Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Free Music Is Better Because It’s Free

June 5, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Preserving the last remnants of my youth requires staying in touch with rap music, and this year I have enjoyed no two rap albums more than Future’s F.B.G.: The Movie and Tree’s Sunday School Pt. 2. Future is commercially successful, consistently on the radio, and featured on songs by Rihanna and Lil’ Wayne, whereas Tree is more of an underground sensation, just beginning to make a national name for himself. F.B.G.: The Movie is a cinematic haze of keyboard steroids draped over Future’s warbling and Sunday School Pt. 2 is a soulful, introspective walk through Chicago’s war zones. ... Read More

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A Guide to Will and Jaden Smith’s Unifying Theory of the World

May 31, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Will Smith and his son Jaden are on the cover of this week's New York magazine. They're co-stars in the new movie After Earth, in which they sport bizarre accents, crash a ship on post-human-civilization Earth 1,000 years in the future, and try to fight off fully-evolved monkey-beasts. Their names are Cypher and Kitai Raige. Is that weird? Yes, it is weird. But it is not as weird as the interview between Will and Jaden and Claire Hoffman. Claire Hoffman is fine, but Will and Jaden are basically pop-cosmo-physicists and you should expect them to launch their own religion within the next year ... Read More

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The ‘DSM-5′: Introducing the Latest Edition of Psychiatry’s Diagnostic Bible

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The long-awaited, controversial new edition of the bible of psychiatry can be characterized by many numbers: its 947 pages, its $199 price tag, its more than 300 maladies (from "dependent personality disorder" and "voyeuristic disorder" to "delayed ejaculation," "kleptomania" and "intermittent explosive disorder"), each limning the potential woes of being human. But to the psychiatrist who shepherded the tortuous creation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, perhaps the single most important number is the "5" in its title: This is the DSM-5, not the DSM-V. That ... Read More

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The Science of Psychics

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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There is this deeply affecting part in the movie version of A Christmas Carol—OK fine, A Muppet Christmas Carol—where Ebenezer Scrooge is carried forward some unspecified number of years through time and set down on the front doorstep of a future Bob Cratchit. The silent, hooded Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come stands behind him, urging him forward with a long and scary finger, watching eyeless-ly as Scrooge reluctantly dissolves through the family’s front door. Inside their home, Scrooge will learn that Tiny Tim has died. Then, taken along again, either forward or sideways in time, ... Read More

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Unable to Grasp Alternative Viewpoints? Chill Out.

May 13, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
perspective

Having trouble coming to terms with a contrary colleague or disgruntled member of the family? Do you just seem to be talking past one another? Your first impulse might be to sit down and talk things out over a cup of coffee. Bad idea. Newly published research suggests warm temperatures inhibit our ability to get beyond our own egocentric perspective and see things from a different point of view. “We show that perspective-taking is enhanced when participants are exposed to cooler rather than warmer temperature cues,” writes a research team led by Claudia Sassenrath of the ... Read More

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Are Video Games the Next Big Addiction?

May 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Editor's Note: The post originally appeared on The Fix, a Pacific Standard partner site. Once a hobby just for nerds, video games have become as mainstream as alcohol. Whether they are—or will become—as addictive is hotly debated by experts. And as their popularity continues to soar, that debate carries a growing sense of urgency. Modern games, which retail for around $60, are made with one goal in mind: keeping people entertained for hours—which can then be further monetized through subscriptions and expansions. But with Hollywood-sized budgets (sci-fi shooter Halo 4 was built on ... Read More

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The Power of Tetris

May 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Tetris is still a game that people play. (Read this excellent history and consideration of the game from Noah Davis.) It doesn't involve flinging bird-heads at fat pigs or shooting aliens with nuclear pistols or even trying to make a three-pointer with Monta Ellis. (The third option here is the least realistic.) It's just a bunch of blocks falling from the sky, and you have to stack them. But you know that; everyone knows that because everyone has played Tetris at some point. Seriously, at least one billion people are estimated to have played the block-arranging game. Why, then? Why is ... Read More

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Why Do You Hoard?

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Orange-juice containers, newspapers, six-pack cardboard carriers, plastic and paper bags, green compost bins, pill bottles, rain gear, old New Yorker magazines, and running shoes fill Greg Samson's home, often to waist level. The area around Samson's stove is clear enough so he can cook turkey patties or fry up some chicken—what he calls the limit of his culinary repertoire. As we talk, he describes a moldering turkey wrapper that had recently been sitting on the countertop for a few days and attracted his attention. "I can't think of a plausible scenario in which I would need that," he ... Read More

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Marathon Legend Bill Rodgers on the Boston Bombings and the Future of the Race

April 24, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Bill Rodgers is an American running folk hero. An icon during the running boom of the ‘70s, Rodgers won the Boston and New York Marathons four times each between 1975 and 1980. He hasn’t run Boston since 1996 but is still heavily involved in the running community, making appearances every April as runners prepare for the 26.2-mile journey from Hopkinton to Boston’s Back Bay. Patriots’ Day is Boston’s holiday and the marathon, the oldest annual marathon in the world, is sacred to Rodgers and the rest of New England. So it was with a heavy heart that Rodgers spoke with us on ... Read More

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What Does Your Sneeze Say About You?

April 23, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Are you one of those people who just sneezes out into the open air and then goes about living your life like nothing disgusting just happened? If so, you are sick, and it needs to stop. It also tells me that you are a germ-spraying bio-warhead who either does not concern him/herself with the health of others or delights in the pleasure of other people's immune systems breaking down. But, what does your actual sneeze—the sound, the volume, the frequency—say about you? A Chicago neurologist is trying to figure that out: “Sneezes are like laughter,” says Dr. Alan Hirsch, a ... Read More

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