Link Banana

Though quotidien chaos in the streets is hardly unique to Iran, this video certainly makes me glad that I don’t have to drive there.

(via Donklephant)

I’m sure many will find this pointless or perhaps even insulting (it’s undeniably hostile to Mrs. Clinton), but I think it’s rather funny.

(via Donklephant)

Speaking of the Obama speech… Though I’ve never been as down on Mike Huckabee as most, I was never a fan. And then he says something like this:

As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say “That’s a terrible statement!” I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack — and I’m gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who’s gonna say something like this, but I’m just tellin’ you — we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told “you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can’t sit out there with everyone else. There’s a separate waiting room in the doctor’s office. Here’s where you sit on the bus…” And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

(via Donklephant, through Daily Kos)

Psychology Today reports on the theory that dreams are primarily ways that people act out potentially dangerous situations that they’ll encounter or have encountered.

If the threat-simulation theory is correct, dreams should focus on the self, and when confronted with a threat, the dream self should react realistically to ensure its own survival and that of its loved ones. And so it is. We are the heroes of our own dreams. We don’t dream about other people’s adventures or about fictional superheroes battling monsters. We dream about ourselves.

If dreams evolved to simulate the threats in our environment, then being exposed to more dangers in real life should activate the nightmare function, overstuffing our dreams with threats. This is precisely what happens. Even a single exposure to a life-threatening situation can plunge a person into an inferno of post-traumatic nightmares, dreams in which the threatening event—the attack, the rape, the war—is repeated over and over in every possible variation.

(via donklephant)