Corps Study Break

What better way to take a short break from studying the antisocial behavior of American corporations than to read this short piece on a new test for psychotic CEOs?

Ever wonder what leads a lavishly compensated C.E.O. to cheat, steal and lie? Perhaps he's a psychopath, and now there is a test, the B-Scan 360, that can help make that determination. The B-Scan was conceived by Paul Babiak, an industrial psychologist, and Robert Hare, the creator of the standard tool for diagnosing psychopathic features in prison inmates. The B-Scan is the first formalized attempt to uncover similar tendencies in captains of industry, and it speaks to a growing suspicion that psychopaths may be especially adept at scaling the corporate ladder.

Yeah, I bet this test is going to go over like gangbusters in the halls of corporate power. People are going to be banging down the doors of these researchers to get a chance to take this test. Not. Still, what fascinating data might we find if we really could screen all CEOs and other top corporate officers for antisocial tendencies? In my class notes for corporate law I quoted Prof. Corps saying “Greed is a perfectly understandable human emotion.” Perhaps he's right. It sounds reasonable; we're all familiar w/greed, right? To quote Morpheus:

It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.

But how understandable is greed, really? What's understandable about gain for self at the expense of others? It's anti-social, and another name for antisocial is psychotic. In this view, greed is contradictory to human self-preservation, and therefore not understandable at all. The only thing that makes it understandable is culture, and American culture teaches us that there is, in fact, almost no higher value than greed. Greed is exalted in our society precisely to the extent that it is against our best interests; the social structure must constantly struggle to convince us of the value of individualism, independence, and self-interest in it's ugliest form—greed. If it were so natural, we wouldn't need the constant stream of rhetoric about how great these values are, would we? What if, instead of thinking of greed as natural, we thought of it as abhorrent? What if we valued interdependence, cooperation, social-interest, community strength, equality, and justice for all? Hmm. Wouldn't that be weird?

Posted 04:59 PM | Comments (8) | 2L

Studying Blogs and Blogging

Now is apparently the time in the history of blogging when academics decide to study the phenom. First, a researcher at UNC is studying blog ethics, while another seeks “thoughtful adult bloggers (a18 and older)” to interview for what sounds like a very interesting master's thesis. Follow those links if you'd like to help out.

Posted 09:22 AM | meta-blogging

10 Best Books 2004?

The NY Times has released its list of the 10 best books of 2004 in both fiction and non. Funny, none of the books on my potential reading list are on the Times' list. I think I'll stick with my list, along with the suggestions you all have made. So far it seems like Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is winning the race, although I do very much like Care's advice to read Into the Forest first, then try to get to something else. Or maybe Jonathan Strange. . . or I'm still into The Baroque Cycle. I mean, I want to read it someday, for sure, but is now the time to start? Hmm... Isn't thinking about reading great fiction so much more fun than studying for finals? Yeah, it definitely is. In addition to reading, I'd like to catalog all the books L. and I own so we can see what we have. I have a CueCat barcode scanner, I have the free and very impressive Books for Mac OS X software, and I have the books to scan in—I just don't have the time. L. thinks I'm a big fat geek for even wanting to do this, but once you've got them all cataloged, you can do cool things like find them when you want them. You can also do something like putting a list of your books online, which could be useful somehow, I think. Anyway, it sure would be better than studying corporations. But then, the bar for that is really, really low.

Posted 08:45 AM | Comments (6) | ai books