dots and loops

• The Psych Files Podcast | Episode 139: Blaming the Victim in Reverse – the Justice Motive
  Lately I've been interested in what some call the Just World Hypothesis, which is the idea that somehow reality is inherently Just. This is an idea that people have been struggling with since at least the time of the Book of Job. The eastern idea of Karma neatly handles the problem, as does the idea of an afterlife, with both a Heaven and Hell, and a Purgatory where one can do time to insure the scales of justice are properly balanced before moving on.

  Surely this deep need for justice is behind the cycles of revenge and retribution we see throughout history and in the world today.

• Windows 7 tip: (elevated) command prompt anywhere
  Why doesn't anybody bother to tell us these things?

• ndsuvirtualcell’s Channel – YouTube
  Really cool virtual biology videos. You can take a tour of the cell, or watch chemiosmosis, like a hydroelectric dam, forge new ATP molecules.
• Facebook With Care: Social Networking Site Can Hurt Self-Esteem | Depression, Achievement & Social Comparison | LiveScience
  Interesting article about the social psychological dimensions of Facebook. Not surprisingly, it's now a big contributor to status anxiety and low self-esteem as users judge their lives by their friends status updates. Also not surprisingly, these very status updates are often hand crafted for the purpose of impression management.

This morning on the way to work I listened to a Planet Money podcast about ex-drug dealer Freeway Rick Ross. The planet money team wanted to get his responses and opinions regarding the economics of drug dealing, to test how well they match up with economists predictions. All of this was very interesting, of course, but while listening to Freeway Rick describe the life and times of a L.A. crack dealer I suddenly realized that for Rick, dealing drugs put him in the highly desirable state called flow by positive psychologists. Rick, who spent a while in jail and is now out on parole, says there is nothing else he would rather do than be a drug dealer, and while I can’t help thinking this betrays a shortcoming of imagination, it is hardly surprising considering how much flow he achieved in his former job, where he was essentially CEO of a thriving business.

Anyway, I haven’t read much about flow but I imagine it’s an idea that is not typically called upon to illuminate the motivations and psychology of those striving for goals that don’t match up with societies.