Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2863

On Favorite Teams

Scott Adams has a theory:

If you wear the jersey of your favorite team, your brain associates the
colors and the logo with the good feelings of watching a game. The
rational part of your brain might tell you that you wear the team
jersey because you look good in those colors, or you support the team.
But I think the real reason is a simple association with the
stimulation you feel when watching your team compete. It's an
accidental subroutine.

More Intelligent Life traces the history of...

The Erosion Of Partisanship?

Friedersdorf interviews Greenwald:

I think the citizenry is becoming less and less defined by loyalty toone of the two parties, and these partisan divisions are breaking down,becoming much less clean.  We saw that with opposition to TARP, thegeneral anger toward corporatist control of Washington, discomfort withour policy of endless wars, and the widespread disgust with incumbentpower.  Far more important than Right v. Left is insider v. outsider(or politically powerful v. powerless).  That...

Clouds, Not Clocks

Almeria 2008 from Vicente + Sara on Vimeo.

Jonah Lehrer looks inside fMRI machines:

Time and time again, an experimental gadget getsintroduced -- it doesn't matter if it's a supercollider or a gene chipor an fMRI machine -- and we're told it will allow us to glimpse theunderlying logic of everything. But the tool always disappoints,doesn't it? We soon realize that those pretty pictures are incompleteand that we can't reduce our complex subject to a few colorful spots.So here's a pitch...

The VFYW Contest: Where Is That Window

Sent by a reader back in January. You have till noon Tuesday to guess it. Country first, then city and/or state. If we have a tie, the time will count. And remember to put "VFYW Contest" in the content line of the email. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it. 

Veterans of Foreign Wars - Country music - Contests - View From Your Window - X11

The Definition Of Happiness

Does it change with age?:

Whereas younger people are more likely to associate happiness with
excitement, older people are more likely to associate happiness with
feeling peaceful—a change driven by increasing feelings of
connectedness (to others and to the present moment) as one ages.

Google - Search - Search Engines - Yahoo - Carol Bartz

Mental Health Break

Into the deep:

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Hitchens As Atheism's Drag Queen

A reader writes:

In reading the recent comments on this subject I've noticed that we, as atheists, are often using the language of the gayrights movement to describe what it's like to be an atheist in alargely theistic society-- particularly the desire to 'come out' asatheists.  While sexual orientation and religious belief are by nomeans equivalent, and I think it remains harder to come out as ahomosexual than as an atheist, the metaphor is interesting and helps usunderstand the appeal of...

The View From Your Window

São Paulo, Brazil, 2.44 pm

Brazil - South America - Travel and Tourism - Business and Economy - Business

Theocon Watch, Ctd

A reader writes:

I sent my son to a 'Christian' school because it was the only school in our area specifically for children with severe learning disabilities. They had classes of 9 children each and a lot of 'one on one' as well as a high level of supervision. There were definitely a lot of "shalt nots" and not much nurturing. Not wanting to risk his placement, we walked a careful line, only stepping in when certain boundaries were crossed.

Like when they told him he couldn't draw any more...

A Poem For Sunday

.

Mockingbirds

This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing

better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.

In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door

to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,

but gods.
It is my favorite story--
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give

but their willingness
to be attentive--
but for this alone
the gods loved them

and blessed...