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Kidding Yourself Is No Laughing Matter

May 14, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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There’s one at every comedy club: the guy sitting there stone-faced, while everyone around him is laughing. There are many possible explanations: He was dragged there by his girlfriend, doesn’t like the stand-up’s style, or is simply having a bad day. But if his humorlessness is chronic, the underlying issue may be more basic: He just isn’t honest with himself. According to newly published research, self-deception inhibits laughter. “Humor deals with the absurdities of life,” Rutgers University anthropologists Robert Lynch and Robert Trivers write in the journal Personality ... Read More

Robot Deathmatch

May 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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They warned about explosions. They warned about the sweltering heat in a warehouse filled with whirring metal, stray live electric wires, and remote-controlled helicopters buzzing overhead. They even warned about the desolate strip mall-lined walk from the convention center to the nearest bar. Nevertheless, who could pass up a chance to catch the RoboGames, the Olympics of mechanical people? So we drove up from Pacific Standard's Santa Barbara home to San Mateo, California last month to watch robots from dozens of countries vie for supremacy in everything from sumo wrestling to soccer. ... Read More

The Book of Mormon: A Biography

May 3, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
The Book of Mormon: A Biography

America is experiencing something of a Mormon moment, thanks to Mitt Romney’s bid for the presidency and a Tony Award-winning musical named after the Book of Mormon. But much remains unknown about this faith, including the circumstances surrounding its primary sacred text. Paul C. Gutjahr’s well-written and erudite account of the history of the Book of Mormon fills much of this void. In The Book of Mormon: A Biography, he describes an earthly drama that begins in upstate New York in the 1820s, connects with a mythological past about ancient North American civilizations (which includes ... Read More

Comic Con on the Couch: Analyzing Superheroes

May 3, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Comic Con on the Couch: Psychoanalyzing Superheroes

The shrink wants to know how Batman is feeling. In this case, Batman is a husky mid-40s native of uptown Manhattan’s working-class Washington Heights neighborhood, his own personal Gotham. Under his thick black rubber mask, he grunts in his best Christian Bale, “The person that’s under the mask doesn’t exist.” But the woman he’s talking to wants to get deep under that mask. She’s Robin Rosenberg, a middle-aged Palo Alto psychologist in private practice who specializes in an unusual clinical cohort: superheroes. Rosenberg, a columnist for Psychology Today and the author and ... Read More

R.I.P. Traditional Marriage

April 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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The idea of Government-managed marriage — the institution that dates from the 1600s and has long been considered one of the foundations of the social structure of civilization — is rumored to have passed away, quietly, in 2011. It has been widely reported that the institution died of complications from a progressive disease. The causes include growing equality in the workforce, social acceptance of licenseless sex, and the dissolving of the stigma of being either single or gay. In its prime, marriage offered economic structure and support to women who didn’t work outside the home, ... Read More