Friday
Jan272012

Perceived Reality in Conservative & Liberal Brains | NYT on Apple's Workers in China | Austria's Priests Gone Rogue

Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

Wired magazine presents Human Nature and the Neurobiology of Conflict, a Nebraska study focused on how liberals and conservatives process the same information. Brain science is a high-value topic at AOC.

In this case Michael Dodd of the U of Nebraska wanted to explore how conservatives and liberals process images alternately disgusting (spiders on faces, open wounds) and appealing (smiling children, cute rabbits.) “Dodd’s team found that conservatives reacted most strongly to negative images, and liberals most strongly to positive photographs.”

When turning their attention to politicians the results held.

Conservatives displayed more distaste than liberals for politicians they disliked, while liberals felt more positive than conservatives about politicians they liked. Given these and other findings, wrote Dodd’s team, “those on the political right and those on the political left may simply experience the world differently.”

Related articles:

Liberals Have Different Dopamine Gene, More Friends Say Scientists AOC Apple Valley

In other research, scientists at UCLA and New York University found a specific region of the brain’s cortex that is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals rather than conservatives.

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts and were 2.2 times more likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

Inquiring Minds | Liberals and Atheists Have Higher IQs AOC Apple Valley

Self-Reflecting Human Consciousness Tied To Prefrontal Cortex Grey Matter AOC Apple Valley

Americans Maintain Four Different Views of God AOC Apple Valley

More DFR

Color China Photo, via Associated Press An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads. Color China Photo via APOur AOC Apple Valley channel is named in honor of Steve Jobs and the values of the Apple brand. Anne is an Apple person to the core.

It’s distressing to read, then, the intensive New York Times article Apple’s iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China. The article comes at a time when Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with $13.6 billion in profits off sales of $46.3 billion.

Early in this seven-page article, the point is made that a radical overhaul of the supplier system would slow down innovation. “Customers want amazing new electronics delivered every year.” That makes us part of the problem.

The article centers on Foxconn, one of Apple’s biggest suppliers in China. Provided in advance to Apple for comments, the company did not respond to the NYT article. One knowledgeable consultant says “Companies like H.P. and Intel and Nike push their suppliers. But Apple wants to keep an arm’s length, and Foxconn is their most important manufacturer, so they refuse to push.”

Only customers can demand change from Apple concludes the article. In terms of consumer segmentation, the values group we call the Cultural Creatives — who tend to be Apple customers — and our AOC subset of the CC’s called Smart Sensuality women (and men) are most likely to take the lead in any future customer love demands from Apple. We track these issues in our Apple Valley channel.

Priests Gone Rogue

In Austria Helmut Schüller’s Preachers’ Initiative is gaining momentum and widespread support, causing the highest representatives of the Catholic Church to visit the Vatican for a pow wow on what to do next with the rebellious priests. About 400 Catholic priests have joined the movement, which is supported by the majority of Catholics in Austria, and calls itself ‘disobedient’ of the Vatican. 

The Preachers’ Initiative wants the Vatican to allow Austrian priests to give Holy Communion to divorced people. The rebellious group also want female priests in the Catholic Church and an abolition of celibacy. Its founder says this is the year the group will go international. via Austrian Independent.

DateFri, January 27, 2012 in , , tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
Thursday
Jan262012

Vatican's Financial Coverup Scandal | Kids Need Play | Social Networks & Altruism Among Hadza | Please, No Nagging

Carsten Höller vs Jamie Bochert | Lachlan Bailey | The Last Magazine #7 AOC Private Studio

Anne of Carversville

Anne is reading …

Dominic Bugatto for WSJMore than one ‘honey-do’ list has broken up a marriage, writes the Wall Street Journal. And it’s a scientifically confirmed fact of life that women do more nagging. Perhaps it’s that lack of real power resentment that seeps into everyday lives, even among the happy homemakers.

When women reflect on more clever ways to get what they want — like the appliances fixed — a wife can learn a few tips from motivational speaker Janet Pfeiffer succeed. Deciding to soften her approach before that stoney male silence took her to divorce court, Pfeiffer took to writing clever post-it notes.

Ms. Pfeiffer sometimes writes notes to him from the appliances that need to be fixed. “I really need your help,” a recent plea began. “I am really backed up and in a lot of discomfort.” It was signed “your faithful bathtub drain.” “As long as I am not putting pressure on him, he seems to respond better,” Ms. Pfeiffer says. Mr. Mac Dougall (her husband) agrees. “The notes distract me from the face-to-face interaction,” he says. “There’s no annoying tone of voice or body posture. It’s all out of the equation.”

Vatican Corruption Scandal

A respected Italian show ‘The Untouchables’ aired on La 7 Wednesday night a series of letters about corruption at The Vatican. Pope Benedict was among the recipients of copies of letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who was then deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors about financial irregularities and mismanagement of investments. Archbishop Vigano was under fire and the victim of a smear campaign, he wrote. 

“Holy Father, my transfer right now would provoke much disorientation and discouragement in those who have believed it was possible to clean up so many situations of corruption and abuse of power that have been rooted in the management of so many departments,” Vigano wrote to the pope on March 27, 2011, in response to a campaign to have him removed from his post. Vigano is now the Vatican’s ambassador to Washington. via Reuters

Navy Seal Rescue in Somalia

Young American journalist Michael Scott Moore, who was kidnapped in Somalia last Saturday, may bear the brunt of the Navy SEAL’s daring rescue of Jessica Buchanan, 32, a former fourth grade teacher from Virginia, and Paul Thisted, 60, of Denmark, both employees of the Danish Demining Group (DDG), who were abducted there in October and being held for a ransom of $10 million, writes The Daily Beast.

According to Somalia Report, a Nairobi-based online news service, 11 to 12 aircraft arrived at that airport right about midnight Tuesday, local time. U.S. Special Operations forces secured the airport, with plans to launch the raid between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. local time. Residents near the site of the attack reported that around 3:30 a.m, U.S. helicopters began engaging the pirates in a gun battle.

The SEALS captures six pirates and killed nine more. The leading pirate commander wasn’t captured and no US casualities were reported.

More DFR

Photo: Tony Avelar/TCSM Illustration: John Kehe/StaffHow About Some Horsing Around?

On the one hand schools have abolished recess and in many cases, physical education even though doctors insist that kids should get good exercise an hour each day. Call it time for playing around, that exhuberant, sometimes unpredictable event when kids let loose.

Alternatively, when kids do have relaxation time, they’re most often in front of a computer. Concerned parents, child psychologists and Fortune 500 companies who are worried about a future group of zombie American workers are all expressing concerns about the end of childhood and expecially time for play. Read on in this excellent in-depth article at The Christian Science Monitor.

Young Girls Online

In a New York Times story with a big headline Does Technology Affect Happiness? we learn that the Stanford University study is focused on girls 8 to 12, a group of 3,400 who may not be representative of the larger population or even same-age peers.

Within this disclaimer, the facts are that girls who say they spend considerable amounts of time online appear to be less socially comfortable than same-age girls who say they spend less time online. Cause and effect haven’t been established, but researchers stress that “on a basic, even primitive level, girls need to experience the full pantheon of communication that comes from face-to-face contact, such as learning to read body language, and subtle facial and verbal cues.”

Dawn of Social Networks

“If you can get cooperators to cluster together in social space, cooperation can evolve,” said Coren Apicella, a post-doctoral research fellow in Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School and first author on a paper studying social networking among a rare hunting and gathering society in Tanzania called The Hadza. “Social networks allow this to happen.”

The natural world, red in tooth and claw, has a gentle side. While individuals compete fiercely to ensure the proliferation of their progeny, a few animals, including humans, also cooperate and act altruistically. Researchers have wondered if human social networks are a product of modern lifestyles, or if they could have emerged under the kind of conditions that our distant ancestors faced. This question has been challenging for classic evolutionary theory to explain neatly. via Science Daily

DateThu, January 26, 2012 in , , , tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
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