I remember my amazement as a kid when I was told about the presumed mechanic of advertising. The idea behind, as explained to a children, was that creating an association between this or that admired person, and a certain product, would make us go to acquire such product in a rush.
I also remember that my immediate, pure impression as a child, was that such a reasoning was, to say the least, defective; (more…)
It happened the other day. I was having the habitual fast-paced walk that is currently my sport of choice (remind me to recover my skates one of these days), when my way got obstructed by a family group. (more…)
If you’re as lucky as me, you’ll have, or you’ll have had this fantastic relative (grandpa, an aunt or uncle maybe) who takes care of you in an almost frenzied manner. A sort of die-hard fan of yours obsessed with (more…)
Not very uncommon: there was this silly commercial I used to ran into every time I watched TV, a commercial that I particularly hated. I thought it was one of the silliest commercials of the decade, which is a lot to say, and every time I recognized it, I had this “oh no, here it comes again” sensation, knowing that I was going to waste the next twenty seconds of my life with an idiotic story that made me cringe. (more…)
In terms of energy consumption, pedantry is an outrage. It could be defined as an inflammation of language in which a lot of resources are invested in saying quite little, sometimes even nothing. (more…)
It is always nice when a science guru ratifies something you had been doing merely by instinct. In “Emotional Intelligence” (chapter 14), Daniel Goleman talks about Jerome Kagan’s research on the effects of overprotective mothers on their children. In short, Kagan’s conclusion is that those mothers of very reactive children who try to protect them in excess (more…)
