“Are racists dumb? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent than liberals? A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.

“The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.

“I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.

“Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study’s lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.”

Read the full article here.

Here’s a video of Krauss talking about how the Universe emerged out of nothing, and how abundant nothing really is.

This video is long (over and hour) and challenging, especially if you are attached to a traditional religious viewpoint. I watched it because I was curious to know why over a million people (1,080,352 to be exact) would watch one YouTube video. I’m glad I did, because I was totally entranced by the portions of it I actually understood.

WANTED?

Yeow! Boys will be boys!

I can’t wait to see this episode.

Mythbusters shattered more than myths this time (think walls, a roof, a minivan … ):

… the popular Discovery Channel show intended to fire the 6-inch steel cannonball to test its velocity. It aimed the projectile at huge containers of water meant to absorb the impact on the grounds of the sheriff’s bomb disposal range.

But the ball somehow missed its mark, took an unforeseen bounce off a safety berm and barreled into the quiet Tassajara Creek neighborhood of Dublin about 4 p.m. Tuesday.

That’s where the projectile turned into a suburban pinball, bouncing off a sidewalk, blasting through a front door, barreling up some stairs and careening through a bedroom where a man, woman and child were reportedly sleeping.

The cannonball then punched through the home’s exterior stucco wall, sailed across a six-lane thoroughfare, ricocheted off the roof of another home and finally crashed through the window of a parked, empty Toyota Sienna minivan, where it came to rest.

Read the full article from the New York Daily News: “Cannonball from ‘Mythbusters’ show crashes through Calif. home & lands in minivan.”

Here’s a local ABC News report:

So says Richard Wilkinson in his TED Talk below. Wilkinson is Professor Emeritus of social epidemiology at the University of Nottingham and co-author of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, a study of the pernicious effects of inequality in modern industrial democracies.

A whole array of social pathologies — including infant mortality, homicides, mental health, teenage births, life expectancy, etc. — are significantly worse in more unequal societies, regardless of the absolute level of wealth of that society as measured by GDP per capita.

In other words, poorer but more equal societies (like Denmark) fare better on this scale of social health than do richer but more unequal societies (like the U.S.).

If you want to live the American Dream, move to Denmark.

What, if anything, does this have to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Just this: Many fearful critics of that movement[¹] [²] are afraid that the protesters want simply to redistribute wealth, rather than — as is actually the case — make sure that the rules of the economic game are applied more equally and fairly.

In other words, fairness at the starting gate of the economic race — not absolute equality of wealth at the finish line — is the demand.

Professor Wilkinson’s research, which he describes clearly in this short TED Talk, illuminates vividly the unrest we see all about us now.

His work, though not limited to the U.S., could also be thought of as a “Science of the American Dream,” and should interest anyone who is worried about why that dream is dying.

1. See, for instance, cartoonist Bob Crabb's recent Halloween cartoon
2. See also "Eric Cantor criticizes 'wealth redistribution' and Occupy protesters during University of Michigan speech"

This sort of thing happens all the time in our polarized and dysfunctional political culture. Usually in these situations there’s plenty of blame on each side.

Because of the pervasiveness of fear and anger, none of us is above the tendency to prefer battle over reconciliation. We get so attached to winning that it takes some determination — perhaps even a bit of self-awareness — to avoid getting stuck in the usual conflict.

A day or so after that most recent conflict, I fell asleep in bed at night listening to some political program on my iPod. In one of those strange moments of synchronicity, I woke later in the dark hours of early morning (still in my earphones) to the voice of Tara Brach, the Buddhist psychologist, speaking about fear and anger as the source of human conflict (2 minutes and 59 seconds into her talk, “Causing No Harm“).

To illustrate her point about how each of us (not just some of us) contains the source of this conflict, she told the following story:

An old grandfather is speaking to his grandson, and he’s talking about what causes violence and cruelty.

He says, “In each human heart, there are two wolves battling one another. One is fearful and angry, and the other one is wise, understanding and kind.”

And so the young boy looks at his grandfather and says, “Yeah, and so which one is gonna win?”

The grandfather smiles and quietly says, “Whichever one we choose to feed.”

Brach claims that, through meditation, it’s possible to act more consistently under the direction of the neo-cortex (where the wise wolf lives), rather than under the terrible influence of the more ancient part of the brain (where the fearful wolf lives).

I’m intrigued and encouraged by Brach’s suggestion that wise action is a choice (the point of the grandfather’s story, after all), and that it’s possible to practice and become more skillful in making that choice.

Like everyone else, I still need a lot of practice.