Hee hee true that, no one said they had to be true. They're Biscuit Crumbs, some you might gobble and some you just flick off your shirt onto the floor.
In one well-known psychological experiment, subjects were asked to answer a questionnaire on life satisfaction, but only after they had performed the apparently irrelevant task of photocopying a sheet of paper for the experimenter. For a randomly chosen half of the subjects, a dime had been left for them to find on the copy machine. As two economists summarize the results: "Reported satisfaction with life was raised substantially by the discovery of the coin on the copy machine -- clearly not an income effect."
Well, it's in my Apple Dictonary on my (last year's model) notebook 'puter:
gullible |ˈgələbəl| adjective easily persuaded to believe something; credulous : an attempt to persuade a gullible public to spend their money. DERIVATIVES gullibility |ˌgələˈbilitē| noun gullibly |-blē| adverb ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from gull 2 + -ible . THE RIGHT WORD Some people will believe anything. Those who are truly gullible are the easiest to deceive, which is why they so often make fools of themselves. Those who are merely credulous might be a little too quick to believe something, but they usually aren't stupid enough to act on it. Trusting suggests the same willingness to believe (: a trusting child), but it isn't necessarily a bad way to be (: a person so trusting he completely disarmed his enemies). No one likes to be called naive because it implies a lack of street smarts (: she's so naive she'd accept a ride from a stranger), but when applied to things other than people, it can describe a simplicity and absence of artificiality that is quite charming (: the naive style in which nineteenth-century American portraits were often painted). Most people would rather be thought of as ingenuous, meaning straightforward and sincere (: an ingenuous confession of the truth), because it implies the simplicity of a child without the negative overtones. Callow, however, comes down a little more heavily on the side of immaturity and almost always goes hand-in-hand with youth. Whether young or old, someone who is unsophisticated lacks experience in worldly and cultural matters.
Russian police say hypnotism is not an uncommon criminal technique. By Kevin O'Flynn — Special to GlobalPost Published: December 14, 2009 06:56 ETMOSCOW, Russia — Bank robbers have threatened tellers with knives, shot their way into banks and tunnelled up into vaults. But one woman in southern Russia chose a more peaceful method: Police say Galina Korzhova hypnotised a bank teller into handing over tens of thousands of dollars in what is believed to be just one in a series of daring, if non-violent, bank robberies.
Galina Korzhova was arrested, said Anton Kornoukhov, a spokesman for police in the southern city of Volgograd, on suspicion of hypnotising a bank teller in the nearby town of Volzhky into giving her more than $80,000. She is suspected of having robbed up to 30 additional banks in what Russian media have called a "grand tour" around the country.
More interesting international non-tabloid stories at http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/russia/091212/russia-bank-robber-hypnotize
Rage against the ever vicious downward spiral. Time to get back to basics. [url=http://zmag.org/zmi/readlabor.htm]Worker Control of Industry![/url]
The enterprising lady bank robber was probably using a form of what's referred to in Russia as -- http://www.speedlearning.org/columnboy. ... is+is+real! -- "Gypsy Hypnosis". (sorry--the link will not embed for some reason)
Paying Attention
If we hear a voice addressing us that articulates words ‘too-fast’ or ‘too-slow’ - it changes how our brain processes language.
A metaphor is ‘highway-hypnosis’ which changes our ability to think and react with conscious-behaviors - to ‘no-thinking’ - ‘auto-pilot’. It occurs because visual-sameness causes mental-boredom, and our decision-making processes shut-down.
Our brain has a standard language processing-speed at either the speed-of-speech or the speed-of-sight (reading). Listening to accelerated or ‘s-l-o-w-e-d’ speech patterns creates mental ‘information-overload,’ which results in two-effects:
a) reduced vigilance and decision-making ability b) limited attention-span on the present-transaction
The result is a consciousness-hiatus, a mental-time-out, because our anterior cingulate cortex becomes inhibited. Our minds become vulnerable to the requests of others that ordinarily would be instantly rejected. We cannot decode the incoming-language at the perisylvian area of the brain, and are inhibited from rejecting outrageous requests - such as turning all our ‘wealth’ over to a stranger!
It's also one of performer/magician Derren Brown's favorite shcticks. No time today to search for a better link, but I'm sure there is one. The anterior cingulate cortex is a fascinating part of the brain and it particularly interests me because of the ways that exploiting it have probably been used in mind control programs, both government-sponsored and other.
When Justice John Paul Stevens retires this summer, the eight remaining members of the Supreme Court — the top arbiter of U.S. law and a check and balance on the White House and Congress — will be comprised entirely of legal minds trained at two law schools, Harvard and Yale.
Iceland's Laki volcano erupted in 1783, freeing gases that turned into smog. The smog floated across the Jet Stream, changing weather patterns. Many died from gas poisoning in the British Isles. Crop production fell in western Europe. Famine spread. Some even linked the eruption, which helped fuel famine, to the French Revolution. Painters in the 18th century illustrated fiery sunsets in their works.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.-- Jonathan Swift
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift