The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843
Added by: Maria | Karma: 3098.81 | Periodicals, Science literature | 2 October 2008
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Our brains use shortcuts for social identification, swiftly categorizing others—and ourselves—to avoid the energy-intensive processing of conscious thought. Often we do not even realize how extensively subconscious stereotypes shape our reactions, as two feature articles in this issue reveal. The first, “The Social Psychology of Success,” by S. Alexander Haslam, Jessica Salvatore, Thomas Kessler and Stephen D. Reicher, looks at behavioral aspects. It explains how people’s performance is shaped by awareness of stereotypes. The second article, “Buried Prejudice,” by Siri Carpenter, digs into the neuroscience of implicit bias and how it affects cognition. Even basic visual preferences are skewed toward in-groups; studies show that we remember faces better if they match our own racial group.
Enter the world of Zhongguo, where Dragons and Phoenixes live among Cats, Rats, Dogs, and dozens of other races … Where the Celestial Bureaucracy governs not only the Noble Houses of Earth, but also the Heaven Court and even the weather itself … Where evil lurks in forgotten places, and ambition stirs in the hearts of the greedy and the wrathful … Where masters of the mystic martial arts make impossible feats look effortless … Where wizards conjure forth balls of fire, bolts of lightning, thunderstorms, or even changes to fate itself … Where adventure can be found from the uncharted wilderness, to the Forbidden City of Majing, and all places in between.
Jadeclaw: Anthropomorphic Fantasy Role-Playing is a complete game in one volume. Create the character you want to play from the many Races and Careers of Zhongguo, or invent your own. Immerse yourself in martial-arts battles and spell-casting with a game system that is simple to learn yet endless in possibility. Experience the wonder of a fantastic kingdom where the destiny of a thousand years can be decided in an instant.
Jadeclaw is another bold direction in fantasy role-playing games.
Based on mythical China during time of the Warring States period.
IRONCLAW is a bold new direction in fantasy role-playing games, designed with both the novice and the experienced gamer in mind ... simple enough that one can start playing in only 15 minutes, yet richly developed, clearly presented, and lavishly illustrated. With two dozen races ... over 60 careers than can be mixed and matched without restrictions ... plus rules for making your own races and careers ... plus over four different kinds of magic with more than 150 spells; plus unique powers and abilities, from the primal to the technological. The role you assume is limited only by your imagination.
Added by: Maria | Karma: 3098.81 | Periodicals | 30 September 2008
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Macbeth extolled “sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,” in Shakespeare’s great tragic play of the same name. Soothing rest is not all that shut-eye provides, however. As sleep and cognition researchers Robert Stickgold and Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen explain in their feature article in this issue, the brain is very busy during a night’s slumber. It is processing and sorting all the things we learned during the day, making valuable memories more resilient and tossing away irrelevant details. It finds hidden relations among our recollections and works to solve problems that arose during our waking hours. Turn to page 22 for our cover story, “Quiet! Sleeping Brain at Work.”
There is nothing like a good yarn to pluck our emotional strings, as Jeremy Hsu writes in “The Secrets of Storytelling,” beginning on page 46. Stories are one of humanity’s universals—they appear in all cultures—and certain themes arise repeatedly in tales around the world. Why do these narratives have such power over our feelings? The study of stories reveals clues about our evolutionary history and the roots of emotion and empathy. Indeed, as you will learn from Hsu’s article, the stories we tell explain much about ourselves.
