1) The heron that visits our lake has been back this past week. I was rather amused that, while on a walk on the lake's sidewalk, it kept flying away from me – but only by about 50 feet or so each time. So within minutes I'd be catching up again and it would fly forward again, still by the sidewalk.

I actually wondered if the heron was playing a game because it seemed a rather dumb thing to keep doing – and it did it 6 times! Finally it flew off to another part of the lake. Maybe had it been a crow it really would have been a game but I guess herons have something in common with mourning doves.

2) Another interesting study regarding online behavior, this one in regards to lying. The study wanted to see if the form of communication affected deception and the answer was yes but not much. It also noted "Deception rates might also differ across technology because people use some forms of technology for certain social relationships. For example, people might only email their professional colleagues, while video chat might be a better fit for more personal relationships."

The real difference was among people. "There’s a low rate of lying across the board. Most people are honest — a premise consistent with truth-default theory, which suggests most people report being honest most of the time and there are only a few prolific liars in a population." They also linked to this UK study which pointed out that studies have consistently shown that compulsive liars are few in number.

3) We have more congenital syphilis cases today in America than we ever had pediatric AIDS at the height of the AIDS epidemic. "It costs public health departments less than 25 cents a dose to buy penicillin, but for a private practice, it’s more than $1,000." However for any of that to help, you have to get people to agree to treatment and guess how well that works.

4) "Newspaper audiences in general are not a representative sample of Americans, according to Stroud’s study results. Of readers who took a survey on their commenting habits, roughly 62% were men, 91% were white, 78% had a bachelor’s degree or more and the average age was 65."

I was somewhat more surprised that a report on how labor issues are becoming a hot reporting topic admitted it was all about journalists themselves. "The shift was spurred, many journalists believe, by the growing labor movement inside American newsrooms, which has made reporters “more knowledgeable and sympathetic to labor issues."" You don't say.

5) I was interested in this post about group identity research given its relevance to fandom, but what stood out to me was the finding that diversifying your groups doesn't serve any advantage if the group itself doesn't see itself as working towards a common goal or buying into group philosophy:

"There was a study at Google where they looked at what made the most effective teams. They looked at over 200 teams… The one thing they found that predicted team success, that made teams greater than the sum of their parts, was psychological safety. A lot of people don’t understand what that term means, but that term means that you get to share a perspective that might be different, challenge the status quo, constructively criticize a friend or a colleague, and you’re invited back to the group the next day. In other words, you’re intrinsically valued. You’re not walking on eggshells. You’re not biting your tongue. Those are groups where performance excels, and they perform greater than the sum of their parts. That’s another piece of diversity, creating that sense of safety so that everybody feels like they have a voice."