SilverJacket

Thumbs Up to Masturbation!

The ad placement is just too good. Click for full size.

Link to story. The idea that masturbation prevents prostate cancer is not new by the way.

UPDATE: Per the comments, my sister sees the following ad with the story. I sure as hell want to prevent anything resembling those things. BRB.

Blogging about Bullshit

I've written some recent posts about bullshit for Brainstorm.

The first one defines bullshit and describes Hunter S. Thompson's use of it on the campaign trail in 1972. And mentions a bullshit lecture on statistics I saw that was actually titled "Not Always Bullshit: A Simple Explanation of Statistics."

The second one relays what Harry Frankfurt, author of On Bullshit, had to tell me about the use of bullshit by Hillary and others on the campaign trail in 2008.

The third describes a bullshit music review in Maxim magazine, asks whether I committed the same sin in Psychology Today, and ties in material from the book How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read.

A fascinating, and queasy, new competition.

To be a journalist is to occupy one of the worst stations in life one can imagine. Picture it: Tied to a computer, sometimes on the road, occasionally forced to talk to strangers, always starting from square one on a new topic after each deadline. And you are maddeningly, incessantly indentured to the hard truth of reality, or the hard reality of truth, or some combination thereof, with the nitpicky public waiting to jump on you for any creative deviation from "fact." What a life! It's enough to drive anyone to drink, or let their hair go, or at least compete with coworkers to slip inane specimens of verbiage into front page stories. Well, we know which route(s) Malcolm Gladwell has (claimed to have) taken.

In case you missed it, read Jack Shafer's rundown on Slate. Gladwell told a tale, broadcast on NPR, about challenging a colleague at the Washington Post back in the day to rack up instances of the phrase "raises new and troubling questions" in their articles. Then they moved on to round 2 with "perverse and often baffling." It's a fun story, but Shafer did some legwork and called bullshit on most of it. Anyway, there was a flurry of attention in the blogosphere that seems to have abated.

But wait! A new contender has entered the ring! Who else but Clive Thompson? First, let me quote from a February 11 story in the Canadian paper The National Post: "Malcolm and Clive? Both went to the University of Toronto around the same time. Both are whip-smart and terrifically ambitious. [True.] ... The only difference? Clive never made it to pop culture level, and as one tittle-tattle who knows this world well tells me, 'Clive has always been a little envious of Malcolm.' [Unverified, and to be fair, Gladwell instills both envy and schadenfreude in writers from this country too.]"

So what does Dark Horse Thompson do in his latest Wired magazine column? He creates a mashup that's one part "perverse and often baffling" and one part "raises new and troubling questions." The result: "These tools raise a fascinating, and queasy, new ethical question." You can look it up, right on page 60.

Malcolm, are you listening? That's Thompson: 1, Gladwell: 0.
Hop to it.

TURN UP THE JUICE!!

My boss sent me this.

Indistinguishable from Magic

Magical thinking--typically considered an archaic mode of cognition that populates the world with animistic forces, hidden dimensions, and evocative incantations--may actually serve us well in the future as we navigate an existence increasingly mediated by digital information.

Read the full post at Brainstorm.

But there are several cases where we've already jumped the gun in attributing powers to our tech toys.

Read about this, too, at Brainstorm.

Lost in Translation

In 1937, a long-lost Vermeer was revealed at auction, heralded by experts as one of the Dutch painter's greatest works. Only it wasn't a Vermeer at all. A man named Han van Meegeren had produced this and many other expensive forgeries. Once he stepped forward, their value dropped like the jaws on his customers. Why?

Read the full post at Brainstorm.

I'll give you a hint. It relates to magical thinking.

Magical Thinking

My latest feature article has just been published in Psychology Today. It's about everyday magical thinking and how even the most hard-core skeptic thinks magically--believing in karma, luck, curses, tempting fate, etc. And it's loaded with coverage of studies that involved voodoo dolls, royal spoons, dart boards, and Mr. Rogers's sweaters. Check it out.

Point Blank

Few things annoy me more than when a writer dramatically builds up to a revelation or punchline that turns out to be already obvious. Here's an example from the Times this week:

In the drawing, a nude man and woman stand on either side of a wall. Each wears a plastic breathing mask that covers the nose and mouth; the masks are connected to air hoses that pass through the wall. The hoses attach to pouches at each other’s underarms and crotches. [OMG they're huffing each other's stank!]

It is a device that allows people — and there is no polite way to put this — [Whoa, what's he about to reveal that's even cruder than the fact that they're remotely huffing each other's stank?!] to sniff each other. Remotely.

Transformers

If you haven't seen them already, you really need to check out these amazing, amazing photos of kids' science fair projects. For so many of them I can't even imagine what the null hypothesis could be. It's like science from a semi-parallel universe.

I can't really make fun of how the kids look, though, because check out this pic of my two best friends (since 6th grade), Ken and Glen:

And see how they turned out:

Reminds me of the tale of another computer hacker's transformation:

The Copycat Unconscious

Considering how lazy many e-daters are, and how clever many other e-daters are, it should come as no surprise that plagiarism runs rampant in the online dating world. On Friday the Wall Street Journal reported on copycat personal profiles, mentioning that in one survey 9% of respondents admitted to lifting material from someone else, and that lines from some sources appear on dozens of people's profile pages. In some cases people cop to lack of imagination, but I suspect in others people subconsciously appropriate the sentiments behind the words so as to justify their claims of authorship.

Read the full post at Brainstorm.