Author Robert Wright on his meditation retreat experience..
August 20, 2009
August 17, 2009
Positive Psychology
Good review of the field in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
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August 16, 2009
Quebec's Secularization
I’ve been to Quebec this summer, and there is an interesting article about its secularization, while retaining sentimental attachments to the Roman Catholic Church.
The philosopher Charles Taylor, co-chair of the accra commission, points out that Quebeckers are not the only society of lapsed Catholics to show an attachment to religious traditions without necessarily embracing the doctrine. Millions of non-practising Germans continue to pay confessional taxes, for instance, even though simply declaring themselves as non-Catholics would spare them the expense. The most secular societies in the West also “retain the vestigial public reference to God in public space,†Prof. Taylor writes in A Secular Age .
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August 11, 2009
The Pain of Being a Redhead
According to an American Dental Association study, there is a genetic connection between red hair and pain sensitivity.
Researchers believe redheads are more sensitive to pain because of a mutation in a gene that affects hair color. In people with brown, black and blond hair, the gene, for the melanocortin-1 receptor, produces melanin. But a mutation in the MC1R gene results in the production of a substance called pheomelanin that results in red hair and fair skin.