Hope for me! Willpower can be trained.

Wow!  Hope for me.  The article does state two contradictory results.  In the short term, you should avoid wearing out your will power.  If you try hard not to eat ice cream, later you  will eat something else.  So, avoid exposure to the ice cream.   In the long term, exercising willpoer increases capacity.  So, if [...]

Teenage Suicides Bewilder an Island, and the Experts

That is the headline of a very sad story about a cluster of three suicides on Nantucket.  Too bad they didn’t seem to look for any sociology experts.  Starting with Durkheim’s Suicide there  is a lot of evidence that suicide is not exclusively a problem of the “head” but also of the community and society.  [...]

Army Social Scientists Calm Afghanistan, Make Enemies at Home

Tanks again to Valdis Krebs for pushing this out to SOCNET.
Army Social Scientists Calm Afghanistan, Make Enemies at Home
Each team is getting a half-dozen laptops, a satellite dish and software for social network analysis, so they can diagram how all of the important players in an area are connected. Digital timelines will mark key cultural [...]