The cover story of this week’s New Scientist has ten useful tips for making better decisions, based on current scientific knowledge of how your mind works. It’s for subscribers only, of course, so here’s a quick summary…
Cho Seung Hui conspiracy loopiness
It’s a shame to waste this one down in the comments. Apparently Cho Seung Hui didn’t do it. It was all a cover-up by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, who hired mercenaries to do the killing and did a set-up to blame the Korean lad. Uhuh.
The Rowdy Boys Incident
’Pong and I are standing on the balcony at Sydney nightclub Arq, looking down at the continuing awards ceremony. Nearby someone asks whether the women currently on stage are “the lesbian singers” he’s seen before.
“What’s a lesbian singer?” I ponder aloud in a stage whisper. “Is that like a horse whisperer?”
’Pong glares, unimpressed. His energy levels are low, he’s not in the mood. My friend Nate, not exactly what you’d call the shy retiring type, has encouraged my heckling of the drag queens hosting the event, and ’Pong and Nate’s boyfriend Chris have both been uncomfortable.
Continue reading “The Rowdy Boys Incident”Escort agency for virgins
The Dutch have launched an escort service especially for virgins. Sociology student Zoe Vialet, who set it up, says most of them work in IT. “They are very sweet… but very scared… You better practice before having a girlfriend. Woman expect men older than 30 having had some experience.”
Burnt out sofa, burnt out life
“Want to buy a sofa, going cheap?” Mike, the bloke sitting on the veranda, laughs — amused that the discarded furniture was torched. He’s annoyed they started the fire too close to the fence, though, scorching the paw paw plant that’s just starting to come into fruit.
Somehow the conversation turns to the weather-beaten old homeless guy who was camped out nearby most of this week, but who’s now been moved on. “Keith? Nah, he’s not into money,” Mike tells me. “He’s a millionaire though.” Come again?
The Ghost of Cho Seung-hui
Watch out. That weird foreign student in trenchcoat and shades. Does he ever talk to anyone? That’s suspicious. What’s he writing? A play about murder and rape? Arrest him. Now! Quick! Check everyone else! Get their psychology profiled! Watch them. Watch them closely!
Cho Seung-hui took a beautiful photo of his bullets and posed with his guns before he blew away 32 fellow humans — roughly a quarter of the number killed in Iraq by suicide bombs yesterday — and was presumably one seriously sick individual. But in that obese, self-centred tangle of hypocrisy that is America the reaction is, as usual, wrong…