What Caught My Eye Today

2008 Presidential Election - Here are some international reactions to Barack Obama's win in last week's presidential election. You may notice a trend.

• Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung: "The election of Barack Obama was an act of liberation, indeed, of cleansing for America."
• Italy's La Repubblica: "This is not just a breakthrough on race, it is also the triumph of the intellectual."
• Austria's Die Presse: "He is a man who can make us like the U.S. once again."
• Spain's El Pias: "It's a good thing Obama is so exceptional. Bush has left an enormous legacy of bitterness, and unenviable challenges await the next president."
• France's Liberation: "Let the world take this moment to rejoice the promise of hope. For the first time in a long time, the New World deserves its name."

Leave it to the France to lay it on so thick. So I guess all that needs to happen now is for the Pope to declare sainthood for Obama.

Infidelity - Depending on your perspective, I suppose this next item could be perceived as either good news or bad news. For decades, surveys of sexual behavior found that married men are far more likely to cheat than married women. My personal belief is that married men are far more likely to get caught cheating. New research suggests that the "adultery gap" is narrowing. Everyone is cheating more than they used to. Studies should that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men has risen from 20% to 28% over the past two decades, and for women from 5% to 15%. Several factors have been suggested to explain this dramatic increase among women including working longer hours, travel for business, the Internet and cell phones. However, researchers are wondering if the increase is explained simply by increased candor in responding to sex surveys. Men want to thin women don't cheat, and women want men to think they don't cheat. That way everyone is happy; delusional, but happy nonetheless. Now back to that perspective angle. The bad news (mostly for women) is that men are still pigs and now it appears that we're dragging women down with us. The good news (mostly for men) is that us male pigs now have female pigs to keep us company.

Adolescence - To be honest, I had to read this item twice. I thought the dude who wrote it was kidding. First, the editorial, then I'll let you know who the author is. It's time to declare the end of adolescence. Seriously? Prolonging the transition from childhood to adulthood helps no one, least of all our young people. My teenage years were no picnic, but I'm not sure I'd get rid of them altogether. There were a few good memories. Adolescence was always an artificial construct. It was invented in the 19th century to enable middle-class families to keep their children out of sweatshops. Sounds like a pretty good reason to me. Before then, there was virtually universal acceptance that puberty marked the transition from childhood to young adulthood. to me that is a physical distinction, not necessarily a mental one. We must return to that direct transition from play to work, by forging tight links between learning and financial reward. We can pay teenagers to study and get good grades. In doing so, young people with learn responsibility and the value of hard work. Seems to me that this guy had a pretty lousy experience being a teenager. Who hasn't? At any rate, who is the author of this manifesto? None other than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (appearing in Newsweek magazine).

Self-help Psychology - It's been awhile since I reporting on fascinating web sites out there. In this edition, we bring you an assortment of online psychology sites. Perhaps these can help explain why your crappy adolescence led you to cheat on your spouse.

• Youjustgetme.com - Rates your personality in categories such as outgoingness and empathy and lets you find out how others see you.
  My results suggest that I'm disciplined (anal retentive I believe is how they put it), open to creative thought but more comfortable with the plain and simple, somewhat neurotic, tend more toward cooperation than competitiveness and am fairly reserved (or introverted as these guys prefer to say). All things considered, they are not too far off the mark...bummer.
• Implicit.harvard.edu/implicit - Harvard's Project Implicit tries to show how unconscious biases can effect our decisions.
  This study definitely smacks of academia not to mention a need to have pretty good hand eye coordination. Bottom line for me--I have an automatic preference toward Cautious compared to Risky...yup.
• Sanityscore.com - Provides a simplet test that assess aspects of mental health, including your risk of depression, anxiety and other emotional disorders.
  Good news. I appear to be in generally good mental health...one less thing to worry about. Though oddly enough I exhibit some issues related to general coping, depression and self-esteem. Who doesn't?