activity in a region of their brains associated with the positive emotions. Nitschke's finding suggests that this region of the brain is attuned to the first objects of our compassion--our offspring.

But this compassionate instinct isn't limited to parents' brains. In a different set of studies, Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen of Princeton University found that when subjects contemplated harm being done to others, a similar network of regions in their brains lit up. Our children and victims of violence--two very different subjects, yet united by the similar neurological reactions they provoke. This consistency strongly suggests that compassion isn"t simply a fickle or irrational emotion, but rather an innate human response embedded into the folds of our brains.

Is Google making us stupid? ~ Nicholas Carr

The Atlantic, July/August 2008 

Search engines like Google have made it infinitely easier to access information quickly, but how is the Internet changing our brains - our ability to read, focus and think? What might we have to give up in exchange for easy information? In this article, Nicholas Carr argues that there is more at stake than we may realize.  

"Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?" ~ Moto Rich

The New York Times, July 27th 2008

As teenagers' scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading -- diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.

Perfectly Happy - The Boston Globe

IF YOU WERE given the choice, and you wanted to reduce human suffering by as much as possible, would you cure blindness or back pain? It seems a silly question. The thought of losing one's sight is, to most people, as frightening as it is depressing: we would no longer be stirred by sunsets or landscapes or the expressions on the faces of our loved ones. Everyday chores would become more difficult, crossing the street perilous. Many sports and pastimes would simply be off-limits, and we would lose a good deal of our independence.

Back pain, on the other hand, is just back pain.

You won't find consciousness in the brain - New Scientist

Our failure to explain consciousness in terms of neural activity inside the brain inside the skull is not due to technical limitations which can be overcome. It is due to the self-contradictory nature of the task, of which the failure to explain "aboutness", the unity and multiplicity of our awareness, the explicit presence of the past, the initiation of actions, the construction of self are just symptoms. We cannot explain "appearings" using an objective approach that has set aside appearings as unreal and which seeks a reality in mass/energy that neither appears in itself nor has the means to make other items appear. The brain, seen as a physical object, no more has a world of things appearing to it than does any other physical object.

25 Blasphemous Quotations  By Atheist Ireland | Published: January 2, 2010

From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational, and we begin our campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine.

Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in Uganda -- BBC

They capture other people's children. They bring the heart and the blood directly here to take to the spirits... They bring them in small tins and they place these objects under the tree from which the voices of the spirits are coming," he said.

Asked how often clients brought blood and body parts, the witch-doctor said they came "on average three times a week - with all that the spirits demand from them."

Who Gets the Best Offices? - The Ethicist NYTimes.com

I am a faculty member at a university undergoing major campus renovations, including new office spaces. Departments were asked to determine their own ways of assigning rooms, but the task is complicated by factors like seniority and rank -- does someone with tenure deserve a better room? Some faculty members have greater teaching demands and might need larger rooms to meet with students. What is the most ethical way to allocate offices: seniority? Rank? Lottery?

Link to an archive of The Ethicist columns

The History of Child Abuse

By the time historical records begin, the widespread sexual use of children is well documented. The Greek and Roman child lived his or her earliest years in an atmosphere of sexual abuse. Girls were commonly raped, as reflected in the many comedies that have scenes that were considered funny of little girls being raped. Both Greek and Roman doctors report that female children rarely have hymens--just like the Indian and Chinese girls I described above. In order to find out if your young wife was really a virgin (girls usually married before puberty to older men), one had to use mystical tests for virginity, since intact hymens were so rare.

Boys, too, were regularly handed over by their parents to neighboring men to be raped. Plutarch has a long essay on what was the best kind of person a father should give his son to for buggering. The common notion that this occurred only at "adolescence" is quite mistaken. It began around age seven, continued for several years and ended by puberty, when the boy's facial and pubic hairs began to appear. Child brothels, rent-a-boy services and sex slavery flourished in every city in antiquity. Children were so subject to sexual use by the men around them that schools were by law prohibited from staying open past sundown, so their pedagogues--slaves who were assigned to protect them against random sexual attack--could try to see that their teachers didn't assault them.

Link to an e-text of Foundations of Psychohistory by Lloyd DeMause. Part I focuses on the history of childhood by Lloyd DeMause

Link to a podcast by Dan Carlin called Suffer the Children which explores the history of child abuse.  Carlin references DeMause.

Link here for Youtube.com video.

Link here for original video ~ Youtube.com

Link here for original: Critical Thinking ~ Discovery magazine.

Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students -  The Chronicle of Higher Education

Almost certainly, you were told that your instruction should match your students' styles. For example, kinesthetic learners--students who learn best through hands-on activities--are said to do better in classes that feature plenty of experiments, while verbal learners are said to do worse.

Now four psychologists argue that you were told wrong. There is no strong scientific evidence to support the "matching" idea, they contend in a paper published this week in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. And there is absolutely no reason for professors to adopt it in the classroom.

Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons' - Times Online

Dolphins have been declared the world's second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as "non-human persons".

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

The Science Behind Failed Resolutions - WSJ.com

There's something unsettling about this scientific model of willpower. Most of us assume that self-control is largely a character issue, and that we would follow through on our New Year's resolutions if only we had a bit more discipline. But this research suggests that willpower itself is inherently limited, and that our January promises fail in large part because the brain wasn't built for success.

Everybody knows that the bicep has practical limitations: If we ask the muscle to hold too much, it will give out and drop everything on the floor. And just as our muscles get tired after a tough workout, and require a rest to recuperate, so does the poor prefrontal cortex need some time off.

The Psychology Behind Putting Off What Can Be Enjoyed Now - NYTimes.com

When there is no immediate deadline, we're liable to put off going to the zoo this weekend because we assume that we will be less busy next weekend -- or the weekend after that, or next summer. This is the same sort of thinking that causes us to put the gift certificate in the drawer because we expect to have more time for shopping in the future. We're trying to do a cost-benefit analysis of the time lost versus the pleasure or money to be gained, but we're not accurate in our estimates of "resource slack," as it is termed by Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch. These behavioral economists found that when people were asked to anticipate how much extra money and time they would have in the future, they realistically assumed that money would be tight, but they expected free time to magically materialize.

Studies confirm that more women than men believe in God.~ Double X

While the number of male nonbelievers was rocketing, the overall totals were slowed by women hitching themselves to the anchor of faith: "Gender difference is a brake on the growth of the No Religion population," says the study, which found that 19 percent of men were no longer denizens of a religious America, while only 12 percent of women live outside the faithful fold. In the past, one could say that women tended the hearth, and men participated in the marketplace. But today?