Uninvited guests turn out to be real animals
Police in Boxford, Mass., say a roving group of cows crashed a small gathering and bullied the guests for their beer, Associated Press reports. Police Lieutenant James Riter "says he was responding to a call for loose cows [last week]and spotted them in a front yard. Lt. Riter says the herd high-tailed it for the backyard and then he heard screaming. He says when he ran back there he saw the cows had chased off some young adults and were drinking their beers. Lt. Riter says the cows had knocked the beer cans over on a table and were lapping up what spilled. He says they even started rooting around the recycled cans for some extra drops. Lt. Riter says the cows' owner and some friends herded the cows back home."
Swap hats, swap morality?
"A person's sense of right or wrong may change depending on what role they are playing at the time, according to a new study that also found that people may not even be aware of their shifting moral integrity," says Psych Central. "The study from researchers at Oregon State University focused on people who have more than one role, such as an engineer who is also a manager, or an army medic who is also a soldier." Lead author Keith Leavitt, PhD, said: "People like to think they are inherently moral creatures – you either have character or you don't. But our studies show that the same person may make a completely different decision" based on what they thought was expected of them at the time.
Gamblers, expert and not
"What's the difference between an expert gambler and an ordinary gambler?" asked the New Scientist in an interview with Dylan Evans, author of Risk Intelligence: How to Live With Uncertainty. His reply: "The expert gambler makes money and the problem gambler loses it. But there are emotional differences. Although they both gamble a lot and it appears to be compulsive, expert gamblers know when not to bet … There is also a big asymmetry in feelings about winning and losing. Problem gamblers get a buzz from winning … but they don't mind losing that much. With experts, it's the opposite: they don't get a huge kick out of winning … But they hate losing so much that they are constantly re-evaluating their decisions and finding out how to do better."
Mixed feelings? Good for you
"When we hear that someone has 'mixed feelings' about something, we usually don't see that as a good thing," says The Boston Globe. "But maybe we should – it sounds like they might be good for you. In a new study, researchers asked a diverse sample of people in the San Francisco Bay Area about their health and their daily experience of emotions. Controlling for one's age and overall level of positive and negative emotion, people who experienced more simultaneous positive and negative emotion tended to report fewer health problems. Moreover, when the researchers followed up with people years later, those who experienced increasing amounts of simultaneous positive and negative emotion also reported less of a decline in health."
Portion sizes, then and now
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has charted the growth of fast-food portion sizes since the 1950s, reports The Washington Post:
– The average soda was 7 ounces in the 1950s, and is 42 ounces today.
– The hamburger was 3.9 ounces back then; it's 12 ounces today.
– A portion of French fries was 2.4 ounces in the 1950s, 6.7 ounces now.
Killers and playing
Stuart Brown, a Carmel Valley, Calif., psychiatrist and a leading expert in the field of play, contends that play's opposite is not work, but depression, writes Stephanie Lee of The San Francisco Chronicle. Dr. Brown, co-author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul, "built his theory about the importance of play through 6,000 interviews with people about their play habits. His first interviews – with young men convicted of murder and their relatives – revealed a common theme in the killers' childhoods. 'There was abuse, suppression, a failure of engaging in rough-and-tumble play,' he said. 'There was a vast difference between those individuals and those we studied who hadn't engaged in homicide. That's what triggered my interest in play behaviour.' "
Thought du jour
"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)
Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate