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Ron Jones's "Third Wave" experiment, which took place at a Californian school in 1967. Because his students did not understand how something like national socialism could even happen, he founded a totalitarian, strictly-organized "movement" with harsh punishments that was led by him autocratically. The intricate sense of community led to a wave of enthusiasm not only from his own students, but also from students from other classes who joined the program later. Jones later admitted to having enjoyed having his students as followers. To eliminate the upcoming momentum, Jones aborted the project on the fifth day and showed the students the parallels towards the Nazi youth movements.[3][4]

“Therein lies the great danger. It is an interesting fact that we always believe that what happens to others would never happen to us. We blame others, for example the less educated or the East Germans etc. However, in the Third Reich the house caretaker was just as fascinated by the movement as was the intellectual.”[10]

For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.

One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming.

He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.

 wrote my favorite sentence about this whole affair, one which I often quoted in my speeches to great audience laughter: “there are only three possible explanations for the Snowden heist: 1) It was a Russian espionage operation; 2) It was a Chinese espionage operation; or 3) It was a joint Sino-Russian operation.”

demanding that they only publish those which expose information necessary to inform the public debate: precisely because he did not want to destroy NSA programs he believes are justifiable.

As is true of most leaks – from the routine to the spectacular – those publishing decisions rested solely in the hands of the media outlets and their teams of reporters, editors and lawyers.

To understand Obama's legacy, walk in his shoes on the day it all began

WASHINGTON — We try to assess Barack Obama’s legacy by squinting into the murky future — debating the durability of his policies and programs, wondering what the new president will do to them.

But when we measure the 44th president’s accomplishments, do we recall where and when he started? Remember what the nation and world were like the day he took office? Imagine what might have been without him?

After eight years, few lines from Barack Obama’s Presidential speeches stay in mind. For all his literary and oratorical gifts, he didn’t coin the kinds of phrases that stick with repetition, as if his distaste for politics generally—the schmoozing, the fakery—extended to the fashioning of slogans. He rarely turned to figurative language, and he never stooped to “Read my lips,” or even “Ask not what your country can do for you.” His most memorable phrase, “Yes we can,” spoke to the audacious odds of his own run for the Presidency, not a clear political vision. He sought to persuade by explaining and reasoning, not by simplifying or dramatizing—a form of respect that the citizenry didn’t always deserve.

This aversion to rhetoric, like Obama’s aloofness from Congress, is a personal virtue that hurt him politically. It’s connected to his difficulty in sustaining public support for his program and his party. Even the President’s hero, Abraham Lincoln, was a master of the poetic sound bite.

This is the last week of the Obama Presidency. Historians will argue over its meaning and its merits. But, for democratic integrity, there’s no argument, no contest. Obama’s final speech wasn’t just a warning—it will stand as an emblem of what we have been and perhaps can be. 

The thing about having a highly social mind is that anxiety lurks just around the corner. High levels of anxiety are also reported with Williams Syndrome, whether it's the eagerness to please you, or simply to know when Christmas is coming. But now that employers and job programs are starting to better understand the needs of people with Williams Syndrome, the workplace might be getting more amenable for them. Still, for these individuals, does going to work mean learning to temper their trust?

"I'm very wary now of trusting anyone," Koch says. "I don’t want to go through what I went through at my past jobs. I guard things. I'm quiet. I'm cautious, period."

The social network is going to partner with the Poynter International Fact-Checking Network, which includes groups such as Snopes and the Associated Press, to evaluate articles flagged by Facebook users. If those articles do not pass the smell test for the fact-checkers, Facebook will label that evaluation whenever they are posted or shared, along with a link to the organization that debunked the story.

Mosseri said the social network still wants to be a place where people with all kinds of opinions can express themselves but has no interest in being the arbiter of what’s true and what's not for its 1 billion users.

The new system will work like this: If a story on Facebook is patently false — saying that a celebrity is dead when they are still alive, for example — then users will see a notice that the story has been disputed or debunked. People who try to share stories that have been found false will also see an alert before they post. Flagged stories will appear lower in the news feed than unflagged stories.

Pregnancy changes a woman’s brain, altering the size and structure of areas involved in perceiving the feelings and perspectives of others, according to a first-of-its-kind study published Monday.

The results were remarkable: loss of gray matter in several brain areas involved in a process called social cognition or “theory of mind,” the ability to register and consider how other people perceive things.

A third possibility is that the loss is “part of the brain’s program for dealing with the future,” he said. Hormone surges in pregnancy might cause “pruning or cellular adaptation that is helpful,” he said, streamlining certain brain areas to be more efficient at mothering skills “from nurturing to extra vigilance to teaching.”

While it’s imperative that you actually read and study the book itself, sometimes it’s helpful to gain understanding by also reading what others have taken from the book, and how it helps them become better marketers and run a successful business. The Psychology of Persuasion was written by Robert Cialdini, a world-renowned psychologist who has previously worked at many universities, including Stanford. His principles have stood well the test of time, and this book has topped the New York Times Bestseller List.

The foundation of the book is simple – if someone does go out of their way for you, you are more likely to do so in return. Now, let’s think of this from a business standpoint. Let’s say you are a business that offers terrific incentives, programs, or sales. You also offer great customer service (a very liberal return policy, for example). What you get in return as reciprocity is customer loyalty, as well as word of mouth. Building a customer base is one of the most important parts of marketing, and in this instance, sometimes you have to give a little to get some in return. However, having a customer for life, who speaks well of you to their friends, is worth the price of a liberal return policy, or whatever method you choose.

if one person says black, the other person would say white. This correlation is also known as priming. This is one of those functions that works well in both a psychological and marketing arena.

TV is drowning in cheap, sloppily executed deaths

The spring of 2016 has been marked by death after death after death on TV. Some have proved controversial. Some have passed without commentary. A couple have been largely applauded.

But the fact remains: TV is killing major characters at an astonishing rate.

Fifty minutes.That’s the average amount of time, the company said, that users spend each day on its Facebook, Instagram and Messenger platforms

there are only 24 hours in a day, and the average person sleeps for 8.8 of them. That means more than one-sixteenth of the average user’s waking time is spent on Facebook.

That’s more than any other leisure activity surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the exception of watching television programs and movies (an average per day of 2.8 hours)

I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts.

the overwhelming majority of college freshman in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

where is the view coming from?

Google is announcing that it wants to cut out the middleman—that is to say, other websites—and serve you content within its own lovely little walled garden. That sound you just heard was a bunch of media publishers rushing to book an extra appointment with their shrink.

Back when search, and not social media, ruled the internet, Google was the sun around which the news industry orbited. Getting to the top of Google’s results was the key that unlocked buckets of page views. Outlet after outlet spent countless hours trying to figure out how to game Google’s prized, secretive algorithm. Whole swaths of the industry were killed instantly if Google tweaked the algorithm.

Facebook is now the sun. Facebook is the company keeping everyone up at night. Facebook is the place shaping how stories get chosen, how they get written, how they are packaged and how they show up on its site. And Facebook does all of this with just as much secrecy and just as little accountability as Google did.

are we losing the power to retain knowledge? The short answer is: No. Machines aren’t ruining our memory. Advertisement The longer answer: It’s much, much weirder than that!

we’ve begun to fit the machines into an age-old technique we evolved thousands of years ago—“transactive memory.” That’s the art of storing information in the people around us.

frankly, our brains have always been terrible at remembering details. We’re good at retaining the gist of the information we encounter. But the niggly, specific facts? Not so much.

It is startling to realize just how much the social safety net expanded during Barack Obama’s presidency. In 2016, means-tested entitlements like Medicaid and food stamps absorbed 3.8 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, almost a full percentage point more than in 2008

Public social spending writ large — including health care, pensions, unemployment insurance, poverty alleviation and the like — reached 19.3 percent of G.D.P.

Government in the United States still spends less than most of its peers across the industrialized world to support the general welfare of its citizens.

For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong. Enlarge This Image Josh Haner/The New York Times A technician at a Department of Energy site in Oklahoma launching a weather balloon to help scientists analyze clouds. More Photos » Temperature Rising Enigma in the Sky This series focuses on the central arguments in the climate debate and examining the evidence for global warming and its consequences. More From the Series » if (typeof NYTDVideoManager != "undefined") { NYTDVideoManager.setAllowMultiPlayback(false); } function displayCompanionBanners(banners, tracking) { tmDisplayBanner(banners, "videoAdContent", 300, 250, null, tracking); } Multimedia Interactive Graphic Clouds and Climate Slide Show Understanding the Atmosphere Related Green Blog: Climate Change and the Body Politic (May 1, 2012) An Underground Fossil Forest Offers Clues on Climate Change (May 1, 2012) A blog about energy and the environment. Go to Blog » Readers’ Comments "There is always some possibility that the scientific consensus may be wrong and Dr. Lindzen may be right, or that both may be wrong. But the worst possible place to resolve such issues is the political arena." Alexander Flax, Potomac, MD Read Full Comment » Post a Comment » Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk.

They acknowledge that the human release of greenhouse gases will cause the planet to warm. But they assert that clouds — which can either warm or cool the earth, depending on the type and location — will shift in such a way as to counter much of the expected temperature rise and preserve the equable climate on which civilization depends.

At gatherings of climate change skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic, Dr. Lindzen has been treated as a star. During a debate in Australia over carbon taxes, his work was cited repeatedly. When he appears at conferences of the Heartland Institute, the primary American organization pushing climate change skepticism, he is greeted by thunderous applause.

Most urgent questions of public policy turn on empirical imponderables, and so policymakers fall back on ideological predispositions or muddle through. Is there a better way?

The gold standard for empirical research is the randomized field trial (RFT).

The RFT works better than most other types of empirical investigation. Most of us use anecdotes or common sense empiricism to make inferences about the future, but psychological biases interfere with the reliability of these methods

The half-century between 1912 and 1962 was a period of great wars and economic tumult but also of impressive social cohesion. Marriage rates were high. Community groups connected people across class.

In the half-century between 1962 and the present, America has become more prosperous, peaceful and fair, but the social fabric has deteriorated. Social trust has plummeted. Society has segmented. The share of Americans born out of wedlock is now at 40 percent and rising.

Liberals congregated around an economically determinist theory. The loss of good working-class jobs undermined communities and led to the social deterioration.

The study, which compares the traits of young people in high school and entering college today with those of baby boomers and Gen X'ers at the same age from 1966 to 2009, shows an increasing trend of valuing money, image, and fame more than inherent principles like self-acceptance, affiliation, and community. "The results generally support the 'Generation Me' view of generational differences rather than the 'Generation We,'

college students in 1971 ranked the importance of being very well off financially No. 8 in their life goals, but since 1989, they have consistently placed it at the top of the list.

"I see no evidence that today's young people feel much attachment to duty or to group cohesion. Young people have been consistently taught to put their own needs first and to focus on feeling good about themselves."