- When one is a raging psychopath, certain other physical
or personal deficiencies usually take a back seat. Having a near-total lack of empathy,
antisocial behavior and callousness, often leading to pathological lying and
manipulation of others, just seems to render something like a remarkably poor
sense of smell relatively meaningless. Yet there is a group of Australian
researchers, led by Mehmet Mahmut and Richard Stevenson of the department of
psychology at Sydney's Macquarie University, conducting research on
psychopaths’ olfactory abilities. They were able to trace both conditions to
dysfunction in part of the brain called the orbito-frontal complex (OFC). The
OFC is a frontal part of the brain responsible for controlling impulses,
planning and behaving in line with common behavioral norms. It also helps
process olfactory signals, although that function is still being fleshed out. For
their project, Mahmut and Stevenson measured the olfactory skills of 79
individuals, aged 19 to 21, who had been diagnosed as non-criminal psychopaths
and lived in the community. They used something called "Sniffin' Sticks" -- 16 pens
that contain different scents, such as orange, coffee and leather – to test
participants’ smell-abilities and found that they had problems in correctly
identifying the smell and also in differentiating it from a different scent. The
more psychopathic a person was, the worse their sense of smell tended to be.
Participants who scored highest on a standard scorecard of psychopathic traits
did worst both in differentiating between smells and correctly identifying
individual smells. "Olfactory measures represent a potentially interesting
marker for psychopathic traits, because performance expectancies are unclear in
odor tests and may therefore be less susceptible to attempts to fake 'good' or
'bad' responses,” the study authors wrote in their report, which was published
in the journal Chemosensory Perception. While the study doesn’t mean that
anyone with a poor sense of smell is automatically a psychopath, Mahmut and
Stevenson believe their findings could be useful for identifying psychopaths…………
- Seeing an oppressed group rise up and demand fair
treatment always warms the heart. When The Man brazenly tramples the rights of
an abused people and treats them like a commodity rather than human beings,
action must be taken. That’s why it is so uplifting to see track
and field athletes from the United States and abroad unionizing. Yes, athletes
who make a lot of money and are sponsored to go around the world competing in
major meets are unionizing in part to fight a rule against promoting private
sponsors, achieve collective bargaining and seek prize money in the Olympics.
The last part of their platform is rather asinine, as there are more
high-profile athletes than track stars at the Games and yet, none of them are
demanding prize money. The unionization movement is led by some of the biggest
stars in the sport, including Americans Sanya Richards-Ross and Bernard Lagat
and Jamaican stars Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake. Their movement gained momentum
at the Olympics and it is largely a crusade against s Rule 40, an International
Olympic Committee bylaw that prohibits Olympic participants from advertising
for non-Olympic sponsors just before and during the Games. In response, track
and field stars launched a social media campaign using the #WeDemandChange
hashtag. Those are the forefront of the effort insist their quest is about the
little guy, the athlete who has to work two or three jobs just to train and stay
in the sport. Seeing the amount of money made at the Olympics pushed many over
the edge on the issue, Richards-Ross explained. To better facilitate the
campaign, the Track and Field Athletes Association expanded to international
athletes on Friday and will seek to model itself after player unions in other
sports. However, Khadevis Robinson, a U.S. middle-distance runner and president
of the TFAA, said athletes are not planning work stoppages to further their
cause. "We don't foresee even discussing things like strikes. We don't
want that. That's not our purpose," said Robinson. "We want to find
more ways for the sport's professionals to make more money, not the opposite of
that." Where does the battle go from here? To discussions with the
International Olympic Committee and national governing bodies, for starters.
Richards-Ross has a good viewpoint from which to operate, as her husband is
Aaron Ross, a cornerback for the Jacksonville Jaguars and a member of the NFL
Players Association. Hopefully, all of the starving and suffering track and
field athletes of the world will get the support they need from this new
endeavor and regain their dignity and basic human rights………..
- It is time to wage war with your circular plastic discs
and multi-colored balls, Hartford, Conn. residents. Your mayor has declared his
intentions to rip some of your basic rights and unless you fight back, you will
lose your ability to randomly decide to call up a few friends on a sun-drenched
fall afternoon and organize an impromptu game of Ultimate Frisbee, soccer or pickup football. Mayor Pedro
Segarra is on the warpath against Hartford residents with audacity to play
pickup sports at Bushnell Park,
so he and his goons are banning certain sports and games unless those wishing
to play at the park have a permit. According to ass-hatted city officials, such
games are tearing up the grass at the park and because the health of grass is
more important than the health, fitness and well-being of the people whose
taxes keep the park running, the crackdown has begun. The city is dropping its
administrative hammer on all sporting events at the park that do not have a
proper permit because Segarra believes anyone who gears up and puts down field
markers and boundaries needs to make their outing official. Simply banning
cleats obviously wouldn’t be enough because it would be far too logical and not
involve enough bullsh*t bureaucratic red tape, so the mayor and his sycophants
made the obvious leap in logic and took their idea about two dozen steps too far.
Never mind that co-workers, schools and random groups of friends might want to
take advantage of unseasonably warm fall weather on a Sunday for some flag
football or Ultimate Frisbee – fun be damned. Segarra explained the decision on
his official Facebook page and the reaction, both digitally and in the real
world, has not been positive……….
- One of the most highly-anticipated new albums in the final
few months of 2012 is “Babel,” the second album from British indie/folk rock
rising stars Mumford & Sons. A second album is often when a band that comes
from obscurity with a successful first album can find itself pulled back toward
the mainstream as it lands a record deal and gets more attention from the
masses, so there is plenty of eagerness to hear what Marcus Mumford and his
mates have come up with. Just don’t expect the band to be too concerned with
those who don’t like what they hear when the project drops next week, not if multi-instrumentalist
Ben Lovett is speaking for the group when he says anyone who is cynical about
the album “can f*ck off.” Lovett believes the album’s sound will broaden
people’s view of the band, but insisted it doesn’t make a difference what the
response is. "The cynics can just all f*ck off. We think this new record
will attract a different audience, which is really exciting. And broaden
people's view of us,” he said. Mumford previously said “Babel” is a more
diverse composition than “Sigh No More,” the band’s 2009 debut, and that its
sound more closely mirrors their sound at live shows. "We wanted our
second album to be an advert for our live shows. That's why it's more of a
mixture than the first record. I’ll tour until I’m dead as that’s where we are
most at home. And I hope that's come across on ‘Babel,’” Mumford said. String
bassist and guitarist Ted Dwayne admitted the recording process was difficult
and that finally having the album come out was something of a relief……….
- Despite global warming and melting polar ice caps causing
rising sea levels around the world, not everyone is living in terror of the
water inching up on their lives. In Poland, low water levels in Warsaw's Vistula River have presented a rare opportunity
for police and a team of archaeologists to recover gigantic marble and
alabaster treasures that apparently were stolen from royals in Poland by
Swedish invaders in the mid-17th century. A police Mi-8 helicopter led the
effort Thursday, hovering over the riverbed and lifting a litany of lost items,
including the centerpiece of a
fountain with water outlets decorated with Satyr-like faces. A group of Warsaw
University archeologists welcomed the assist from police in what was deemed a “this
very important mission of retrieving priceless national treasures” by Mariusz
Mrozek, a spokesman for Warsaw police. The treasures’ presence in the riverbed
has long been known, but their exact location had not been determined. The
researchers, led by Hubert Kowalski, retrieved some of the stolen stone
ornaments from the Vistula riverbed over the past three years but could not
reach many of the items while water levels remained near their normal heights.
Once the waters receded, thanks to recent heat waves and droughts, the sunken
treasures were
located and their value and importance is impressive. “This is a precious find.
These elements were stolen from Warsaw's royal residences and palaces,"
said Marek Wrede, a historian at the Royal Castle. Using the chopper, the
recovery team has unearthed marble floor tiles, parts of archways and columns
and other valuable items that were robbed from Warsaw by the Swedes who overran
the nation in mid-17th century and seized spoils from across the country. Most
of the items recovered Thursday are believed to have been pilfered from the
Royal Castle and from a royal country residence, the Kazimierz Palace. They
likely were being carried by a barge that sank while carrying loot down the
river to the Baltic Sea and to Sweden. Poland has lost more valuable artifacts
than just about any nation in Eastern Europe in the past few centuries, having
been plundered by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Red Army during World War II and
the Swedes prior to that. Tales of hidden artifacts lost in the river have been
pulled from 17th-century letters and the stories picked up credibility when sand
barge operators discovered some items, but could retrieve only a few of them.
The newly retrieved items are reportedly “very well-preserved” and will be
cleaned thoroughly before going on display publicly in a location to be
determined………..
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