A new wiki entitled Wikicars has launched. It’s basically a gigantic user-editable encyclopedia focused on cars that you can view for free. It follows along the lines of Wikipedia, but it’s car-centric. Although Wikicars is fairly new, and lots of information still needs to be added, Wikicars definitely looks like it has some promise. Right now it appears it will include information on buying, selling, maintenance, and more.

The reason this is so great is because it can be edited by anyone. As we have seen with the success of Wikipedia, with a few exceptions, this means information is quickly and often accurately assembled. Of course, Wikicars shouldn’t be the only place you do car-related research, but it’s a great place to start.

I was listening to NPR this morning, and heard a report on what affects political polarization. The results were surprising:

Studies presented at the conference, for example, produced evidence that emotions and implicit assumptions often influence why people choose their political affiliations, and that partisans stubbornly discount any information that challenges their preexisting beliefs.

When self-described democrats and republicans were told to evaluate negative aspects of various candidates, they interestingly only pointed out negative information about candidates from the opposing party. On top of that, when presented negative information about candidates on their side of party lines, they found ways to discount that information.

These same people were in brain scanners while they were evaluating candidates. When they rejected negative information about the opposing candidate, reward centers in their brain were activated.

The psychologist observed that the way these subjects dealt with unwelcome information had curious parallels with drug addiction as addicts also reward themselves for wrong-headed behavior.

There were more studies mentioned that discussed bias against African Americans. Interestingly, in a study of 130,000 whites, those who showed bias against African Americans were much more likely to vote for president Bush in the last election.