I love this weblog, You Are Not So Smart, which explodes our assumptions about why we do the things we do. Here, it is the notion that we behave toward people according to how we feel about them. In reality, it is often the other way around; our feelings toward others will be post facto justifications for how we see ourselves acting toward them. This is because feeling justified, having a plausible explanation for our actions, is so essential. So if you can get someone who dislikes you to do a favor for you, their attitude toward you will change. And, perhaps more important, if you would like to cultivate an attitude of lovingkindness and dissipate your own bitter feelings toward someone, do a favor for them.

“We talked to a group of nutritionists and asked them to share the food myths they find most irritating and explain why people cling to them. Here’s what they said.” (via Lifehacker).

“If the result is true…, it does change everything. In particular, the likely explanation is that the neutrinos are taking a short-cut through one of the extra dimensions which string theory postulates are hidden among the familiar four of length, breadth, height and time. Measured along this five-dimensional route, Einstein might still be right. (It would not so much be that he made a mistake as that he did not know the whole story.) Indeed, moving beyond four dimensions in this way would also allow physicists to try to integrate Einstein’s work with quantum theory, the other great breakthrough of 20th-century physics, but one which simply refuses to overlap with relativity. A unified theory of everything, including perhaps as many as 11 dimensions, would then beckon.” (via The Economist).