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Important article to forward to all older single non-web-saavy female relatives. Also, foreground cat LOL.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/07/18/business/18retiring-web/18retiring-web-master675-v3.jpg

AT first, the constant attention seemed sweet and very special.

Janet N. Cook, a church secretary in the Tidewater, Va., area, had been a widow for a decade when she joined an Internet dating site and was quickly overcome by a rush of emails, phone calls and plans for a face-to-face visit.

“I’m not stupid, but I was totally naïve,” said Ms. Cook, now 76, who was swept off her feet starting in July 2011 by attention from a man who called himself Kelvin Wells and described himself as a middle-aged German businessman looking for someone “confident” and “outspoken” to travel with him to places like Italy, his “dream destination.”

But very soon he began describing various troubles, including being hospitalized in Ghana, where he had gone on business, and asking Ms. Cook to bail him out — again and again. In all, she sent him nearly $300,000, as he apparently followed a well-honed script that online criminals use to bilk members of dating sites out of tens of millions of dollars a year.

Many of those targeted are women, especially women in their 50s and 60s, often retired and living alone, who say that the email and phone wooing forms a bond that may not be physical but that is intense and enveloping. How many people are snared by Internet romance fraud is unclear, but between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2014, nearly 6,000 people registered complaints of such confidence fraud with losses of $82.3 million, according to the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center.​
- read the full article Swindlers Target Older Women on Dating Websites (from The New York Times)​
 
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There has been some activity this week at 84 Second Ave. near East Fifth St. … a building that has intrigued many of us for years…

First, before any history … on Monday, workers started replacing the long-empty storefront's front windows…

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_lPevOkHI0k/Vagpp4Pxw_I/AAAAAAACY7Q/wATypFIvwxM/s640/84.jpg


[Photo by Paul Kostabi]

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sFARPVq_fwM/VagptYodWaI/AAAAAAACY7Y/L7G9kouJwts/s640/84%2B1.jpg

[PK]

The first thought among 84 watchers: The storefront is being put to use again as a… storefront… there's nothing on file with the DOB to offer any hints… for now the work has stopped…

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-z_jV-hFks8Y/VafpyLagcKI/AAAAAAACY6Y/eNQauEgjRcQ/s400/84.jpg

[Photo Wednesday by Derek Berg]

As for history.

In February 2009, a man who said that he lived and worked nearby for years told Jill the following about the building:

It used to be a place that sold tuxedos and formal wear. The family had several children, but one of them, a daughter, was raped and murdered in the top floor, possibly in the 1940's [note: it was actually 1974].

The killer was never found. The children (or one of them and a spouse?) still live there and refuse to renovate or change anything. The top floor is exactly the way it was when the daughter was murdered and you can still see the powder where the cops dusted for fingerprints. This man had been inside once and was witness to its originality. He said they have no intention of selling or changing or even of renting out the storefront.

The name of the family is Sopolsky.

This is from The New York Times, dated Jan. 18, 1974:

The nude body of a 40-year-old woman propietor of a tailor shop that rents tuxedos on the Lower East Side was found bludgeoned to death. The victim was Helen Sopolsky of 84 Second Avenue, near fifth Street, whose shop is one flight up at that address. The motive of the attack was not determined immediately...."

Here's more history of 84 via Lost City from February 2012:

It was a temporary home for women in 1884, open to "self-supporting homeless young women, with or without a child." Morris Kosturk, 40, was found dead there in 1921. And Aaron Schneider, who lived here in 1964, was the victim of a hit and run driver.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/11.gif

For years (decades?), you could see a plastic-covered dinner jacket in the second-story window with the neon sign that reads "DRESS SUITS TO HIRE."

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Isw2icXAEac/VagxBBfbNFI/AAAAAAACY7o/uNEQ969xTDU/s400/P1000069.JPG

More recently there was an ad for Jamie's now-closed check-cashing shop around the corner … as well as for a walker for $60.

Here's Jeremiah Moss writing about the building in July 2011:

We're all a little nervous about #84. There are those of us who watch it and wait, anxiously, for the day when it will be sold, when a multi-millionaire will turn it into a grand mansion, or the ground floor will be converted into a trendy farm-to-table restaurant, and all the mystery will be sucked away.

Read:

A Change At 82 2nd Ave.

Haunted House of Second Ave.

That Haunted Looking Building

Dress Suits To Hire
 
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The Philographics series, explaining philosophy through basic shapes, created by Genís Carreras, text by Chris Thomas.
 


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The Green Mirage


Review of Forbes On-line Magazine Article “Solar Energy Revolution: A Massive Opportunity”

By: Tom Tamarkin Founder FuelRFuture & President USCL Corp



Abstract:
This paper discusses a recently published business magazine article projecting massive growth in the solar industry over the next 20 years. We have analyzed the business, scientific, and engineering backgrounds of two well-known gentlemen quoted in the article and searched for business interests that would benefit from such growth either by way of early investment and subsidy capital or long term net revenue. We have analyzed the utility industry’s need to replace an existing 440 GW of fully operational and cost effective generating capacity in light of its projected retirement of plants due to age coupled with the potential increase in demand based on partial electrification of the transportation system. We conclude with the analysis of the feasibility of powering the U.S. electricity needs by a solar-only generation infrastructure based on system components and the feasibility of extremely large volume manufacturing, capital costs and the huge land areas required.

Key Concepts:

· 29.3 billion 1 square meter solar panels are required for 100% solar power in the U.S. based on current demand 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

· 29.3 billion 1square meter panels would cover 29,333 km2 which equals 7.2 million acres, or almost all of Maryland and Delaware.

· If 1 square meter PV panels were manufactured at the rate of 1 per second, it would take 929 years to manufacture 29.3 billion panels

· The cost of a solar only approach exceeds $15.27 trillion

· To meet all energy demands for transportation, industrial, and commercial-agriculture would require 176 billion solar panels and 5,574 years to produce

· Moore’s Law is not applicable to the production or deployment of solar panels

· Increases in “solar cell efficiency” have little impact on land area to produce utility scale power

· Unsubsidized Solar has applicability in rural areas and developing countries with low population density

· Google’s Green Energy Project RE<C was canceled; “Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach; Suggest “A disruptive fusion technology…”



more... http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/29/the-green-mirage/




Warning:
There's lots of math in this article. If you're an innumerate or a believer in perpetual motion/Santa Claus/The Tooth Fairy/unicorns— don't bother, it'll be a waste of time.



​
 
"He said my writing does not show him Africa. Keep in mind this American man has never visited any country in Africa. He said i was writing about Africans driving and listening to Sade in air-conditioned cars. He just couldn’t identify with such. He said it like i should apologize for ever portraying my people as some modern day normal Africans. It is as though if Africans are not killing each other or dying of a disease; then our stories are not valid. As a Nigerian, i have never witnessed war and i know what listening to Sade in an air-conditioned car while in crazy Lagos traffic feels like, yet an American who has never stepped foot in my continent tried explaining my country to me. He said, “i am sorry, this is just not believable….” and then as i tried to hold my anger, i understood the ‘burden’ of writing an African story.

The anger most African writers feel when others seem to know so damn much about our own motherland. The terrible idea that Africans are a certain way is disheartening. I remember how my friend in Lagos laughed as i told her about the American. She laughed loud at his foolishness and cursed him in Yoruba. You cannot tell me what an African city looks like, you cannot tell me what a Nigerian city looks like. You cannot tell me how to write about Africa only if it shows her people as helpless, only if it feeds into your stereotype. How can a foreigner tell us about our own land? They want to shake their head, read only about struggles and discuss it in their book clubs. The audacity of a foreigner to tell me how to write about my people."

— Ijeoma Umebinyuo

http://theijeoma.tumblr.com
 
Was looking for the Dunning-Kruger study and found this. Most of us only got the headline that not very bright people overestimate their intelligence. This article makes a case for why humility is smart.

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/lessons-from-dunning-kruger/

The Dunning-Kruger effect is not just about dumb people not realizing how dumb they are. It is about basic human psychology and cognitive biases. Dunning-Kruger applies to everyone.
The solution is critical thinking, applying a process of logic and empiricism, and humility – in other words, scientific skepticism.
In addition to the various aspects of critical thinking, self-assessment is a skill we can strive to specifically develop. But a good rule of thumb is to err on the side of humility. If you assume you know relatively less than you think you do, and that there is more knowledge than of what you are aware, you will usually be correct.
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Early study found tumor reduction in several forms of the disease...

By Brenda Goodman

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, May 16 (HealthDay News) --

An experimental drug that taps the power of the body's immune system to fight cancer is shrinking tumors in patients for whom other treatments have failed, an early study shows.

The drug binds to a protein called PD-L1 that sits on the surface of cancer cells and makes them invisible to the immune system, almost like a cloaking device.


"That [the protein] allows the tumor cell to grow unchecked and cause harm to the patient," said study author Dr. Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at Yale University.

But with the protein blocked, the immune system can see and destroy cancer cells.

Of 140 patients in the pilot safety study, 29 (or 21 percent) initially saw significant tumor shrinkage after at least three months on the medication. Researchers say 26 patients have continued to respond over time, including some who have been on the drug for more than a year. One patient saw tumors disappear completely.

The drug also seems to work on a wide range of cancers, including some of the toughest to treat, including non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma skin cancer, colorectal cancer, kidney cancer and stomach cancer.

"This has all the characteristics of a really amazing drug," said Herbst, who has been testing new cancer medications for two decades. "I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen response rates like this."

The study was funded by Genentech/Roche, the company that is developing the drug. The results were presented at a Wednesday news conference organized by the American Society of Clinical Oncology in advance of its annual meeting, which starts May 31 in Chicago.

Study results presented at medical meetings are considered preliminary because they have not been subjected to the rigorous scrutiny required for publication in a medical journal.

At least four other companies -- Merck, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, MedImmune and Amplimmune -- also are racing to develop drugs that target PD-L1 or the molecule that binds to it (PD-1).


Full story here: http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20130516/new-drug-may-help-immune-system-fight-cancer
 
MEIN KAMPF by Adolf Hitler

POLITICAL PREFACE by Walter Lippman.

Lippman was a Jew. To my surprise Lippman and Hitler shared many of the same views about government effectiveness.

More interesting, Lippman was the author of the harsh terms Germany got at the end of World War I.
 
MEIN KAMPF by Adolf Hitler

Its a long read.

I anticipated a psychotic rant, and its about as sober and philosophical and lucid as you could want. But I'm not to the Jew part yet. Where I am he's dissecting Social Democrats, trade unions, and Marxists. He rationally explains why all of them suck. He was analytical to a fault. That is, he experienced life, thought about his experiences, then researched his observations. His philosophy of violence is a good example.

Violence works. Violence gets quick results because people are too impaired to do the math that leads to cooperation and rational results. And kind, humane guidance invites violence from opponents. Nice guys get their asses kicked. So apply merciless violence against your opponents, to dampen their enthusiasm to hurt you first. His SA storm troopers were designed to roll over Marxist mobs. The SA were mob violence with a handle, on a leash. Hitler worked it all out years before he unleashed them. It be madness, but there was method to it.
 
MEIN KAMPF by Adolf Hitler

So I got to the Jewish part of the book. Hitler says he had no interactions with Jews before he went to Vienna as a teen, and didn't understand anti-Semitism for a long time. Says he became anti-Semitic because Jews were anti-German, says Jews seemed to dominate the press, academia, publishing, trade unions, and the Social Democrats, and used these forums to disparage Germans. Particularly, Jews loved France and French whatever was always better than anything German.

After World War 1 France was significantly antagonistic to Germany, and the cause of Hitler going to prison for protesting French political and military actions in Germany. Its for real France violated the Versailles Treaty with its bald efforts to dominate the Rhineland and Bavaria. Its for real Hitler wanted to oust the Bavarian state government for its efforts to secede from Germany and become French.

In another book, about the American ambassador to Germany 1933-1938, Roosevelt advised the ambassador to counsel German Jews to tone down their cultural/social dominance. It wasn't helping.

I never understood why Hitler had a hard-on for Jews. Now a picture is starting to form, Jews loved France and Russia, and Hitler was a fanatic German nationalist. John Toland says Hitler never bothered any Jew who won an Iron Cross fighting in World War 1.
 
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What It Was Like Being A White Girl with Dreadlocks

In navigating through a predominantly white, feminist punk subculture, I never gave a second thought to whether wearing my hair in dreadlocks was offensive — at least to any one other than to The Patriarchy.

Having dreadlocks was part of what allowed me to stop obsessing over my appearance.

As long as I had them, the pressure – well for me as a cis gender white woman – to achieve mainstream, heteronormative beauty standards was off the table.

I suppose I felt empowered by this form of rebellious self-exclusion (the alternative being forced exclusion because I simply failed at womanhood).

While I did run into the occasional asshole on the street who called me a “filthy dyke,” my whiteness led people to read me as “quirky” and “alternative”.

I wasn’t followed around by security guards every time I went into a store. I wasn’t hassled by the cops for hanging out with my friends on street corners. I wasn’t hauled off to jail on the presumption that I was a gang member just because of my nonconventional appearance.

To further my point, being a white grrrl with dreadlocks, as well as someone who wore clothing scrappily held together by safety pins, dental floss and band patches, I was still considered employable and trustworthy.

Without any regard to personal qualifications, even with an incarceration record and no college education, I was often given responsibilities that put me in positions of authority over my co-workers of color.

Despite my rebellious appearance, I enjoyed a level of tolerance from authority figures and society at large that can only be attributed to my whiteness.

Everything changed when I stopped traveling, started investing in local activist projects, and began building a broader, more multiracial community.

For the first time, my peers had lots of questions and critiques about my choice to wear dreadlocks.

The responses other activists had to my hair ranged from mild irritation to downright anger.

People were constantly making comments under their breath when they passed me about “cultural appropriation” – I had no idea what that meant.

Some friends eventually suggested some readings and resources that would help me understand.

I read them and learned more about the history and symbolism of dreadlocks in the US in context to black folk’s resistance movements against white supremacy. I learned that black folks in the US with dreadlocks are not seen as “quirky” or “alternative,” but as “dangerous” and “militant”.

I learned to identify the ways that white colonist mentalities show up in our contemporary, everyday lives.

I realized that I was participating in the shitty reality that, for centuries, white people have felt entitled to taking pretty much anything their hearts desire – entire continents, human bodies, land resources, and, yes, whatever cultural trappings of the communities they colonized that were thought to be intriguing at the time.

Read: This White Feminist Loved Her Dreadlocks – Here’s Why She Cut Them Off
 
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In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.
[...]
We have been studying this development for a while now, with rising alarm. (Greg Lukianoff is a constitutional lawyer and the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends free speech and academic freedom on campus, and has advocated for students and faculty involved in many of the incidents this article describes; Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who studies the American culture wars. The stories of how we each came to this subject can be read here.) The dangers that these trends pose to scholarship and to the quality of American universities are significant; we could write a whole essay detailing them. But in this essay we focus on a different question: What are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help? What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors?

There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think. The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates. Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding.

But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.​
- read the full article The Coddling of the American Mind (from The Atlantic)​
 
Laurel said:
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/07/WEL_Haidt_PC_Books_FNLcrop/c939be5b4.jpg

In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.
[...]
We have been studying this development for a while now, with rising alarm. (Greg Lukianoff is a constitutional lawyer and the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends free speech and academic freedom on campus, and has advocated for students and faculty involved in many of the incidents this article describes; Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who studies the American culture wars. The stories of how we each came to this subject can be read here.) The dangers that these trends pose to scholarship and to the quality of American universities are significant; we could write a whole essay detailing them. But in this essay we focus on a different question: What are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help? What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors?
There’s a saying common in education circles: Don’t teach students what to think; teach them how to think. The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates. Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding.

But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.​
- read the full article The Coddling of the American Mind (from The Atlantic)​
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Yesterday I read a therapy article that faults kinder, gentler life for the epidemic of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Younger people are too tender and fragile for real life. Common stressors and military stressors overwhelm them.

One of my Vietnam special memories is of a sweet guy from New Jersey who went apeshit upset when he got a small piece of shrapnel in his armpit. The guy comforting Sid was a military cop who looked like a package of hamburger from his wounds. The Hamburglar put his arm around Sid and said, ITS GONNA BE OKAY LITTLE BUDDY, JUST HANG ON.

Now, shrapnel hurts. Its red hot and like a razor blade but mostly uncomfortable and painful rather than fatal. I once crawled thru 45 mortar explosions without a scratch tho it was an awful trial for nerves and courage. We got some exposure to it in basic training. I kept low and hated It.
 
Laurel said:


In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health. ​
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Sorry, not stalking you, Laurel, but you posted several interesting things today.
On a similar line, -although my post is slightly more flaming I am talking about the commodification of education- :
I like this guy -Henry Giroux-. I don't know about the situation in the US, but his pov resonates with some of my own experiences:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/it...the-imagination-a-critical-pedagogy-manifesto


"Interviewer:
There is considerable criticism, which we share, of technocratic teacher development that fails to recognize the individual processes for each student and situation.
HG: The role of democratic education has been devalued in favor of a pedagogy of commodification and repression.

Like the dead space of the American mall, the school systems promoted by the un-reformers offer the empty ideological seduction of consumerism as the ultimate form of citizenship and learning.
Trust, imagination, creativity, and a respect for critical teaching and learning are thrown to the wind in the pursuit of profits and the proliferation of rigid, death-dealing accountability schemes.

Market-driven educational reforms, with their obsession with standardization, high-stakes testing, and punitive policies, also mimic a culture of cruelty that neoliberal policies produce in the wider society. They exhibit contempt for teachers and distrust of parents, repress creative teaching, destroy challenging and imaginative programs of study and treat students as mere inputs on an assembly line.

At stake here is the creation of a human being that views him or herself as a commodity, shopper, autonomous, and largely free from any social obligations."​
 
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Naaah. We created a world where every gal and nigger gets a tee ball trophy for showing up.
 
JAMESBJOHNSON said:
Yesterday I read a therapy article that faults kinder, gentler life for the epidemic of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Younger people are too tender and fragile for real life. Common stressors and military stressors overwhelm them.
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you are right - that being 'mollycoddled' sets you up for failure
but occasionally it's the reverse : strict parenthood, being raised guilt-prone. Aka that if something goes wrong it's your fault, cause you're a peace of shit and not the other way around, which is often the case
 
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If you follow any funny people on any social media platform, odds are you’ve seen at least a few instances where someone has freaked out over one of their jokes being stolen. Almost every time this happens you’ll see a few responses from random people telling them to calm down or stop making such a big deal out of it. But is their outrage justified?
[...]
It’s interesting that if we were talking about a song, film, speech, or news report it would be obvious why plagiarism is a big deal, but in writing jokes the response is usually met with eye rolls. That’s mainly because there’s a big gray area as to what’s considered stealing. When thousands of people are throwing out a constant stream of jokes, there’s going to be some similarities and overlap. It’s inevitable. Let’s be clear: This isn’t about coincidences or parallel thinking. This is the popular, new trend of taking someone else’s joke, removing their name, and claiming it as your own.
[...]
Some will look at that and say, “Well that’s what happens when you post a joke or anything else online.” And my response? Exactly. That’s why something needs to be done about it. No issues ever get resolved by realizing there’s a problem, shrugging your shoulders, and walking away.

There are always going to be people trying to make money by replacing talent with exploits, but that doesn’t mean we should tolerate it.​
 
I was happy to read this. Someday maybe I'll learn the bolded......

http://notable.ca/big-surprise-harvard-study-shows-that-sarcasm-is-actually-good-for-you/

People who don’t like sarcasm are the best; such confident, agreeable, quick-witted folk. More impressively, their negative conclusions regarding sarcasm are often founded upon strong analytic frameworks like raw emotion and insecurity, rather than notoriously unreliable approaches like rational observation and the scientific method.

See what I did there?

According to new research from Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School and INSEAD (“The Business School for the World”), that first paragraph just made you more creative.

You’re welcome.

Data from a recent study entitled, The Highest Form of Intelligence: Sarcasm Increases Creativity for Both Expressers and Recipients, suggests that the delivery and deciphering of sarcasm offers psychological benefits that have been largely underappreciated and long overlooked.



Francesca Gino, the study author from Harvard, told the Harvard Gazette in an email, “To create or decode sarcasm, both the expressers and recipients of sarcasm need to overcome the contradiction (i.e., psychological distance) between the literal and actual meanings of the sarcastic expressions. This is a process that activates and is facilitated by abstraction, which in turn promotes creative thinking.”

In the study, participants were randomly rotated through simulated conversation tasks that had one of three conditions: neutral (control), sincere, and sarcastic. After each conversation, participants were asked to complete unrelated “creativity” tasks. Those addressing the creativity tasks after sarcastic conditions consistently outperformed those attempting the tasks after sincere or control conditions.

“This suggests that sarcasm has the potential to catalyze creativity in everyone,” Columbia’s Galinsky told the Gazette.



The study did show some predictable negative impacts of sarcasm. Namely its propensity to instigate conflict between people with limited rapport. But once a simple baseline of trust is introduced between parties, sarcasm promoted significant creative and abstract thinking without elevating conflict levels.

“We hope our research will inspire organizations and communication coaches to take a renewed look at sarcasm,” said Gino. “…by doing so, both the individuals involved in sarcastic conversations…would benefit creatively.”

So next time someone makes a derogatory comment about sarcasm, look them straight in the eye while you nod, gently pat them on the head and say, “You’re so right.” Then hand them this article. They will graciously acknowledge defeat and be in your creative debt for eternity.

Happy sarcasting.
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