A recent analysis of 20 studies over the last 30 years indicates that between 31% and 57% of women have rape fantasies, and these fantasies are frequent or preferred in 9% to 17% of women. Considering that many people are ashamed to report rape fantasies, these stats are most likely lowball figures.
I recently spotted a paper (pdf) in the July 2008 issue of the influential journal Psychological Science with the following title: "Objects on a Collision Path With the Observer Demand Attention."
Hey, you think I should pay attention to that thing headed for my face? Leave it to scientists to require grant funding to figure out what they were supposed to pick up in gym class by like first grade.
Seriously, those guys would not stand at chance at Mentalball.
(Super-seriously, there are some new findings in the paper. Don't let the cool kids tell you science is not cool.)
In my interview with games designer Jane McGonigal for the June issue of Psychology Today, I asked her if she and her twin sister made up a lot of games together as kids. She said, in part, "We went through a phase of making up playground games, versions of hide and seek but incredibly convoluted versions that you would have to explain like a hundred times to people." That reminded me of piece of hypertext fiction I wrote in college that was set in a particle accelerator/psychiatric hospital. Inmates played a game called Mentalball. I remember my teacher Robert Coover really liking the passage:
Typically I would not choose to do go outside and sprint around the city in 95 degree heat as I did both days last weekend, but I had an excuse: A swarm of wonky and wonder-eyed game designers from around the world coalesced with their crazy-ass inventions to bring the Come Out & Play Festival back to New York. Here's a roundup of what I played:
Two months ago I came home and found Britney Spears on the cover of my April Atlantic. I immediately sent off an email to Gawker:
Subject: wintry mix, chance of locusts
omg srsly, what is the world coming to when britney graces the cover of the fucking atlantic?
(Here's Ryan Tate's write-up.)
Last week I found that the Atlantic had answered my question with its June cover. This is what the world is coming to:
Apparently asteroids will be saving the rest of the universe from Brit Brit. (The attentive will also notice that the mercurial mastermind Professor X has a byline in the issue. Coincidence?)
In just two months the Atlantic, which usually features politics on its cover, has gone from US Weekly to Discover. Looking forward to the Alfred E. Neuman portrait in August. (Calling Andrew Hearst!)
In the current issue of Psychology Today, I wrote a little piece about personality and body modification
(titled "The Body Mod Squad" in the paper version.) I already have a
pierced tongue and some scarification, but for the servicey sidebar
(titled "Rebel Without a Commitment") I reviewed some more softcore
ways to stand out. (And actually tried them; yes we are better than Maxim.)
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.
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.
