Tag Archives: psychology
Smell and Memory
Sniff sniff. Sniff. Have you ever had that experience where you smell something and are whisked back in time to your childhood? A lot of people have. Proust wasn’t just making it up with the whole madeleine thing, you know. … Continue reading
happy people live longer
Yet again, I find reason to be happy that I am happy. Hm. That is an odd sentence. Anyway, a new study from the UK finds that happy people live longer. I wrote it up for ScienceNOW last week. This … Continue reading
brains are somethin’ else
Forget lessons. You can get better at putting just by using a famous person’s golf club. Ok, not even. A golf club that you are *told* belonged to a famous person. I wrote about it for ScienceNOW today. Confidence is … Continue reading
men with sexy dance moves
Lots of male animals perform dances as part of their mating display. They’re trying to impress females, the theory goes, by showing how strong/agile/graceful/whatever they are, with the idea being that these are qualities the females would like to pass … Continue reading
older and better
It’s the thing I didn’t realize about getting older: life gets better. Nobody really knows why, but a lead theory is that the older you get, the better you are at letting stuff go. You know who you are, you … Continue reading
throw some haggis on the barbie
I keep having this problem with foreign languages. I learned Norwegian – a little in Minnesota, a little in Oslo. Then I moved to Trondheim and discovered that nobody outside of Oslo speaks the nice standard Norwegian that you learn … Continue reading
babies in the news
Newborn babies might seem like they don’t do anything but cry, sleep, eat, and excrete – but there’s really a lot going on as that tiny human adjusts to a whole new world. Today for ScienceNOW I wrote about a … Continue reading
[expletive deleted]
Hey, guess what – swearing might actually be good for you. Or good for decreasing pain, anyway. For a study that came out this weekend, a researcher in the UK had a bunch of undergrads stick their hands in buckets … Continue reading