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By Adam, on April 30, 2013, at 10:19 am
The book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Dr. Martin Seligman is not new, but it is to me. For others who have not heard about it before, it looks like an uplifting read. The central thesis of the book is to essentially learn what a worthwhile life is for you and to un-learn the other things: learn optimism.
‘Happiness’ is a scientifically unwieldy notion, but there are three different forms of it if you can pursue. For the ‘Pleasant Life,’ you aim to have as much positive emotion as possible and learn the skills (Read more…)
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on March 11, 2013, at 4:00 pm
Donald Smith was protesting a sign at Glenmore Landing in Calgary’s southwest Sunday that bans political demonstrations. [CBC]
The privately owned parking lot near the prime minister’s constituency office asserts that protesting is prohibited. On the surface, this looks like the prime minister is impeding the constitutional rights of expression and peaceful assembly.
I’m sure he finds this all quite convenient, but a large hidden issue in this is the privatization of public space.
Can I prohibit protest in a space I own? Possibly.
Can I lament at the amount of space deemed to be public [parking lot, shopping mall] (Read more…)
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on January 29, 2013, at 12:00 pm Saturday night, I spent almost two hours discussing the Geography of Emotions with Colin Mills. We explored the ubiquitousness of emotions, the male crisis around emotions, how emotions relate with cognition, and the betweeness of emotions.
It was a fascinating conversation about a topic with wide implications for society, culture, human relations, activism, politics as well as relation, local, regional, national and world peace.
In the podcast, Colin refers to a couple folks you can read up on here: Jonathan Heidt, a moral psychologist, and Daniel Kahneman, a behavioural economist.
And I referred to the counselling technique, EMDR.
You
. . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: The Geography of Emotions, A Conversation with Colin Mills
By Ron Brown, on January 26, 2013, at 11:48 pm I am a reformed and rehabilitated ex-academic. In my previous life, I aspired to be a professor of Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science. I described my experiences in the academic stream in a series entitled The Grad School Gospels. In The Grad School Gospels I have been pessimistic about the value of most Psychology graduate degrees. I argued that the tenure-track job market for Psychology PhDs is devastatingly competitive and that for most Psychology sub-fields non-academic career paths are limited. That is, there often aren’t many jobs to go around that reflect one’s training and interests and that offer
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: How are Psychology PhDs doing on the job market?
By Ron Brown, on January 9, 2013, at 1:57 am The hallmark of schizophrenia is perceiving things that are not there. Auditory hallucinations, including “hearing voices”, is particularly common.
What if this clinically distinguishing feature of schizophrenia differs from the cognitively distinguishing feature? What if, cognitively speaking, what distinguishes schizophrenia is not the presence of voices, but rather how one interprets them?
WHAT IF WE ALL HEAR VOICES?
Have you ever tried to engage in mindfulness meditation?
If not, try this: Pay attention to your breathe. Attend to the sensations of your lower stomach as you inhale and exhale. That’s it. Don’t think of anything else. Do this for five
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: Don’t We All Hear Voices? A Mindfulness-Informed View of Schizophrenia and the “Normal” Mind
By Ron Brown, on December 29, 2012, at 4:49 pm The Grad School Gospels is a series of posts inspired by Dirk Hayhurst‘s The Bullpen Gospels. In the Bullpen Gospels, Hayhurst tells stories from his struggle to self-actualize through professional baseball. Inspired by Hayhurst and the many commonalities I noticed between the minor league track to the Majors, as he described it, and my experience in the grad school track to cognitive science professorship, I began the Grad School Gospels series.
In this, the fourth, installment of The Grad School Gospels, I speak to how I – a person who had long prided himself on his advanced critical thinking
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels – Part 4: On Grad School Goggles and the Cult-Like Nature of Grad School
By Ron Brown, on December 29, 2012, at 12:43 am The Grad School Gospels is a series of posts inspired by Dirk Hayhurst‘s The Bullpen Gospels. In the Bullpen Gospels, Hayhurst tells stories from his struggle to self-actualize through professional baseball. Inspired by Hayhurst and the many commonalities I noticed between the minor league track to the Majors, as he described it, and my experience in the grad school track to cognitive science professorship, I began the Grad School Gospels series.
As with Part 2 – Passion, Fear and Indifference – the present installment was inspired by a set of quotes from Hayhurst. After a few disappointing seasons Dirk
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels – Part 3: Academe Can’t Be Your Everything
By Ron Brown, on December 24, 2012, at 12:55 am In The Grad School Gospels: On Professional Baseball, Academia, and My Shared Experience with Dirk Hayhurst, I juxtaposed Hayhurst‘s pro baseball journey – which he recounts in his first book, The Bullpen Gospels – with my journey through academic psychology.
Several factors conspired to make our situations alike. We both laid most of our eggs in one basket, deriving identity, strength, purpose, livelihood and self-esteem from a single source. We were accustomed to success, praise and the ability to live indefinitely off of success in our chosen field. For a while this worked out swimmingly. Intrinsic passion and
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels – Part 2: Passion, Fear and Indifference
By Ron Brown, on December 22, 2012, at 3:19 pm In The Bullpen Gospels, author and former professional baseball player, Dirk Hayhurst, takes readers through his lived experience in the cut-throat world of professional baseball. As I read Hayhurst’s story, I find myself impressed by his talent as a writer, sympathetic to his hardships as professional baseball player, and connected to him by analogous personal struggles.
A few years prior to returning to school in 2009 to train to be an occupational a therapist, I was a research graduate student in Cognitive Psychology. Back then, in many ways graduate school was for me what professional baseball was
. . . → Read More: Death By Trolley: The Grad School Gospels: On Professional Baseball, Academia, and My Shared Experience with Dirk Hayhurst
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on November 30, 2012, at 1:48 pm If you think popular media is still chauvinist or even misogynist, but you didn’t know about the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, you should look into them. I found out about their latest research study, Gender Roles & Occupations: A Look at Character Attributes and Job-Related Aspirations in Film and Television, and was not [...] . . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: “Female Characters Are Still Sidelined, Stereotyped, and Sexualized in Popular Entertainment Content”
By Guest Contributors, on November 27, 2012, at 3:25 pm [Here is what some of us have been wanting to say about Taylor Swift, but didn't because A. Lynn did it first, and perhaps best, reposted her with her kind permission. Thanks to Jarrah Hodge for pointing us to this piece of brilliance! Enjoy! - seb] I’ve been mentally composing this blog for forever and [...] . . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: No, Taylor Swift. No.
By jtoddring, on November 23, 2012, at 3:10 am I never reprint other people’s writings, no matter how good – but I will make an exception for this. This article is a true must-read. Please, take the time to read it. Then act. Good morning America. It’s time for a new day. Kudos and warm thanks to Jill Dalton at recoveringarmybrat. I will definitely [...]
By Obert Madondo, on November 4, 2012, at 11:43 am A recent study by the Open University of Israel and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, suggests that women who have been labeled “beautiful” by their peers are more likely to conform to social norms. They’re likely to put their own interests before the interests of others. And, apparently, “beauty and character are more mutually exclusive [...]
By Guest Blog, on November 4, 2012, at 10:38 am Wired: It’s election season in the U.S., and the campaigning between the Democrats and Republicans is fiercer than ever. Now, here at GeekDad, we prefer to steer clear of partisan politics, so this posting is not going to tap-dance into that minefield; instead, we’re going to take a look at the more interesting subject of [...]
By Christine, on August 23, 2012, at 7:56 am Apparently standing on the brink of global disaster, economically and environmentally, isn’t enough to get the majority of people to demand real change from their political leaders, and move away from their fossil fuel lovin’ ways. So what will it take? This video from 14 year old Hyrum Grenny (with a little help from his [...]
By mollymew, on July 12, 2012, at 9:30 pm DRIVING AROUND WINNIPEG:PERCEPTUAL EXPECTANCY As you drove over the Slaw Rebchuk bridge from downtown Winnipeg to the North End you were greeted for years by the “Welcome To The North End: People Before Profit” sign on the roof of the Nippon Auto building at the north foot of the bridge. For years this somewhat incongrous sign on the roof of an auto body shop (whose owners must certainly be quite concerned about profit) set the tone for the neighbourhood where so much of Winnipeg’s radical history came to pass. Nobody seemed to know how long it had been (Read more…)
By Tia Everitt, on May 1, 2012, at 5:18 pm
Last week, our favourite sweatervest hoarding Prime Minister made the world’s laziest Nazi/Hitler invocation during Question Period. This is the latest in a string of Hitler references made by sundry politicos in Ottawa during 2012, and we’re not even half way through the year. His gaffe brought jeers and tears of laughter to denizens of the House and online. For your viewing pleasure, witness the exchange between Mulcair the Bearded Sandwich Explainer and Stevie Soulless Eyes HERE.
After I was done laughing and wiping tears of hilarity from my eyes, I went back to the Politics Respun crew, and
. . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: Springtime for Hitler in Ottawa
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on April 23, 2012, at 11:00 am Having spent some time recently examining the NHL’s and NHLPA’s collective negligence about headshots, I was inspired to address the homophobia that surrounds hockey fandom last night. Sure the Canucks lost, but before that, someone called them a bunch of faggles in Twitterland. How did that all go down, and what hope is there that the NHL actually cares about combating mindless, ignorant bigotry and homophobia? Read about it after the jump.
Sometimes I think I’m a bit ahead of some curves. Starting in the late 1990s, I developed a “gay speech” that I would use in my suburban
. . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: Challenging Homophobic NHL Fans
By Greg Fingas, on April 12, 2012, at 3:36 pm Here, on the distinction between healthy optimism and dangerous boosterism – and how both the Harper and Wall governments are dragging Saskatchewan toward the latter.
By T. A. Everitt, on April 4, 2012, at 3:42 pm Not so long ago, my friend Becca was shopping at her local Loblaws store (Real Canadian Superstore, for those of us who live in the West.)
Like many people I know, Becca approves of their Joe Fresh clothing line, which offers Canadians the opportunity to buy stylish and seasonal clothing at reasonable prices. Always colourful, fairly hip, and relatively well made, Joe Fresh offers people of all ages and genders opportunity to dress in a manner that would usually cost much more at other retail establishments.
That day, Becca was perusing the children’s section, looking for something for her
. . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: Joe Fresh & Loblaws: Perpetuating the Early Marginalization of Women
By Adam, on March 12, 2012, at 2:31 pm Playing games is tons of fun and enterprising people are finding ways to better humanity through gameplay. I just found out that Tetris can be used to help people deal with traumatic experiences – cool!
Research tells us that there is a period of up to six hours after the trauma in which it is possible to interfere with the way that these traumatic memories are formed in the mind. During this time-frame, certain tasks can compete with the same brain channels that are needed to form the memory. This is because there are limits to our abilities in each
. . . → Read More: Things Are Good: Play Tetris to Reduce Traumatic Flashbacks
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on January 10, 2012, at 11:00 am I have a great deal of respect for Canadian Forces personnel. I have generally disagreed with virtually every one of their foreign deployments in my lifetime, but that is a criticism I make of our political leaders who order our forces to go here and there.
I support our troops by encouraging the government not to continue slashing their pensions and healthcare, and to actually treat soldiers with respect and dignity by providing the kind of care they need: vocationally, psychologically, emotionally, etc.
I do not, however, like the militarization of Canadian culture because it is priming us for a
. . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: My Canada Does Not Include Militarizing Canada Day
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on January 8, 2012, at 9:00 pm Tragedy of the Market: From Crisis to Commons January 6-8, 2012 Vancouver/Burnaby
All panelist biographies are here. Below are some lessons learned and observations from the sessions.
Friday:
The opening panel is recorded in the Twitter storify here.
Saturday:
My notes are here.
Sunday:
Opening Panel
Radical Squares: Reflections on the Global Indignant Moment
Nefertiti Altán, George Caffentzis
Nefertiti Altán
Crisis in the economy:
Greed leads to assaults on living wages, off-shoring, migrant workers, slashing pensions. US unemployment is 9.7% or 14.9 million people, 16% for African-Americans and 42% for African American youth. The number is higher when . . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: Day Three of Tragedy of the Market: From Crisis to Commons
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on January 7, 2012, at 10:00 pm Tragedy of the Market: From Crisis to Commons January 6-8, 2012 Vancouver/Burnaby
All panelist biographies are here: Below are some lessons learned and observations from the sessions.
Friday:
The opening panel is recorded in the Twitter storify here.
Saturday:
Opening Panel A Global Tradition: History of the Commons
Silvia Federici
Rebuilding our Commons will allow us to live in a free and self-determined way. When we talk about the Commons, we are not talking about small-scale experiments like communes, but whole social formations. The Commons involves sharing our resources because nature is not for sale. The principle of common . . . → Read More: Politics, Re-Spun: Day Two of Tragedy of the Market: From Crisis to Commons
By Stephen Elliott-Buckley, on January 7, 2012, at 12:00 pm This weekend I attended Tragedy of the Market: From Crisis to Commons community gathering in Vancouver and Burnaby, sponsored by these groups and people.
The basic premise is not so much that capitalism is broken, and we just need to fix it, but that neoliberal market fundamentalism is inherently broken when we’re thinking about sustainability, equity and building a healthy future, largely because capitalism is diametrically opposed to the commons and rich community.
All panelist biographies are here.
Below is a storified collection of tweets from the opening night.
[View the story “Tragedy of the Market: Opening” on Storify
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