Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

It’s a Slow News Day, Huh?

by SB Sarah | by SB Sarah | October 07, 2009 | Wednesday at 7:32 pm | 7 Comments

Gee, got Kindle? If you’re in Canada, no Kindle for you. But Amazon.co.uk has started selling the 6” Kindle in Europe for $279.00 US, while the US-only 6” Kindle has dropped in price to $259.00.

And great day in the morning, Amazon has refurb US-only 6” Kindles for $219.00 while supplies last.

As Kate Johnson said to me, holiday wishlists just got a bit more expensive.

In other news, does the experience of falling in love, or thinking about love itself, make us humans more creative? According to an article in Scientific American, a recent study demonstrates that thinking about love - not sex, and that distinction is clear - “triggers global processing, which in turn promotes creative thinking and interferes with analytic thinking”:

Thinking about sex, however, has the opposite effect: it triggers local processing, which in turn promotes analytic thinking and interferes with creativity.

Why does love make us think more globally? The researchers suggest that romantic love induces a long-term perspective, whereas sexual desire induces a short-term perspective. This is because love typically entails wishes and goals of prolonged attachment with a person, whereas sexual desire is typically focused on engaging in sexual activities in the “here and now”. Consistent with this idea, when the researchers asked people to imagine a romantic date or a casual sex encounter, they found that those who imagined dates imagined them as occurring farther into the future than those who imagined casual sex.

According to construal level theory (CLT), thinking about events that are farther into the future or past - or any kind psychological distancing (such as considering things or people that are physically farther away, or considering remote, unlikely alternatives to reality) triggers a more global processing style. In other words, psychological distancing makes us see the forest rather than the individual trees.

Graceful curtsey to Lori for the link.

And Harlequin has sent me a heads up for those who were curious about the vintage Harlequins in digital format: here you go! Funny enough, even though the Harlequin ebook store has all the digital files, I was also sent a link to the Diesel ebookstore where you can look at the bundle and get an excerpt for each individual book file. The entire bundle of vintage titles is $26.00.

[Source: Harlequin]

And finally, one more Twilight cover clone, only this one I never expected. Thanks to Miri, who took a snapshot in the bookstore and led me to… the Twilight SAT Study Guide Series.

No, you only wish I was kidding.