Between a rock and a hard place
CRYSTAL botherers beware: are your healing stones costing the earth? Writing in the New Republic, Emily Atkin into the murky origins of the polished minerals beloved by New Age devotees.
While the stones are often presented as a way to connect with Earth鈥檚 natural energy, many are a byproduct of industrial mining for gold, copper and cobalt, which certainly puts a sour aftertaste in Goop鈥檚 $84 amethyst-powered positive energy water bottle.
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Searching for answers to this crystalline conundrum, Feedback turns to its trusted source on all things gem-like: Crystal Energy: 150 ways to bring success, love, health and harmony into your life by Mary Lambert. Thus we learn that those troubled by the environmental and social impact of their medicine stones should hold a piece of rose quartz against their ear to alleviate guilt, and clutch a piece of rhodochrosite to achieve forgiveness and self-acceptance. Problem solved!
鈥淰et Andy Maloney says: 鈥淎 client recently brought in their labrador, which was displaying caffeine toxicity after eating a 300g bag of coffee beans.鈥� The dog鈥檚 name? Latte鈥�
Hair of distinction
EYEBROWS 鈥� well-coiffured and hirsute alike 鈥� were raised among our colleagues amid claims that narcissists can be identified by a certain facial feature.
Miranda Giacomin and Nicholas Rule at the University of Toronto investigated how we identify narcissists, reasoning that there is an evolutionary benefit to avoiding socially conniving people.
Armed with photographs of 39 undergraduates who had completed a personality quiz, Giacomin and Rule asked a panel of judges to rate each face on how egotistical they thought the person was. By displaying only part of the face at a time, they found it wasn鈥檛 the eyes that have it: eyebrows were the key feature for singling out the self-absorbed.
The judges cited grooming, femininity and distinctiveness as eyebrow traits that signalled narcissism. But given that eyebrow distinctiveness was the only trait found to truly correlate with narcissism, perhaps this revealed more about the judges鈥� own attitudes than about the undergraduates.
Those rushing to the mirror will be dismayed to read that the research does not elucidate what 鈥渄istinctive鈥� eyebrows look like. Perhaps, as with narcissists, you know them when you see them.
Cliff notes
WHAT is mostly white, craggy and somewhat responsible for sea level rise? If you said 鈥渢he US Congress鈥�, you only get half a point.
Despite a lack of trained scientists among them, US law-makers have no shortage of climate change theories. At a hearing of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, congressman Mo Brooks advanced the novel hypothesis that rocks tumbling into the oceans were to .
鈥淲hat about the White Cliffs of Dover鈥� where you have the waves crashing against the shorelines, and time and time again you have the cliffs crashing into the sea?,鈥� he asked climate scientist Phil Duffy. 鈥淎ll of that displaces water, which forces it to rise, does it not?鈥� Duffy conceded it did 鈥� though the effects would be 鈥渕inuscule鈥� on a human timescale.
Fit for porpoise
YOU鈥橵E heard of Navy SEALs, but what about Army dolphins? Several of the flippered recruits are stationed at a military training centre in Sevastopol, Ukraine. Or at least they were: following Russia鈥檚 annexation of Crimea in 2014, the cetacean soldiers became prisoners of war.
The Ukrainian representative in Crimea, Boris Babin, has now , dying patriotically on hunger strike after refusing to defect to the Russian side. It was very sad, said Babin, that the dolphins took their oath more seriously than many of their human counterparts deployed in Crimea.
A Russian spokesperson countered that the dolphins at Sevastopol had all been sold to commercial entities or died of natural causes by 2014.
Puppy dog eyes
IN THESE divided times, most of us can agree on one thing: puppies are adorable. But psychologist Nadine Chersini and her colleagues at the University of Florida suspected there might be more to our love of tiny pooches than meets the eye.
The team collected photos of 39 adorable dogs, from newborns to 7-month-olds. A panel of 57 people then judged which pups in this pageant were the cutest.
All the breeds included were cutest at about 8 weeks of age. This corresponds closely to the age at which domestic dogs are left to fend for themselves by their mothers, and lies in stark contrast to their ancestors: wolf pups receive care from both parents until their second year.
Chersini suggests that dogs may be roping humans into co-parenting their offspring by abandoning pups at the point they are most appealing to us.
Chill out
A MOTHER in Sweden has played it cool after a tattoo of her son鈥檚 name was misspelled. The tribute to her two children inadvertently read 鈥淣ova & Kelvin鈥�. Rather than undergo a lengthy and painful process to have the tattoo removed, she had the 5-year-old .
Feedback salutes this determined nominativism.
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