The Psychology of Evil: The Stanford Prison Experiment to Abu Ghraib

in Current Affairs, Psychology, Video - Politics/Society | November 8th, 2007

Back in 1971, Philip Zim­bar­do, a Stan­ford psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, set up an exper­i­ment that quick­ly and now famous­ly went awry. Here, Zim­bar­do had under­grad­u­ates play the role of pris­on­ers and prison guards in a mock prison envi­ron­ment. Meant to last two weeks, the exper­i­ment was cut short after only six days when, as The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment web site puts it, the guards “became sadis­tic and [the] pris­on­ers became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” For Zim­bar­do, the way things played out says a lot about what hap­pens when good, aver­age peo­ple are put in bad sit­u­a­tions. And it speaks to how tor­ture sce­nar­ios, like those at Abu Ghraib, become pos­si­ble. (For more on the par­al­lels between the prison exper­i­ment and the tor­ture in Iraq, you may want to check out Zim­bar­do’s recent video-cap­tured talk at Google­plex.

Below, we’ve post­ed a video that offers a quick ver­sion, with orig­i­nal footage, of how the prison exper­i­ment went down. If you’re inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing what he calls the “Lucifer Effect,” the title of his new book (which, by the way, was just reviewed by Martha Nuss­baum in the Times Online), then it’s worth your time.

Deadhead Hunter and Dirty Hairy

in Comedy | November 7th, 2007

Catch the full col­lec­tion of ani­mat­ed New York­er car­toons here on YouTube and our per­son­al favorite here.

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How Radiohead’s Experiment Turned Out

in Music | November 7th, 2007

In mid-Octo­ber, Radio­head released its lat­est album, In Rain­bows, and began a fair­ly nov­el exper­i­ment. They cut the record labels out of the equa­tion and let fans down­load the album direct­ly from the Radio­head web site, for what­ev­er price they saw fit. A few weeks lat­er, some finan­cial fig­ures are com­ing out, giv­ing us a sense of how well the exper­i­ment went.

Accord­ing to a study by com­Score Inc., 62% of the esti­mat­ed 1.2 mil­lion vis­i­tors (in Octo­ber) to the Radio­head site down­loaded the album and paid noth­ing what­so­ev­er. The remain­ing 38% paid an aver­age of $6. Over­all, the band aver­aged $2.26 per down­load and net­ted about $2.7 mil­lion dol­lars in total, a num­ber that’s well below the ear­li­er esti­mates of $6-$10 mil­lion. In the end, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that the band gets to keep all the rev­enue (instead of shar­ing it with the record com­pa­nies), and appar­ent­ly the traf­fic to Radio­head­’s web site gen­er­at­ed hand­some incre­men­tal sales of high-priced dis­cbox­es. It’s esti­mat­ed that for every $1 spent on dig­i­tal down­loads, anoth­er $2 was spent on hard copies, which makes Radio­head­’s over­all take even high­er. What con­clu­sions to draw? One is that Radio­head fans did­n’t exact­ly deliv­er the goods and demon­strate the pow­er of this new direct dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el. It may have worked mod­er­ate­ly well for Radio­head. But will a less­er band take the risk? Not so like­ly. At least not now.

A quick PS: It looks like Radio­head is plan­ning to do its first web­cast in five years. Watch for more infor­ma­tion here.

Source: com­Score press release and blog

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America’s Endless Capacity to Reward Failure

in Current Affairs | November 7th, 2007

Please God give me the luck to enter the upper echelons of the American elite — the upper, upper crust where normal rules don’t apply, where illogic reigns, where failure doesn’t have consequences, only out-sized rewards. Please give me the luck to fail splendidly one day (even to bring a major company or a nation itself to near ruin) and yet get nothing less than the platinum parachute that a lucky few deserve:

• Stan O’Neal, CEO of Mer­ill Lynch, recent­ly led the bank to take a $7.9 bil­lion write-down because of bad deals in the sub-prime mar­ket, result­ing in a $2.3 bil­lion loss, the worst loss in 93 years for Mer­rill. As he began to feel the heat, O’Neal secret­ly start­ed look­ing to sell the bank to Wachovia, a deal that could have per­son­al­ly net­ted him an esti­mat­ed $250 mil­lion. Instead, the board of direc­tors oust­ed him last week and he got to walk with $161.5 mil­lion in secu­ri­ties and retire­ment ben­e­fits, the fifth-largest exit-pay pack­age for a U.S. exec­u­tive. It’s good to be the king.

• As the sub­prime mort­gage mar­ket melt­ed down this sum­mer, James Cayne, the chief exec­u­tive of Bear Stearns, was nowhere to be found. In this midst of the cri­sis, two of the bank’s hedge funds col­lapsed. But, accord­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal, Cayne was out of town for ten days and incom­mu­ni­ca­do. No cell­phone. No Black­ber­ry. Noth­ing. Where was he? Play­ing in a bridge tour­na­ment in Nashville (and it’s alleged by the Jour­nal that he has a pen­chant for smok­ing pot at such tour­na­ments). For­tu­nate­ly, his team placed in the top third of the com­pe­ti­tion, and he gets to keep his high­ly lucra­tive job. In the mean­time, Cayne let War­ren Spec­tor, the com­pa­ny’s Pres­i­dent, take the fall. And Bear just announced that it’s lay­ing off 2% of its work­force. It’s good to be the king.

• Don Rums­feld, the for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense, used the Iraq War as a prov­ing ground for his the­o­ries about how the US army should fight the mod­ern war and defend itself against the unknown and the unex­pect­ed. Rums­feld’s mantra was to keep the armies small, mobile and high-tech. And that’s what we did for four years in Iraq, despite mount­ing evi­dence that we had too few troops on the ground. Rums­feld, who could nev­er adjust his the­o­ries to the real­i­ties in Iraq (see this piece in the Armed Forces Jour­nal), even­tu­al­ly got forced out, leav­ing behind a mess that will con­sume the US for a decade or more. What’s the fall­out? Months lat­er, Rums­feld gets Stan­ford’s seal of approval. In Sep­tem­ber, Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion announced that he will join as a “dis­tin­guished vis­it­ing fel­low” where he will par­tic­i­pate on a task force of schol­ars and experts focus­ing on “issues per­tain­ing to ide­ol­o­gy and ter­ror” in a post 9–11 envi­ron­ment. It’s pre­cise­ly the same flawed vision that land­ed the US in a deep hole that the Stan­ford-affil­i­at­ed think tank is choos­ing to hon­or. Once again, it’s good to be the king.

Amen.

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The Nine Minute Sopranos

in Television | November 4th, 2007

The pop­u­lar inter­net video, The Sev­en Minute Sopra­nos, has now been updat­ed to include the last sea­son of the hit HBO series. This means that you can get all six sea­sons (or 86 episodes) sum­ma­rized in a speedy nine min­utes. Watch below.

(P.S. HBO has just pub­lished The Sopra­nos: The Com­plete Book. Fans will want to take a look.)

Contact Us. Suggest a Link.

in | November 3rd, 2007

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The Godfather Without Brando?: It Almost Happened

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | November 3rd, 2007

It’s hard to imag­ine The God­fa­ther, the icon­ic 1972 film, with­out Mar­lon Bran­do. But that’s almost how it turned out.

Dur­ing cast­ing, Para­mount exec­u­tives orig­i­nal­ly pushed for Lau­rence Olivi­er. But when he could­n’t take the film, and when the direc­tor, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, asked them to con­sid­er Bran­do, they ini­tial­ly respond­ed: “Mar­lon Bran­do will nev­er appear in this motion pic­ture.” Below, Cop­po­la and co-star James Caan explain how the execs were even­tu­al­ly cajoled into chang­ing their minds, and how film his­to­ry fell into place. As you watch this, also keep in mind that Para­mount orig­i­nal­ly asked two oth­er direc­tors to make The God­fa­ther before approach­ing Cop­po­la, and they lat­er want­ed Robert Red­ford or Ryan O’Neal to play Michael Cor­leone. But Cop­po­la, who threat­ened to quit pro­duc­tion, even­tu­al­ly got his way and put the rel­a­tive­ly unknown Al Paci­no into the film.

FYI: Best Week Ever has a good post on the Top 10 Actor / Direc­tor Tandems In Movie His­to­ry.

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Where to Get Online Music For Free

in Music | November 2nd, 2007

Head over to Wired and you’ll find a “How-To Wiki” that lists web sites where you can stream or down­load music online for free. As you’ll see, Wired is not shy about admit­ting what it’s try­ing to accom­plish here. The wiki page is called “Cheat the Music Indus­try: Nev­er Pay for Music.”

To access more online music, vis­it Life­hack­er’s guide to find­ing free music on the web, and peruse our col­lec­tion of free music pod­casts.

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Human Species May Split into Two: Life Imitates Art Again?

in Science | October 27th, 2007

Here’s a zinger to mull over: The BBC has post­ed an arti­cle about a the­o­ry advanced by Oliv­er Cur­ry, an “evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­rist” work­ing out of The Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, who sug­gests that human­i­ty may split into two sub-species about 100,000 years down the road. And what we’d be left with is “a genet­ic upper class” rul­ing over “a dim-wit­ted under­class.” This is a sce­nario, of course, that HG Wells laid out in his 1895 clas­sic, The Time Machine (lis­ten to free audio­book on iTunes here). And, if Cur­ry’s the­o­ry holds water, Welles may offer the most extreme exam­ple of sci­ence fic­tion antic­i­pat­ing the shape of the future. Does Cur­ry’s the­o­ry have any­thing to it? We haven’t the fog­gi­est. But does it make for strange­ly com­pelling yet dis­turb­ing read­ing? It sure does.

See our Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion as well as our col­lec­tion of Audio­book Pod­casts.

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Timely Talk About Fire

in Books, Current Affairs | October 26th, 2007

It’s been an unspeak­ably bad week through­out much of fire-rav­aged South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. As of Thurs­day, the toll looked liked this: 500,000 acres burned; 1,800 homes destroyed; 57 peo­ple injured and at least six killed. As all of this tran­spires, a new book has come out that gives you an inside look at fire­fight­ers who make their liv­ing bat­tling nat­ur­al wild­fires. On the Fire­line: Liv­ing and Dying with Wild­land Fire­fight­ers is writ­ten by Matthew Desmond, who spent four years tack­ling these blazes. And, in this lengthy free excerpt you get graph­i­cal­ly exposed to the risks and loss­es that they expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sion­al­ly and per­son­al­ly. It cer­tain­ly makes you feel for the fire­fight­ers on the front­lines this week, and we wish them and our fel­low Cal­i­for­ni­ans the best.

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