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Athletes Often Start Life At The Opposite End Of The Wealth And Prestige Spectrum, But As Soon As They Exhibit An Unusual Talent For Swinging A Bat Or Sinking A Free-throw They May Find That The Rules Have Been Suspended For Them. They Are Waved Through School And Into The Pros, And Incidents Of Bad Behavior Are Overlooked Or Covered Up.

-Jeffrey Kluger

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Athletes Often Start Life

Jeffrey Kluger

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Athletes Often Start Life At The Opposite End Of The Wealth And Prestige Spectrum, But As Soon As They Exhibit An Unusual Talent For Swinging A Bat Or Sinking A Free-throw They May Find That The Rules Have Been Suspended For Them. They Are Waved Through School And Into The Pros, And Incidents Of Bad Behavior Are Overlooked Or Covered Up.

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Anxiety Disorder

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Good Intentions

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The Death Of Anti-gay Hate Speech Is No Doubt Being Hastened By The Head-spinning Speed With Which Gays As A Group - To Say Nothing Of Gay Marriage - Are Becoming An Unremarkable And Even Quite Traditional Parts Of American Life.

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Athletes Often Start Life At The Opposite End Of The Wealth And Prestige Spectrum, But As Soon As They Exhibit An Unusual Talent For Swinging A Bat Or Sinking A Free-throw They May Find That The Rules Have Been Suspended For Them. They Are Waved Through School And Into The Pros, And Incidents Of Bad Behavior Are Overlooked Or Covered Up.

Your Parents Leave You Too Soon And Your Kids And Spouse Come Along Late, But Your Siblings Know You When You Are In Your Most Inchoate Form.

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Narcissism, Like The Other Personality Disorders, Is A Condition That's Known As Ego-syntonic. In Other Words, The Paranoid Person Really Does Believe That People Are After Him, And The Narcissist Really Does Believe That He Or She Is Better Than Or More Entitled Than Other People, And Truly Doesn't See Why That's Not The Case.

Narcissism Is Actually A Clever Guise Adopted To Mask Its Exact Opposite, Which Is A Deep Well Of Self-loathing, A Well Of Low Self-esteem, Rather Than High Self-esteem. This Helps Explain Why Narcissists Are So Sensitive To Criticism, Why Narcissists Tend To Break Into Outrage If They're Criticized, Because Their Self-esteem Is Actually Much More Brittle Than It Seems, And Once They're Challenged, That Mask Falls Apart.

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At The Root Of The Shy Temperament Is A Deep Fear Of Social Judgment, One So Severe It Can Sometimes Be Crippling. Introverted People Don't Worry Unduly About Whether They'll Be Found Wanting, They Just Find Too Much Socializing Exhausting And Would Prefer Either To Be Alone Or In The Company Of A Select Few People.

There's No Such Thing As Downtime For Your Brain.

Older Siblings Get More Total-immersion Mentoring With Their Parents Before Younger Siblings Come Along. As A Result, They Get An Iq And Linguistic Advantage Because They Are The Exclusive Focus Of Their Parents' Attention.

There's Plenty To Read About Keeping Your Sanity While Raising Children, But It's All Common-sense Stuff About Task Division And Taking Breaks And The Relentlessly Repeated Magic Of Date Night With Your Spouse. What's Missing Is Some 'tude.

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The Families Of Many Athletes - Incensed At The Sports Leagues And Hoping To Make Games Safer Overall - Are Increasingly Making The Brains Of Players Who Die Prematurely And Suspiciously Available For Study. Some Athletes Are Even Making The Bequest Themselves.

The Golden Child May Be The Oldest One, Unless It's The Youngest. It May Be The Toughest One, Unless It's The Most Sensitive. It's Not Even Necessary That Mom And Dad Have The Same Favorite - And Typically They Don't.

I Was Born In The U.s., My Wife Was Born In Mexico And Emigrated Here When She Was In College, And My Daughters Were Born In New York City. That Makes Them Passport-carrying, Natural-born, Eligible-to-run-for-president Americans. But They're Also Mexicans And They Like That Just Fine.

Is There Anything Sadder Than The Foods Of The 1950s? Canned, Frozen, Packaged Concoctions, Served Up By The Plateful, Three Meals Per Day, In An Era In Which The Supermarket Was King, The Farmer's Market Was, Well, For Farmers, And The Word 'locavore' Sounded Vaguely Like A Mythical Beast.

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Psychopaths Know The Technical Difference Between Right And Wrong - Which Is One Of The Reasons Their Insanity Pleas In Criminal Cases So Rarely Succeed; They Just Fail To Act On That Knowledge.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev Is Telling No Tales. The Older Of The Two Brothers Who Committed The Boston Marathon Bombings Was Likely The One Who Planned The Attack, But When He Died In A Shootout With Police Just Days After The Blasts, His Thoughts And Motivations Vanished With Him.

Overspending Is As Certain A Part Of The Holiday Season As Overeating. But Pushing Away From Both The Table And The Cash Register At Least A Little Bit Sooner Can Make The Post-holiday Hangover Hurt A Little Bit Less.

Confidence Quickly Curdles Into Arrogance; Smarts Turn To Smugness, Charm Turns To Smarm.

Humans Are Crude Linguists From The Moment Of Birth - And Perhaps Even In The Womb - To The Extent At Least That We Can Hear Spoken Sounds And Begin To Recognize Different Combinations Of Language Sounds.

There Are A Lot Of Downsides To Being Male. We Age Faster And Die Younger. But Give Us This: We're Lifetime Baby-making Machines. Women's Reproductive Abilities Start To Wane When They're As Young As 35. Men? We're Good To Go Pretty Much Till We're Dead.

There May Be No More-radioactive Term In The English Language Than What We Now Almost Always Refer To As The 'n-word' - Itself A Coy Means Of Linguistic Sidestepping That Is A Sign Of How Perilous It Is To Utter The Thing In Full, Even In Conversations About Language.

What Makes Spinal-cord Injuries As Devastating As They Are Is That Everything About Them Plays Out In Absolutes: They Are Instantaneous, Utterly Disabling And Horribly Permanent.

Spinal Cord Injuries

Members Of Royal Families Are Born Into A World Of Indulgence And Entitlement, And The Princelings Who Grow Up That Way May Never Have To Develop The Emotional Musculature That Will Allow Them To Show Self-restraint.

The Mind Of The Polyglot Is A Very Particular Thing, And Scientists Are Only Beginning To Look Closely At How Acquiring A Second Language Influences Learning, Behavior And The Very Structure Of The Brain Itself.

Older Fatherhood Isn't All Bad: Testosterone Rates Drop About 1% Per Year As Men Age, Making Them Less Reactive And More Patient, And A Professionally Established Middle-aged Man Is Likely To Have More Time And Money To Devote To His Kids Than A Twenty-something Who's Just Getting Started.

There's Only One Thing Harder Than Living In A Home With An Adolescent - And That's Being An Adolescent. The Moodiness, The Volatility, The Wholesale Lack Of Impulse Control, All Would Be Close To Clinical Conditions If They Occurred At Another Point In Life. In Adolescence, They're Just Part Of The Behavioral Portfolio.

Impulse Control

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