Tag Archives: psychology

Jonesing

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Here are two addictions that I’m sure many bloggers suffer from.

Yahoo: Internet withdrawal anguishing
By Jim Hu, Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Tobacco companies, drug cartels and Starbucks beware–the Internet may be giving you a run for the money in the addiction department.

According to a study sponsored by Yahoo and advertising company OMD, Internet detox makes people feel emotionally vacant and lost in life. Twenty-eight participants were asked to record their thoughts and feelings during a two-week period of no Net usage. From studying the subjects’ video and written diaries, researchers noticed that two weeks of Internet deprivation affected social lives and left many feeling bored.

Caffeine withdrawal recognized as a disorder
By BJS

If you missed your morning coffee and now you have a headache and difficulty concentrating, you might be able to blame it on caffeine withdrawal. In general, the more caffeine consumed, the more severe withdrawal symptoms are likely to be, but as little as one standard cup of coffee a day can produce caffeine addiction, according to a Johns Hopkins study that reviewed over 170 years of caffeine withdrawal research.

Results of the Johns Hopkins study should result in caffeine withdrawal being included in the next edition of the DSM or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, considered the bible of mental disorders, and the diagnosis should be updated in the World Health Organization’s ICD, or The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems.

Engaged Encounter Part II: Three to Get Married?

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The first Catholic Engaged Encounter (CEE) weekend was given in Detroit in 1974 with the aide of the Marriage Encounter Resource Community. In 1975 CEE became a self-sustaining National Ministry. CEE has had astonishing growth throughout our country and also throughout the world. CEE is now taking place in more than 30 countries around the world. It has become the rpeferred Marriage Preparation Program for the Catholic Church, and today many other Christian denominations also offer Engaged Encounter programs. Engaged Encounter teams are all volunteers.

Earlier this month, my fiance and I attended a Catholic Engaged Encounter weekend. I've already written about the site and the Masses. This part is about the content.

Continue reading →

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For Real?

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“Oh, Midnight Star

You can believe it if you read it in the weekly Mignight Star

They’re keeping Hitler’s brain alive inside a jar
Midnight Star, I wanna know, I wanna know”
– “Weird Al” Yankovic

Abandoned boy said to have been raised by a dog (Thanks, BoingBoing)

A Mowgli-like wild boy who appears to have been raised by a dog since he was three months old has been discovered living in a remote part of Siberia seven years after he was abandoned by his parents.

This kind of thing actually happens?!?

Aesthetics and Evolution

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Science is often more artistic than many people, both within and outside of the humanities would believe. Physicists and mathematicians in particular look for "elegance" as a key factor in deciding a theories worth. In many ways, this is just an extension of Ockham’s razor: the simpler explanation for the same phenomenon is best. Elegance generally evokes images of clean, simple lines, and so dovetails with Ockham rather nicely.

This sense of aesthetics is a good thing and ties in with human cognition very closely–I doubt that we could purge ourselves of this even if we wanted–but it does get oddly distorted in some debates. For your consideration I present an article on evolution and intelligent design and how some prominent advocates of Darwinism may have gotten in a rhetorical jam over their critiques of, for instance, the eyeball and the panda’s thumb. This is from Touchstone Magazine’s special edition on Darwism and Intelligent Design from this summer.

The Down Side

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Indiana University study: having children significantly lowers parents’ IQs

A five-year study run by Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction proves what many in the scientific community have always suspected: having children significantly lowers the IQ of both male and female parents.

Well, pro-lifers may be outbreeding
pro-choicers, but we’re
dumber for it. 😉 [It’s satire. – Funky]