BaR2D2 is a radio-controlled, mobile bar that features a motorized beer elevator, motorized ice/mixer drawer, six-bottle shot dispenser, and sound activated neon lighting. The robot is driveable so you can take the party on the road! It was created in my garage using standard hand/power tools and readily available parts and materials.
Psychologists have studied this sort of behavior since at least 1978, when Steven Berglas and Edward E. Jones used the phrase “self-handicapping” to describe students in a study who chose to take a drug that they were told would inhibit their performance on an exam (the drug was actually inert).
The urge goes well beyond a mere lowering of expectations, and it has more to do with protecting self-image than with psychological conflicts rooted in early development, in the Freudian sense. Recent research has helped clarify not just who is prone to self-handicapping but also its consequences — and its possible benefits.
Which local TV news anchors make the best team? Well, judging from a behind-the-scenes video clip that has popped up, it’s WGN’s Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, hands down. The two are shown going through an elaborate routine—complete with coordinated paper-shuffling, precision gestures and various grunts and giggles—that they perform during the first commercial break of their weekend newscasts. They are awesome.
Every year since 1927, the editors of Time have named a Person (or Machine or Planet) of the Year. The honor is bestowed upon “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill.”
...I was a participant — and victim — of the Madoff scam, and have a pretty good understanding of the factors that caused me to behave foolishly. So I shall use myself as a case study to illustrate how even a well-educated (I’m a college professor) and relatively intelligent person, and an expert on gullibility and financial scams to boot, could fall prey to a hustler such as Madoff.
The real mystery in the Madoff story is not how naïve individual investors such as myself would think the investment safe, but how the risks and warning signs could have been ignored by so many financially knowledgeable people, ranging from the adviser who sold me and my sister (and himself) on the investment, to the highly compensated executives who ran the various feeder funds that kept the Madoff ship afloat. The partial answer is that Madoff’s investment algorithm (along with other aspects of his organization) was a closely guarded secret difficult to penetrate, and partly (as in all cases of gullibility) that strong affective and self-deception processes were at work. In other words, they had too good a thing going, for themselves and their clients, to entertain the idea that it might all be about to crumble.
Fred Syversen realized that he missed the correct line. Instead of braking he decided to drop as well as possible. He knew that braking could lead to uncontrolled flying, which could actually kill him. Just before jumping he made a little turn in order to avoid crashing into the rocks on his left side. His position looks well controlled, although (for a moment) he was sure he was going to die.
It's very cold tonight, so we played with bubbles If you blow them upwards enough they have time to freeze on the way down.
