psychology dector

My friend Jean Sendy [1910-1978] said that society’s most murderous criminals were in fact interesting specimens who had harmed no more than the victims they happened to assassinate, while fascinating most observers. So, instead of being condemned to death, such criminals should be treated with respect. Sendy suggested that bicycle thieves, on the other hand, annoy so many citizens constantly that they deserve to be shot at dawn. The attempted assassination of Arthur Rimbaud , 18, by his lover Paul Verlaine , 29, in Brussels in July 1873, has always fascinated enthusiasts of out-of-the-way crimes. Rimbaud had been upset by Verlaine’s intention of returning to his heterosexual marriage, and they got into a violent squabble. Verlaine fired two shots, one of which wounded the young poet in the wrist. Verlaine was arrested, and went to jail for 555 days. The arm of the crime was a commonplace six-bullet revolver of the Lefaucheux brand. Its current owner put the old weapon up for sale, e...

As is the case with many world religions, in Sikhism we find that patriarchy is deeply embedded in the traditions and texts of the faith, even as Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh tells us that Sikh Gurus “empathized” with women oppressed and in turn, “emphasized gender equality.”   This, in some ways, contradicts Geetanjali Singh Chanda and Staci Ford’s piece, “Sikh Masculinity, Religion, and Diaspora in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s English Lessons and Other Stories.”   Chanda and Ford state quite clearly that “The family, specifically the hetero-normative family, is at the heart of the performance, the pedagogy, and the continuity of specific notions of a religio-cultural masculinity.”   This leaves the Sikh male in a difficult place, especially here in America where the turban often subjects men to physical attack and even death in this post-9/11 landscape. Chanda and Ford describe ads featuring Sikh males prominently displayed in the bright lights of Main Street America:   Ti...

My friend M drives me into town regularly for shopping. Today I had a few extra tasks: ordering reading glasses and buying lamps and an electric kettle for the bathroom. Here’s the third item, which will enable me to make tea of an evening without having to go down to the kitchen. The splash-resistant bathroom lamps are particularly elegant. My future glasses, too, will be perfect for work at the computer, and I’ll keep my old ones as a backup. An unexpected high point of our excursion was a drive through a nearby village whose name evokes a world-famous local cheese. I said to M : “ I remember the time when the owner of that upper-level flat used to have the windows filled with an assortment of stuffed animals that could be seen by people down in the street. The beasts were of several kinds and the flat-owner changed them often, as if she wanted to impress passers-by. ” As usual, I didn’t have an opportunity of telling M anything whatsoever about local folk, because she seems to know ...

Chernobyl saw the inauguration today of a big sarcophagus that hides the notorious reactor destroyed in 1986. Designed and built by the French companies Bouygues and Vinci , the sarcophagus was mainly financed by European nations and the BERD : Banque européenne pour la reconstruction et le développement .

When specialized stores for art supplies sprang up in cities throughout the world, optimistic thinkers might have imagined that hordes of new Michelangelos would soon be appearing on suburban streets. But that was as silly as thinking that the existence of cheap typewriters would have given rise to many new Shakespeares. A few years ago, I imagined naively that the presence of powerful computers and rich Internet facilities would improve society. Over the last decade or so, these devices have become as popular as TV, and people had the impression that this technology was enabling them to become smarter and indeed happier. Like would-be novelists, they could write anything that interested them, and show it instantly to readers. Alas, they failed to realize that they still had nothing much to say. Today, I’m starting to have my doubts. I feel at times that more and more ordinary people will move away from alleged “tools of the mind” and simply become run-of-the-mill users of gadgets for ...

The following function evalCode() traces the global variables that are accessed while evaluating a piece of JavaScript code. // Simple solution const _glob = typeof global !== 'undefined' ? global : self; function evalCode(code) { const func = new Function ('proxy', `with (proxy) {${code}}`); // (A) const proxy = new Proxy(_glob, { get(target, propKey, receiver) { console.log(`GET ${String(propKey)}`); // (B) return Reflect.get(target, propKey, receiver); }, set(target, propKey, value, receiver) { // (C) console.log(`SET ${String(propKey)}=${value}`); return Reflect.set(target, propKey, value, receiver); }, }); return func(proxy); } The way this works is as follows: The with statement wrapped around the code (line A) means that every variable access that “leaves” the scope of the code becomes a ...

A few days ago, the former Ecology candidate Jill Stein claimed that votes should be recounted in three states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. To obtain the necessary funds, she awaits the outcome of a national subscription appeal. Far away, in the UK, former PMs Tony Blair and John Major are looking into the possibility of a second Brexit referendum, which is still vaguely thinkable. Are such projects a mere expression of wishful thinking ? Or is the possibility of life after democratic death a real possibility?

 [photo d’Alberto Korda] [photo Prensa Latina / Reuters]

If I understand correctly the title, there are three good reasons why you should binge-watch the Netflix series of the Gilmore Girls. I hope you understand what I’ve just said. Now, I’ll make an effort to teach you the pronunciation of the French verb “ binge watcher ”. • binge is pronounced like barn-jeuh • watcher is pronounced like wot-chay The only information you’ll have to discover for yourselves is the actual meaning of this exotic French verb. Serious examination of the English slang “binge” The word “binge” (rhyming with “hinge”) probably comes from a 19th-century Lincolnshire dialect term meaning “to soak”. Example: Water that splashed onto the table was binged by means of a sponge. A heavy drinker might be thought of as soaking up alcohol. So, she/he might be described as a binge drinker. More recently, instead of being applied to alcohol consumption, the slang term “binge” has been applied to watching videos of a soap-opera variety. In other words, the verb “binge” now de...

Skip the ad, then click on the YouTube icon Extraordinary video. The Patrol of France and the three Jetmen— Yves Rossy , Vincent Reffet and Fred Fugen –fly together in an amazing aerial choreography.

Today, in the USA, is known as Black Friday . But I see that the Big Red Fellow is still alive and kicking. The dumb bastard is fitter than I'd imagined. But his time in office won't necessarily last long. I hope he's enjoying his existence, be it short or long. I wish him all that jumps into the minds of good American Christians: health, wealth and prosperity. As for the rest, I have nothing to say.

Geneviève Delaisi de Parseval , a French psychanalyst, has written an amusing article ( here ) on the curious role of distinctive colors in certain political contexts. For example, the abominable American Donald Trump seems to be linked to red, whereas our gentle Frenchman François Fillon is often accompanied by blue. Are such associations (if indeed they are true) purely arbitrary? Or do they convey some kind of hidden meaning?

The verb “to bear” involves a minimum of understanding and acceptance. If a happening that concerns us is so removed from our normal existence that we cannot understand it, let along accept it, then it might be said that are faced with an absurd challenge: that of bearing the unbearabl e. In such circumstances, something has to break… often in the mind of the victim. The common cause of this nasty situation is death. Animals—human animals in particular—have never understood death, and never will... particularly when it hits loved ones: a husband, a wife, a close and intimate friend, parents or, above all, innocent children. In such cases, the mind “explodes”, as it were. In former times, individuals who were suffering from an unbearable happening might have sought comfort in religion or traditional social circles. Even the danse macabre was, in a way, a “solution” for bearing the unbearable. But remedies of that kind have disappeared to a large extent. These days, strangely enough, th...

I’m always thrilled whenever I rediscover by chance a typical Richard Dawkins gem like this one. A nice old-fashioned answer is that God, knowing that He had cunningly placed the most tasty leaves at the top of tall trees, designed giraffes with extra long necks so that they would have no trouble in reaching this good food. A less religious answer is that, over a certain period of time, Nature caused the necks of giraffes to grow longer and longer, because Nature was smart enough to realize that hungry giraffes would be needing bigger necks to attain leaves that were moving higher and higher. Well, that god-free answer is closer to the truth, but we still need to improve the wording. We merely have to introduce a pair of freak events. So, let’s go. At a certain point in time, most giraffes had medium-sized necks, whereas a minority of freaky giraffes were born with slightly longer necks. At about the same time, during a few freak seasons, leaves happened to grow so high that all norma...

No matter what science says, modern societies (including France and England) will always include a sufficient number of uneducated folk, fools and princes in order to believe that homeopathy is credible. And they keep this industry going by spending much money on quackery. I was thrilled to learn this morning that efforts to fight homeopathy in the UK, headed by the Richard Dawkins Foundation [ here ] and the Center for Inquiry [ here ], appear to be bearing fruit.

Iraqi soldiers hold a Daesh flag captured in Mosul Islamic jihadists in Mosul—estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000—are now totally encircled by Iraqi forces, who cut the last Daesh link with Syria. Iraqi troops now control 40% of the eastern sector of the city of Mosul. The end of Daesh at Mosul is near.

If I drop in periodically on The Daily Examiner in Grafton, it's merely on the off chance of coming across an item that's less boring than usual. Like today. The driver of a giant truck, carrying a load of authentic shit, hit the brakes... and his cargo, as they say in the classics, promptly "hit the fan". This story made me split my sides laughing. Click to enlarge slightly Marvelous photo. I have the impression that the fellow on the left is praying for divine help. Police asked the driver why it hadn't occurred to him that it might be a good idea to cover up his load with a batch. I can imagine his likely reaction: " A truck driver never thinks of taking precautions on such a short trip. And then suddenly, shit happens. " Here's another photo, with different colors: Final thought. [Australian readers will say, once again, that I'm knocking my native land... and that's perfectly true, because it's really a most knockable country.] I...

I've always looked upon Nigel Farage as an English amusement. He reminds me of rows of fair-ground clowns that amused me greatly as a child in Australia. The heads swivelled constantly to the left and the right, and the trick consisted of guessing the exact moment to drop your ping-pong ball down the clown's throat, so that it ended up falling into the right spot and winning something. Today, I don't think the prize would justify my efforts. On the other hand, the ping-pong ball might shut up Farage.

In a time of fear and uncertainty, one more area of concern is the president-elect’s cabinet shortlist .   According to several news organizations, Trump is using a method that has worked for him in the past:   The Apprentice reality show way to pick “winners” to help him “Make America great again,” and “win so much that Americans will be tired of winning,” or “you’re fired!” There are cameras stationed outside the lobby elevators at Trump Tower to catch each candidate and newly designated official sycophants like Mitt Romney as they take the magic elevator to the Trumpian version of Oz (only I think it is more the horrific Oz of the HBO prison drama than the yellow brick road Oz with Dorothy and Toto).   Is there anything more pathetic than watching spineless Romney come to Trump to kiss his ring?   Where’s the fire, Mitt?   Where’s the passion?   When you kissed the president-elect’s hand, did it still taste of “fake” and “phony” in your now trumped-ove...

It's the first time I ever recall a total day at Gamone without electricity. The power went off this morning at 8 o'clock, and it didn't come back on until about 18h30. The outage was caused by strong winds in the valley, which are still blowing. Today, it's really weird to experience a whole day without electricity. It's like being thrown back into the Dark Ages . Even a simple operation such as opening the fridge to grab something to eat has to be calculated carefully, to avoid the entry of heat. An hour ago, I even took my dog Fitzroy out into the dark, so that he would enter his kennel for the night. Otherwise, I wasn't sure there would be enough light, later on, to find the path to the kennel. Truly, in rural France, we have become innocent Children of Light .