I don’t usually prelude the clipped copy that I feature here on my scraps blog, but I find this of particular note. Following a thread on ask.metafilter, I came across this particular comment, which lead to this bit of insight from ‘Craig’s Spring Branch Blog’ that I feel I ought to share:

The earliest cite I found was Osgood and Richard, “From yang and yin to and or but” from 1973. Osgood apparently coined the description “golden section” after the golden ratio in ancient Greek geometry. 1 : .616 which are the proportions of the edifice of the Parthenon, for example. There is a trove of material on google scholar with many examples and themes. The most interesting of which is that we may even have an essential brain circuit for sorting whatever we encounter in our environment, such that we find 62 percent of it appealing at a subconscious lever and 38 percent of it unappealing.

Stigma is specifically analyzed within this paradigm in Raskin, Harasym, Mercuri, and Widrick, “Construing stigmatized identities: a golden section study”. The most stigmatized are the homeless and the mentally ill. They are looked down upon even more harshly than criminals. Criminals are of only slightly lower status than politicians. It was not clear whether we should laugh or cry about this last finding. I did neither but merely noted it.

http://craigsspringbranchblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/zombies.html

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