Mass hysteria causes people to wrongly think they are dying from an air freshener at a high school in Baltimore

According to wikipedia, mass hysteria is

a phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear

That’s exactly what just happened at a high school in Baltimore.

After someone activated a pumpkin spice air freshener, people started having trouble breathing, and were taken to the hospital.

The school was evacuated, and emergency personnel were called.

Even though it turned out to be just an air freshener, experts said that evacuating the school was a good idea, just in case it had been something worse.

On the one hand, there’s a big part of me that has to agree with these experts.

On the other hand, just several decades ago, it probably would have been considered preposterous to evacuate a school under such circumstances.

All I can say about this is that the world sure has changed since I was a kid.

 

October 6, 2017. Tags: , . Psychology. Leave a comment.

The Big Bang Theory: Amy helps Sheldon with his closure issue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r60lVSiF1AA

 

October 4, 2017. Tags: , , , , . Humor, Psychology, Television. Leave a comment.

Morgan Freeman talks about some interesting scientific experiments with guns

The YouTube video below is an episode of the science TV program Through the Wormhole. This episode is called “Is Gun Crime a Virus?” It’s from season 8, and originally aired just a few months ago. Morgan Freeman is both the narrator and the executive producer.

I listened to (but did not watch, as it’s rotated 90 degrees, and is also cropped) the entire video.

Here are three interesting studies from the video that I’d like to mention:

1) In a driving simulator, people drove more aggressively when a gun was placed on the passenger seat, as compared to when a control object (a tennis racket) was placed on the passenger seat. (skip to 26:46)

2) In real world driving, a driver in a pickup truck deliberately stopped at a stop sign for 12 seconds. Sometimes the truck had a rifle on a gun rack, and sometimes it did not. When there was a rifle, the drivers behind the truck behaved more aggressively compared to the control group where there was no rifle. (skip to 28:39)

3) Among minors in prison for violent felony, some were given “decompression therapy,” and some were not. After they got out of prison, those who did not receive the therapy killed 16 people, while those who did receive the therapy killed no one. (skip to 37:15)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL5mP420_z4

 

October 4, 2017. Tags: , , . Guns, Psychology, Violent crime. Leave a comment.

Stay at home father Stefan Molyneux talks about “the rise of the daycare generation”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSo5gzJ1M1s

April 3, 2017. Tags: , , , , , , , . Dumbing down, Education, Parenting, Politics, Psychology, Social justice warriors. Leave a comment.

Heroic dog saves friend from river! Or he just wants a stick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6xJIw0V2Fk

February 5, 2017. Tags: , , , , , . Animals, Science. 1 comment.

Poll: If you had two daughters, and could only give money to one of them…

In this video, the speaker says the government should stop giving money to women for having babies out of wedlock. She says the government should force the biological father to pay for raising the child, instead of the taxpayers.

She also says that if she had two daughters, and one had a baby out of wedlock and needed money to take care of the baby, and the other one got good grades in high school and needed money to pay for college tuition, she would give money to the one who wanted to go to college, and not to the one who had the baby out of wedlock. Her rationale for this is that we should reward good behavior, not bad behavior.,

I agree with her. I believe that we should reward good behavior, not bad behavior. I would give the money to the daughter who wanted to go to college.

Which daughter would you give the money to?

(Video contains lots of profanity.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAre1g_eQhQ

 

 

March 23, 2016. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . Economics, Education, Politics, Polls. 3 comments.

Obama claims he never said he wanted to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”

Five days before the 2008 election, Obama said:

“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

You can see and hear him saying those exact words in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrefKCaV8m4

However, on February 2, 2014, Obama told Bill O’Reilly that he never said those words. Here is the transcript from the interview:

O’Reilly: OK. I got a letter from Kathy LaMaster, Fresno, California. I said I would read one letter from the folks, all right?

Obama: All right.

O’Reilly: “Mr. President, why do you feel it’s necessary to fundamentally transform the nation that has afforded you so much opportunity and success?”

Obama: I don’t think we have to fundamentally transform the nation.

O’Reilly: But those are your words.

So even though it’s on video that he said it, and even though his words have been widely quoted in many sources for years, he still insists that he never said it.

What does Obama’s denial say about his moral character? What can we say about someone who lies so casually about something which is so obviously false?

And what does it say about Obama’s estimation of the level of intelligence of the people to whom he is speaking? Does Obama really believe that people are so dumb that they would believe such an obvious lie?

This lie from Obama reminds me of George Orwell’s novel 1984, where the government was always rewriting history. But the difference is that in the book, every transcript and every video would have been edited to erase Obama’s remarks, whereas in real life, Obama does not have the ability to edit all of the transcripts and videos that are in existence. Orwell wrongly assumed that the government would be able to do this. But in reality, the government is a lot more like the idiotic, incompetent bureaucracy that’s shown in the movie Brazil.

I know a lot of highly intelligent people who voted for Obama. And even after he told huge numbers of lies during his first term, these highly intelligent people voted for Obama in his second election. I don’t think I will ever understand why such highly intelligent people voted for someone who is such an obvious pathological liar.

February 12, 2014. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . Barack Obama, Politics. 9 comments.