Science of the SpiritS


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Sleep Helps Reduce Errors in Memory, Research Suggests


Science Daily
Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:00 UTC
Sleep may reduce mistakes in memory, according to a first-of-its-kind study led by a cognitive neuroscientist at Michigan State University.

The findings, which appear in the September issue of the journal Learning & Memory, have practical implications for everyone from students flubbing multiple choice tests to senior citizens confusing their medications, said Kimberly Fenn, principal investigator and MSU assistant professor of psychology.

"It's easy to muddle things in your mind," Fenn said. "This research suggests that after sleep you're better able to tease apart the incorrect aspect of that memory."

Fenn and colleagues from the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis studied the presence of false memory in groups of college students. While previous research has shown that sleep improves memory, this study is the first to address errors in memory, she said.
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Butterfly

SOTT Focus: Truth to Power: Psychopaths Rule Our World

Niall Bradley
SOTT.net
Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:55 UTC
Ponerology
© SOTT.netThe writing's on the wall
Watching Europe's political class squirm after Ireland's No vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum last year, I couldn't help but feel that some of them know something we don't: there is an agenda that must be met. The Irish people could not be threatened into sealing the nEU Deal, yet it's business as usual for the fanatical Eurocrats who are adamant nothing will get in their way. Incessant media hype is portending economic ruin lest Ireland vote 'correctly' at the second time of asking this fall.

It is evident, for those with eyes to see, that political discord between rival criminal cartels is purely for public consumption. Bread and circuses. Policy is not shaped by party politics. Decisions are made by a few: everyone else adjusts or starves. Weapons of financial mass destruction deployed by Central Bankers and Disaster-Capitalists, under the guise of protecting the markets and improving the efficiency of the system, vacuum the wealth of the nations - the work people produce - into ever fewer hands.

While we share a symbiotic reality, mutually bound by rules and conventions, theirs is very different. It shadows ours, feeding off the real economy below by manipulating the supply of money, which private banks control. 'Market crashes' are built into the system. Rules designed to regulate economies and prevent volatility are periodically altered. Hysteria is induced in people through repeated media suggestion forecasting impending doom. In the ensuing panic brought on by shock, windows of opportunity open for the few to recast the rules in their favour, extending and entrenching their vice on the real economy.
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Light Saber

Best of the Web: Word gets around: Twilight and the trick of the psychopaths

Maasanova
Under the Radar Media
Sat, 21 Feb 2009 09:52 UTC
Image
© Unknown"Denver reveals the Government"
Note: The following is largely extracted from two articles: Twilight of the Psychopaths, by Dr. Kevin Barrett and The Trick of the Psychopath's Trade by Silvia Cattori.

I make the effort to share this information because it gives me, at last, a plausible answer to a long-unanswered question: Why, no matter how much intelligent goodwill exists in the world, is there so much war, suffering and injustice? It doesn't seem to matter what creative plan, ideology, religion, or philosophy great minds come up with, nothing seems to improve our lot. Since the dawn of civilization, this pattern repeats itself over and over again. The answer is that civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been built on slavery and mass murder. Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination. The inventor of civilization - the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers - was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies - especially military hierarchies.
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Heart - Black

It's Not Hard to Be a Job-Slashing, Pension-Grabbing CEO -- If You're a Psychopath

Thom Hartmann
Smirking Chimp
Tue, 28 Jul 2009 05:45 UTC
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that "Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the US... Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total US pay in 2007, the latest figures available."

One of the questions often asked when the subject of CEO pay comes up is, "What could a person such as William McGuire or Lee Raymond (the former CEOs of UnitedHealth and ExxonMobil, respectively) possibly do to justify a $1.7 billion paycheck or a $400 million retirement bonus?"
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Eye 2

Best of the Web: The First Psychopaths - er... Corporation

Angie Reidel
Think or Be Eaten Blog
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:23 UTC
Image
Thousands of years ago people lived in close knit clans and the population of the world was only a tiny fraction of what it is now. People could go an entire life time without ever encountering a stranger. Unfortunately, sometimes strangers purposely encountered them.

One particular day at one particular village a very long time ago, such an encounter took place. It was just after dawn on a foggy morning that the village clan was going about its normal morning routine. Firewood was gathered, fires were lit, and food preparation was underway. Mothers breast fed their babies, children played and elders sat waiting to be fed.

The comforting sounds of fire crackling and children laughing were interrupted by the muffled rumbling of hoof beats and the sharp clatter of scraping metal coming from somewhere beyond the fog. The sounds grew louder and more distinct by the second, and so, sensing danger, the people of the clan quickly gathered together in the center of the camp.

Moments later, emerging from the haze came a terrifying vision:
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Family

SOTT Focus: The Evolution of Humanity

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Sun, 31 May 2009 04:49 UTC
Imagine that you are standing in a large room full of people. You are not part of the assembled crowd but are merely observing the activities and the people.

A large and grandiose party is in full swing. People continue to arrive all the time, swelling the already voluminous mass of humanity. A band plays in the corner, some of the people are talking and drinking while others dance to the music. As you wander around you notice that the people gathered in the room seem to have organised themselves into groups. As you listen in on the conversations that are taking place you learn that these groups seem to be organised by social status, racial type or simply those with a similar world view. Very clear however is the fact that there are those that are well dressed and seem to be well fed and there are those that appear to be rather more disheveled and materially poor.
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Bad Guys

SOTT Focus: Netanyahu, Israel's Mussolini

SOTT Focus
SOTT.net
Mon, 19 May 2008 15:40 UTC


Image

Andrew Lobaczewski studied at close range a deviant category of humans who, when they manage to grab pivotal positions of power, hold a devastating potential for raining death and destruction down on humanity, simply to further their own interests. These individuals are known as psychopaths, and they move skillfully and purposely throughout the higher echelons of the global body politic. And like clockwork, they slot themselves into all the significant seats of power.

One such individual interests us today. It seems that dangerous moves are afoot which threaten the safety of the entire planet, and that he plays a key role.
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Cult

Florida Psychologist calls Madoff a psychopath

Katie Brace
wptv.com
Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:02 UTC
Boca Raton - The Richards depend on their neighbors for dinner these days. All of their money, millions of it, was with Bernard Madoff.

"We scraped together every nickel that we had and sent it into Bernie and we've been invested with him ever since, almost 30 years," says Steve Richards.

Now, like many, they are wondering why someone considered a friend for so long potentially scammed them. Forensic psychologist Dr. Phil Heller works on thousands of criminal cases. He has never met Madoff, but says the financier fits a profile.

Dr. Phil Heller says, "A psychopath makes you give them money, believing in something else and you're betrayed."

A psychopath is someone who lacks a conscience and empathy. In his practice, Dr. Heller has dealt with victims of people with anti-social personalities.
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Eye 1

To understand war criminals we must learn to understand the irrational mind

Greg Felton
Media Monitors Network
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:28 UTC
The psychopath, in this case the pro-Israel apologist, feels no compunction about lying to justify the torture and mass murder of a defenceless civilian population because in his dissociative mental state he sees no connection between himself and his victim

(THE SCENE: A graduate seminar in political psychology at a Canadian University. The professor enters and takes his place at the end of a medium-sized oblong table)

Professor: "Good morning, and welcome to Aberrant Political Psychology. I'm Professor Langston. Before we begin, a show of hands - how many of you are taking this course because you want to know what makes people become evil? (a few hands go up.) Hmm. You'll save yourself and this class a lot of aggravation if you leave right now and sign up for a Bible study course. 'Evil' is a moral absolute found only in the simplistic, zero-sum world of religion and American movies. It has no place in a rational investigation of the human mind."
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Eye 2

UK: Peter Tobin's 'mask of sanity' concealed the horrific truth


The Herald
Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:34 UTC
Peter Tobin
© AFP/Getty ImagesPeter Tobin, 61

He sat calmly in court throughout the 21 days of his trial, apparently unmoved by the public airing of his terrible crimes. He simply denied he had committed them and sat impassively as the awful details of his deeds were revealed one by one.

The magnitude of the charges he faced and the sheer harm he caused to his victim, her family and her friends appeared to escape him. He just sat, small and silent, day after day, taking the odd note, gently smiling in recognition at a witness asked to identify him in court.

This was a man not intent on proving his innocence, but a psychopath completely untouched by the terror inflicted on Vicky Hamilton, just 15 when she was drugged, sexually assaulted and murdered; indifferent also to the 17-year nightmare he created in the aftermath.
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