drego: the unrequited narcissist

“Not sure if this research passes the peer-review process. British psychologist Cliff Arnall claims that, according to a complicated equation he devised in 2005, the third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year. He calls it Blue Monday. We’re so blue, Arnall says, because of the weather, the Christmas holidays being over, and already-failed New Year’s resolutions, among other things he takes into account. But Arnall’s formula was created as part of a publicity campaign for Sky Travel, a British TV channel that shut down in 2010. “The fact is that Cliff Arnall’s equations are stupid, and some fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms,” psychiatrist Ben Goldacre wrote in his “Bad Science” column in The Guardian, and other scientists have dismissed the formula.”  Read more…

(source: NY Daily News, via The Daily Beast)

“Apparently it’s ultra-super important for Christian kids to be able to pray at school but not so much for Muslim kids.”  Read more…

(source: PoliticsUSA)

“The Village Voice has obtained artist renderings of a new Scientology Super Power Building being built in Clearwater, Florida. Here are pictures of 10 of the weirdest rooms/machines there.”  Read more…

(source: The Village Voice, via BuzzFeed)

“An Irish mathematician has used a complex algorithm and millions of hours of supercomputing time to solve an important open problem in the mathematics of Sudoku, the game popularized in Japan that involves filling in a 9X9 grid of squares with the numbers 1–9 according to certain rules. Gary McGuire of University College Dublin shows in a proof posted online that the minimum number of clues — or starting digits — needed to complete a puzzle is 17; puzzles with 16 or fewer clues do not have a unique solution. Most newspaper puzzles have around 25 clues, with the difficulty of the puzzle decreasing as more clues are given.”  Read more…

(source: Gary McGuire et al., via Nature)

“Surprisingly, some studies have suggested that only 10% of the world’s population is left-handed, and an even smaller percentage, 1%, is ambidextrous. But, all you creative left-handed rarities beware, seems that being a south paw isn’t good for you.”  Read more…

(source: LimeLight)

“God Almighty himself, through his appointed papal mouthpiece, has picked a winner. For this year’s celebration of Christ’s birth, Pope Benedict will remotely light a giant Christmas tree display attached to the side of a mountain, from 130 miles away…. But! Scandal! He’s doing it with the Lord’s fave new gadget, [a Sony Android tablet]!”  Read more…

(source: Gizmodo)

“Your resident narcissist — that excessively self-centered, self-important admiration hog — is ready to fill your holiday stocking with complication, drama and disappointment. Yes, just like last year. My definition of a narcissist is someone who possesses excessive amounts of self-centeredness and an inflated sense of importance. When a narcissist is a part of an event, other guests may try to ignore him, or overlook or justify his behaviors. It is often challenging to figure out whether or not a person is a narcissist, because these people are highly skilled in protecting themselves to the point that it may be difficult to truly get to know them (as they most often don’t even know themselves).”  Read more…

(source: USA Today)

From a recent study in Administrative Science Quarterly:

“Highly narcissistic CEOs are much less responsive to recent objective measures of their performance than less narcissistic CEOs. They found the narcissists would continue to make lots of acquisitions at high premiums, even when their company hadn’t been doing well…”

“Most interesting though, they found that highly narcissistic CEOs were very responsive to social praise (measured as media praise and media awards) and this would spur them on to increase their pace of acquisitions and premiums paid (which, over time, tended to destroy shareholder value). Less narcissistic CEOs were much less responsive to social praise.”

Read more…

(source: Administrative Science Quarterly, via IT World)

“An international team of astronomers have reached the most definitive conclusion, one with profound implications: our galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets. Of those, most are small planets like ours. Statistically, every star would have at least one planet. This means that the chances of life and habitable planets in our galaxy alone is overwhelmingly high. So high that it’s impossible to deny that it’s out there. The only question is how much of that is little dumb critters and how much is civilized.”  Read More…

(source: Gizmodo)

“Question: would you work at a job that uses software to automatically track your work habits based on e-mails, phone calls and even video conferences? Someone at Microsoft thinks that’s a good enough idea to deserve a patent. The Microsoft patent filing — discovered by GeekWire— covers a computer system capable of not only monitoring the behavior of employees, but also assigning positive or negative scores to each action. Examples given include flagging someone who repeatedly cuts off colleagues during conversations, or raising the alarm over a supervisor who repeatedly bugs underlings during their lunch break.”  Read more…

(source: GeekWire, via Live Science)

“Overall, across the first three studies, men who are one standard deviation below the mean on agreeableness earn an average of 18.31 percent ($9,772) more than men one standard deviation above the mean on agreeableness. Meanwhile, the “disagreeableness premium” for women was only 5.47 percent ($1,828). Thus, the income premium for disagreeableness is more than three times stronger for men than for women.”  Read more…

(source: Wired)

“In the 1970s, a remarkable thing was done; a computer was used to solve a math problem. This, in and of itself, was not remarkable. The difference engine could do it. But this problem was the first one that would probably remain unsolved if it weren’t for computers. Find out about the Four-Color Theorem, and why it needed to be turned over to the machines.”  Read more…

I remember reading about this proof in Scientific American when it first came out! —drego

(source: Mathematics Association of America, via io9)

“Readers across America (and likely beyond) who check out The Atlantic‘s website today have the opportunity to read about West Seattle’s Super Deli Mart. The article by Christopher Solomon is headlined “A Postmodern Elks Club Serving Some of the World’s Best Beer” but talks about the 35th/Barton store as a community gathering place as well as a beverage retailer.”  Read more…

Hey, that’s right around the corner from where I live! —drego

(source: The Atlantic, via West Seattle Blog)

“According to [Jean] Twenge, narcissistic personality disorder originated with the assumption that ‘if you have a high self-image, then you are more likely to help people and less likely to hurt people. But this is not true. In actuality, people who are narcissistic tend to be more aggressive and less likely to help others.’ In her research, she found narcissism to be more prevalent in the workforce and among college students than it used to be in prior generations.”  Read more…

(source: newstimes.com)

“Burgers and fries might not only be bad for your heart and waistline — they could also hamstring your brain’s ability to help you shed pounds. A high-fat diet can actually re-program the structure of the brain, new research conducted on rodents suggests.”  Read more…

(source: The Week)

“Armchair activists now have a tool that can transport their SOPA protestations into the real world: Boycott SOPA, an Android app that scans barcodes and tells you whether an object’s manufacturer/publisher is a supporter of the much maligned Stop Online Piracy Act.”  Read more…

(source: ExtremeTech)

“A minority of that population takes its religion very seriously. These individuals’ behaviors and attitudes are largely influenced by what is perceived to conform to their faiths’ dogmas. On the opposite end, another, smaller percentage of the population thinks that religion is absolute hooey.”  Read more…

(sourec: Live Science)

“They must be celebrating at the Plex now. Statcounter released their report for last month and for the first time Chrome overtook Fireofox to become the second popular browser world wide.”  Read more…

(source: StatCounter, via Chrome Story)

“Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a way to figure out when you’re likely to blow through that red light you’re fast approaching in your car.  By analyzing a vehicle’s speed, deceleration, and proximity to the stoplight, the new algorithm can predict which cars will violate the most basic of traffic laws: red means stop.”  Read more…

(source: CNET)

“Do people’s mental capacities fundamentally change when they remove a sweater? This seems absurd: How could removing a piece of clothing change one’s capacity for acting or feeling? In six studies, however, we show that taking off a sweater—or otherwise revealing flesh—can significantly change the way a mind is perceived. In this article, we suggest that the kind of mind ascribed to another person depends on the relative salience of his or her body—that the perceived capacity for both pain and planned action depends on whether someone wears a sweater or tank-top.”  Read more…

(source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, via Wired)

“A team of California computer programmers has conquered the Pentagon’s latest civilian research challenge. The military’s way-out research arm, Darpa, today announced that the team of three, called “All Your Shreds Belong To Us,” had scooped up the $50,000 prize. To do it, they’d required 33 days and 600 man hours, all to re-assemble five shredded documents.”  Read more…

(source: Wired)

“Social networking and a bit of amateur sleuthing have reunited a Canadian firefighter with the camera he accidentally dropped to the bottom of the sea during a family vacation more than a year ago.”  Read more…

(source: CNET News)

“Their swaggering arrogance and natural authority can make it seem like they were born to lead. But, though dominant individuals frequently make it to the top of the career ladder, their self-obsession often makes them the worst bosses, a study has shown.”  Read more…

(source: Daily Mail)