An article in Newsweek explains how line judges can make those crazy-making line calls that can ruin tennis matches -- "Out!"

Memo to tennis players: because of the way the human visual system works, referees are more likely to call “out” a ball that actually lands in, rather than call “in” a ball that in fact lands outside the line. Now that professional players are permitted to challenge calls, therefore, they would do well to focus on balls that are called “out,” since they are more likely to be wrong.

So concludes a neat little study published online today in Current Biology. Scientists led by David Whitney of the University of California, Davis, started from the fact that the human visual system consistently misperceives moving objects as shifted in the direction of their motion, making them appear to be farther along their path than they are.

When I play, I'm pretty generous with calling balls in. If it looks even a few inches from the line. I usually just call it in. Looks like calling it in is a good call. Karma meets cognitive science.

Oh, and the picture of Marat Safin above is just because.

Via the Guardian, "The prospect of an African-American president is bringing white supremacist subculture in the US out of the shadows." This article is a follow to the report yesterday that Obama was that target of an assassination plot.

Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman, the two Tennessee neo-Nazis arrested for plotting to kill 102 African-American schoolchildren and then assassinate Barack Obama, clearly drew inspiration from a violent white nationalist group called the Order.

In the 1980s, members of the Order carried out a crime spree that included several high-profile murders.The connection to the Order is evident in the numbers the two men scrawled on their car on Saturday shortly before they were arrested: 14 and 88. The so-called Fourteen Words is a slogan - "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children" - coined by Order member David Lane, who also wrote an essay called 88 Precepts. In white supremacist circles, 14-88 is a shorthand expression of allegiance to the beliefs put forth by Lane and the Order, who wanted to found a white homeland where they could preserve the "Aryan race" from being polluted by non-whites and enslaved by the "Zionist-occupied government" of the US.

After reading this, I couldn't help but think of the TED video from yesterday discussing the human urge toward tribalism.

The full article and a video interview with a white supremacist leader over at the Guardian.

Via DoorQ:

I wanted to take a moment to provide some meta information about not just our election struggle, but the ongoing, and probably eternal, conflict between various interest groups. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has some insights into the factors at the core of that struggle.

Haidt studies morality and emotion in the context of culture. He asks: Why did humans evolve to have morals -- and why did we all evolve to have such different morals, to the point that our moral differences may make us deadly enemies? It's a question with deep repercussions in war and peace -- and in modern politics, where reasoned discourse has been replaced by partisan anger and cries of "You just don't get it!" Haidt asks, "Can't we all disagree more constructively?" He suggests we might build a more civil and productive discourse by understanding the moral psychology of those we disagree with, and committing to a more civil political process. He's also active in the study of positive psychology and human flourishing.

In this video, taken from the endlessly fascinating TED series of lectures, Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.

And Haidt is surprisingly funny.