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News Briefs 29-08-2011

As Dan Brown’s website says, a secret CIA document contains the phrase, “It’s buried out there somewhere.”

Thanks, Greg. Hat tips to Anomalist & Mind Hacks.

Quote of the Day:

Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that the ways people used pronouns in their essays predicted whose health would improve the most. Specifically, those people who benefited the most from writing changed in their pronoun use from one essay to another. Pronouns were reflecting people’s abilities to change perspective.

As I pondered these findings, I started looking at how people used pronouns in other texts — blogs, emails, speeches, class writing assignments, and natural conversation. Remarkably, how people used pronouns was correlated with almost everything I studied. For example, use of first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my) was consistently related to gender, age, social class, honesty, status, personality, and much more. Although the findings were often robust, people in daily life were unable to pick them up when reading or listening to others. It was almost as if there was a secret world of pronouns that existed outside our awareness.

Psychologist James Pennebaker

  1. Grailburgers in paradise!
    Wow, nice list for this hot, dry Monday in the Heart of Dixie… um, Drought.

    In re: People are biased against creative ideas, studies find.

    That seems obvious… but also, obvious that those who tend to tail-up on some of the more esoteric subject matter available, would notice this even more.

    I’ve often pondered whether calling someone out over a tin foil hat wasn’t mainly for the callers benefit… or comfort. If people say that some of our beliefs (or considerations) are scary, they may be speaking literally on a personal level.

    In re: History Channel puts strongest UFO evidence under the microscope.

    I was really quite pleased with this production. It captured a lot of ground without then yielding so much of it back up to the ‘fair and balanced’ concept… allowing raging skeptoids to trash every point made.

    That all being said now… back to today’s list 🙂

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