The Psychology of Wonder

"Arguably one of the most significant contributions of psychology is that our understanding of ourselves is more defined by what we believe in our heads than by the actual external world that we experience.  If you imagine you are the center of the universe, then you experience yourself as a different person than one who imagines they live on a speck of dust.  However, even better, if you can imagine living in different kinds of universes, then who you are becomes a fantastic landscape of possibilities."

Pro-Vaxxers are the new pro-lifers: Religious hysteria trumps rational discussion in the vaccine debate

"We were surprised to hear that the bible prohibits believers to be swayed by internet rumours, apparently in two different chapters. The prophetic power of that book has clearly been understated. It's also surprising to hear that the lesson to be learned from someone who died from the small pox vaccine should be held as an example of how it's a good thing to take 'calculated risks'. How's that for some mental gymnastics?"

Why The Afterlife Is Beyond Science

"'But he is merely dreaming all the time, or rather, living with the fantasy created by his strongest desires on earth.'  Over time, whatever form time takes in that condition, the 'dream' fades and the person or soul awakens to his true condition, Myers said."

How extreme isolation warps the mind

"But the most alarming effects were the hallucinations. They would start with points of light, lines or shapes, eventually evolving into bizarre scenes, such as squirrels marching with sacks over their shoulders or processions of eyeglasses filing down a street. They had no control over what they saw: one man saw only dogs; another, babies."

Working Class Monster: How Folklore Became a Class Signifier

"The modern way in which we control social status is through the control of information.  Our technocratic elites are those with a mastery of technology and technique, and thus the arbiters of 'real' information.  This has extended into the world of the Fortean, where the greater accessibility of a wide variety of folklore that might once have been communicated in oral traditions are now available at the click of a button, and thus the technocratic underclass, always suspected of gullibility, superstition, and increased susceptibility to the power of suggestion, can be safely characterized as genuine but unwitting dupes, rather than witnesses or informants, just as the Marxist theologians celebrated the authenticity of the proletariat, while simultaneously pointing out that the ignorant masses did not understand their own alienation from the means of production, and thus allowed themselves to be oppressed by robber barons."

Scientists Tried Trolling Conspiracy Theorists

"So you've got a group of people who only engage with each other, do so vehemently, and are incapable of recognizing when they're being ridiculed. It's almost like being inoculated from critical thinking, but then, we can say pretty definitively that that isn't the case."

Study Reveals Common Development Pattern in Ancient and Modern Cities

"It was amazing and unbelievable. We've been raised on a steady diet telling us that, thanks to capitalism, industrialization, and democracy, the modern world is radically different from worlds of the past. What we found here is that the fundamental drivers of robust socioeconomic patterns in modern cities precede all that."

Cop Brutally Attacks 78-Year-Old Grandma For Delivering Cupcakes To Her Grandchildren

"Not even court rulings declaring such practices to be unconstitutional in the absence of a warrant have slowed down the process. Now the police simply keep a magistrate on call to rubber stamp the procedure over the phone. That’s what is called an end-run around the law, and we’re seeing more and more of these take place under the rubric of 'safety.'"  

"The newspaper cites the example of one Chicago woman whom Zuley kept shackled to a wall for more than 24 hours until she confessed that she and her ex-boyfriend had committed a murder. She remains in prison to this day. Another victim, Lathierial Boyd, was released in 2013 after spending 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit."

"Regardless of departmental regulations, police frequently deny or elide access to lawyers even at regular police precincts, said Solowiej of First Defense Legal Aid. But she said the outright denial was exacerbated at Chicago's secretive interrogation and holding facility: 'It’s very, very rare for anyone to experience their constitutional rights in Chicago police custody, and even more so at Homan Square,' Solowiej said."

"I was very frightened, and I told him to call the police and he said, 'I am the police.'"

The Propaganda Campaign in Support of Genetically Modified Crops

"Paterson has a history of engaging in the type of emotional blackmail and smearing of critics that comes second nature to the pro-GMO lobby. Anyone (usually portrayed as affluent Westerners – which is not true, given many of the critics are not ‘Western’, affluent or reside in ‘developed’ countries) who opposes GM crops or food is painted as an enemy of the poor because they take food from their bellies. Paterson is using a rhetorical device deliberately designed to mislead and stir up emotion. His tactics are based on spurious claims about the efficacy of GMO technology and are intended to divert attention away from the true nature and causes of hunger and food poverty."

Left Panics over Peer-Reviewed Climate Paper’s Threat to Global Warming Alarmism

"Greenpeace denies the settled science that bad forecasts mean incorrect theories. Don’t let them change the subject. This is not about some false accusation of conflict of interest. This is about bad science passing for good because it’s politically expedient."

Will first contact with aliens spell the end of civilisation?

"The Earth Speaks project involved surveying 2,000 people from 70 countries around the world. It was carried out by scientists who have been listening out for radio signals from extraterrestrials since 1960, so far without success, to see what people would say to ET.

Seti (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) scientist Dr Doug Vakoch said: 'One of the striking commonalities - men and women, young and old - was a message: 'Please help.'

'A sense that we are in very precarious time in our development as a civilisation. Our technologies are greater than our social stability.'"

The Universal Feeling in All Human Communication Revealed by Massive Study

“When experienced in isolation and weighted properly according to use, words, which are the atoms of human language, present an emotional spectrum with a universal, self-similar positive bias."

Hundreds of Jewish tombs defaced in France

"Five teens have been questioned after hundreds of tombs in a Jewish cemetery were vandalized in eastern France. The incident follows a rise in the number of attacks against European Jews, the most recent being Sunday morning’s shooting in Copenhagen."

"A 73 year old man was caught Monday trying to tag the word 'Jew' on vehicles in the upmarket 16th district of Paris. The man and his wife, who is Jewish, had previously filed complaints in July and August when anti-semitic graffiti was 'discovered in their building.'"

MI5 accused of complicity in historical NI child sex abuse

“The allegations could scarcely be more serious – that MI5 used a pedophile ring at the boys' home for its own intelligence-gathering purposes and then blocked police investigations which could have ended the abuse years before it was finally stopped."

What is this dog thinking? Scientists now have some fascinating answers

"Having lived alongside us for thousands of years, they have evolved not only an inbuilt affection for mankind but also a set of skills for becoming our 'best friends' – even though they have little understanding of how we feel about them."

Obama aide John Podesta says ‘biggest failure’ was not securing the disclosure of UFO files

"Our colleague Karen Tumulty asked him in 2007 about the FOIA jam at the library, and Podesta, through a spokesman, replied: 'The truth is out there.' That's the show's tag­ line."

Management theories from Roman slave-owners

"The surviving ancient manuals on estate management urge the master to guard against slaves gossiping, fiddling the accounts, or pretending to be sick. These all chipped away at the master’s authority, and the manuals make it clear that it is vital to promote the most ambitious slaves to the position of overseer in order to ensure the efficient running of the estate."

In These Very Moments, The Protocols Are Being Rewritten

"If they don’t understand our words, they’ll understand our threats. And if in the past, we ran the show from behind the scenes, now we’re doing it openly, from center stage. And if you forget our donations, the wellspring will run dry."

How reading a little each week is a form of life support

"People who read regularly feel closer to their friends and to their community than lapsed or non-readers. Previous research has shown that, in addition to enhancing willingness and ability to communicate with others, reading helps promote respect for and tolerance of others’ views. The sympathetic intuitions which reading summons can make us more open to others’ experience and make us feel more part of the wider human community."

Cinco de (M)Alien?

"Will the slides follow the same fate as the infamous 'alien autopsy' Santilli video, or will our friend Nick Redfern be proved right, and they will instead become the equivalent of the Patterson-Gimlin film —forever dividing the researchers into 2 camps (believers and skeptics) out of a lack of tangible evidence —i.e. an actual body— that could conclusively prove them either as authentic or a hoax[?]"

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

"Gulvi simply didn’t understand that she would be branded a racist if she didn’t believe that the entire worlds population could come to Sweden and be financially supported for life by the Swedish people. She died a couple of months later."

The Myth of the Creative Genius

"In Mozart's real letters to his family, he revealed that he revised his compositions, sometimes got stuck, needed a piano and harpsichord to compose, left and returned to his work, and contemplated theory, craft, melody and rhythm when composing."

"So here is still more evidence of the plasticity of the brain, and its ability to adapt to new habits, new skills, and new information. Start doing the work, and the brain responds, allowing one to build and retain not just technical knowledge, but also the imaginative capacity needed to utilize it fully."

Obama Admits US Role in 2014 Ukraine Coup

 "Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine, not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off balance by the protests in the Maidan, and Yanukovych then fleeing after we'd brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine."

"Washington under the Democrats or Republicans wants war, not peace, he said. 'In the post-9/11 era alone, not a single day of peace has followed. Multiple US direct and proxy wars rage. US Special Forces (trained killers) operate covertly and overtly in over 130 countries disruptively.'"

"In the president’s view, the reality of those threats has compelled the US to have "the strongest military in the world." Obama further says that "we occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn't do what we need them to do if it weren't for the various economic or diplomatic or, in some cases, military leverage that we had — if we didn't have that dose of realism, we wouldn't get anything done, either."

"Reality check. Ethnic Russians are being killed in their homes, basements, schools and streets, by the Western-backed Kiev regime, which launched a gratuitous war on eastern Ukraine ten months ago, resulting in over 5,500 dead and more than a million people displaced."

"'However, if Russia continues its aggressive actions in Ukraine, including by sending troops, weapons, and financing to support the separatists, the costs for Russia will rise,' the White House said in a statement."

Ritual and the Consciousness Monoculture

"As scholastic-industrial consciousness has made our selves more weighty and painful, increasing the need for the loss of self through ritual, the opportunity for such rituals has decreased. As we have become more literate and rational, a process begun during the Enlightenment and accelerating throughout the twentieth century, group rituals and the mental states that they induce have been lost."

The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever

"Of much more serious significance, however, is the way this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record – for reasons GHCN and Giss have never plausibly explained – has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known. This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time."

The Anti-Vaccine Movement Should Be Ridiculed

"I'm here to convince you that the best way to deal with anti-vaxxers is to ridicule their position so much that it's no longer acceptable to say in polite company that vaccines cause autism. Ridicule is our best option to help stem the tide of dangerous superstition washing over this beautiful, measles-infested country of ours. Because shaming works."

Family Has 6-Yr Old Boy Kidnapped To “Teach Him a Lesson”

"Family members plotted to have a six-year-old boy kidnapped to teach him a lesson on stranger danger because he was 'too nice' to people."

Chimps joining new troop learn its 'words'

"Unanswered is what motivated the Dutch chimps to sound more like the Scots: to be better understood, or to fit in by adopting the reining patois?"

A Simple Letter from a Ukrainian Girl

"It is necessary not only to remember that the walls have ears, but you have to remind yourself to look like you are in a good mood. Rejoice that the spring sun is shining for example. After Maidan it is unhealthy to do otherwise. People are watching and looking for those that did not support Maidan. Laws no longer work here. The people are absolutely defenseless and left to the mercy of fate."

How Social Norms Suddenly Take Hold

"'Consensus spontaneously emerged from nothing,' Centola said. 'At first it was chaos, everyone was saying different things and no one could coordinate, and then all of a sudden people who had never interacted with each other were all using the same words.'"

Why Near-Death Experiencers and Their Critics Keep Getting Science Wrong

"First, there’s a long and rich history of the very concept of objectivity and its evolution.  This is constantly ignored by skeptics like Harris in favor of pretending objectivity has a fixed definition without history or context.  Second, in the course of its conceptual development, we were warned against the dangers of our current form of objectivity (one that was supposed to be divorced from experience)."

How to Live with Mystery in a Culture Obsessed with Certainty and Definitive Answers

"Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination — whose existence is nothing but a hopeful assumption anyway — but to more questions and mysteries. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask."

Six Veterans of Stalingrad Write Open Letter to Angela Merkel

"Why do European leaders march in support of French caricaturists murdered by Islamic terrorists, but do not march against fascism in Ukraine? Why did the head of state, who ordered annihilation of part of his own population, participate in this march? Why do 12 French victims deserve attention, but thousands of Ukrainian and Russian victims do not?"

School Suspends 9-Year-Old For Pretending He Had Hobbit ‘Ring of Power’

"Aiden also got in trouble earlier this school year by bringing a copy of 'The Big Book of Knowledge' to school."

British Army May Use Internet 'Trolls' to Conduct Psychological War

"The Independent reports that members of the Internet 'trolling' unit will deal with non-lethal forms of psychological warfare using social media.

The Chief of the British Army, General Sir Nick Carter said that the new plan is to adapt to the 'asymmetric' battlefields of the 21st century, where 'tactics and strategies differ significantly between enemies, such as with the Islamic State group.'

Carter added that '77 Brigade is being created to draw together a host of existing and developing capabilities essential to meet the challenges of modern conflict and warfare.'"

Doctor Educating Public on Vaccines Receives Bomb Threats, Cancels Tour

"A study from the 1990s has come to light, proving that compared to unvaccinated children, vaccinated children were more likely to suffer from asthma, eczema, ear infections, hyperactivity and many other chronic conditions." 

"In fact, 20 years ago, scientists working at the CDC's National Center for Infectious Diseases, funded by the WHO and the National Vaccine Program, discovered something truly disturbing about the MMR vaccine: it leads to detectable measles infection in the vast majority of those who receive it."

"Long-time expert and vaccine educator Dr. Sherri Tenpenny has publicly announced that she has cancelled speaking appearances scheduled for Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne and Gold Coast. The reason was due to pro-vaccine extremists repeatedly calling for bomb threats and violence against venue owners and their families in some cities originally scheduled for the healthy living seminars."