Personality

Australian politics is in a mess: backstabbing, corruption, sexting, disloyalty. It’s impossible for party leaders to predict the evil lurking inside the brains of all those fresh-faced backbenchers. But there may be a solution: give all prospective ministers a brain scan to see how likely they are to misbehave.

For years Dr. Gerhard Roth of the University of Bremen has been peering into the minds of hardened German felons seeking to unlock the complexities of the criminal mind. And now, he claims to have answered the ultimate question: What is the source of evil in these offenders? According to the doctor, It’s a little dark spot at the front of their brains.

Evil, claims Dr. Roth, is a function of deficiencies within the frontal cortex.  “When you look at the brain scans of hardened criminals, there are almost always severe shortcomings in the lower forehead part of the brain”, Professor Roth said in an interview with German newspaper Das Bild earlier this week.

Continue reading "What if we could weed out bad eggs before they hatched" »

Seriously guys, just be COOL.

Not ‘cool’ in the private-school-jock-sense of being cool - teasing you for your rust-red hair, exceptional clarinet skills and impressive inability to speak to women without your voice cracking - but cool in the nice-person-sense of being cool.

Apparently, despite the fact that it doesn’t cost you anything, nor does it require intelligence or skill, many people find it difficult to simply be nice to others.

Continue reading "Seven ways to be a nice guy" »

The world is ruled by extroverts. The loudest voices, unsurprisingly, are often the only ones we hear.

The Australia Day honours are meant to pay tribute to the unsung heroes, thereby making them sung.

While the most attention is too often given to the already well-sung - celebrities, the actors and the sportspeople who make the list - there are also the local heroes, the young and the senior Australians.

Continue reading "Singing the praises of the unsung heroes" »