China’s Suicide Rate Among the Highest in the World
September 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day. Timely, since our latest podcast is “The Paradox of Suicide.” It focuses on the specter of suicide and how, strangely, it tends to be more prevalent in rich societies than in poor ones.
One country not mentioned in the podcast is China, where suicide is definitely a cultural problem. Yesterday, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that China’s official suicide rate is among the highest in the world. It’s so high, that someone tries to kill themselves every two minutes. Roughly 287,000 people commit suicide each year, out of a population of 1.3 billion. From the AFP: Read More »
Peg Tyre, Author of The Good School, Answers Your Questions
This week, we solicited your questions for Peg Tyre, education journalist and author of The Good School: How Smart Parents Get Their Kids The Education They Deserve. You responded quickly, and so has she, with answers to a handful of your education-related questions, ranging from textbooks, to No Child Left Behind.
This turned into a smart conversation on a topic that affects all of us. Education policy and reform is certainly something we’ll keep coming back to on the blog. Thanks to everyone for participating. Read More »
Why We Desire But Reject Creative Ideas
According to a new paper by researchers at Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina, creative ideas make people uncomfortable. The paper, which is based on two studies from U. Penn. involving more than 200 people, is set to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. Here’s an earlier ungated version.
From the abstract:
Read More »People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. In two studies, we measure and manipulate uncertainty using different methods including: discrete uncertainty feelings, and an uncertainty reduction prime. The results of both studies demonstrated a negative bias toward creativity (relative to practicality) when participants experienced uncertainty. Furthermore, the bias against creativity interfered with participants’ ability to recognize a creative idea. These results reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas.
and 
. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 