Here's a link to a study, "The Interactive Effect of Cultural Symbols and Human Values on Taste Evaluation," suggesting that our culinary preferences can be influenced by personality. Specifically, people who scored high on "social authority," ie, that one should support people in power, rated vegetarian sausage as inferior even if it was not actually vegetarian. It also worked in the inverse, those who scored low on social authority rated the vegetarian sausage as excellent even if it was actually meat. Within the post there is a link to another study showing that people rated "expensive" wines as better even when though they had just been served the same wine five times and told that each was a different price point.
Let's face it, fellow humans, we're a bunch of sheep.
scienceblogs.com
File this one under Jews Behaving Badly. Here's a link to a post vindicating the Obama campaign on the issue of having "approved" his Western Wall note for publication. Turns out the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv now claims it never said such a thing. blogs.tnr.com
I've avoided blogging about this whole topic because it just made me so freakin' uncomfortable. You know how you feel when your Uncle Drunky Pants does something embarrassing at a wedding and you love Uncle Drunky Pants, but god you wish he wouldn't do stuff that reflects so poorly on the whole family in front of others? Yeah. That's how I was feeling about this story. Made worse by the fact that a freakin' YESHIVA student took the note! Like, how does that not get you a one-way ticket out of yeshiva? Hello, I'm studying to be a rabbi and I thought it would be a funny "prank" to steal a man's prayer to his God from the holiest site in Israel. And then I thought it would be even cooler to give it to a newspaper. Then, the newspaper thought it would be a journalistic coup to print it! And then the newspaper falsely claims (ie, lies) that the Obama campaign pre-approved his prayer for publication in the international press but is now unable to provide any evidence of that claim and in fact says "we never said that." This is the Trifecta of Assh*lery if I've ever witnessed it. Oh and I've left out Ma'ariv's claim that since Obama is not a Jew he has no right to privacy at the wall anyway. I'd have added that in, but I don't know the four-factor word for Trifecta. In any case, I hope the student gets his ass kicked and I hope that somehow the sanctity of that site can be restored. And the people who were certain that this whole scenario was planned by the Obama campaign can just accept that it's okay to not vote for him without being so credulous about every negative charge that comes down the pike.
Next up, re the potential choice of Tim Kaine as Obama's VP. I haven't had time to fully think it through, so that will be a separate post. But I will suggest that Mr. Kaine work on losing the J. Jonah Jameson look before November:
Oh, and here's a link to a story about Delta Airlines who made a woman with Muscular Dystrophy crawl off a plane to get her connecting flight. It goes on to list the additional indignities inflicted on this poor woman, who finally got out of Atlanta hours later. consumerist.com
If you send your kids or aging parents on a flight without you, you can now officially be afraid.
And on that happy note, you have yourself a nice Wednesday.
1 comment:
If it turns out you like Kaine, I will raise Caine with you.
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