Singapore is inequality on steroids, as you might expect from a high human capital, high information tech, growing financial center.
Seventeen percent of the population are millionaires, and that is not counting real estate wealth, which is substantial.
The H&M in the shopping district is closing, because the rent was doubled and it is being replaced by luxury retailers.
photo { Thomas Prior }
It has been conjectured that individuals may be left-brain dominant or right-brain dominant based on personality and cognitive style, but neuroimaging data has not provided clear evidence whether such phenotypic differences in the strength of left-dominant or right-dominant networks exist.
images { Bernhard Handick | 2 }
{ Taxpayer money, building overpasses for bears? Is that really necessary? Would they even use the things? Researchers have been methodically studying the crossings since 1996 to answer this. And it turns out that, yes, animals deterred by fencing that now runs the full 70-kilometer length of the highway in the park actually cross the road an awful lot like a rational pedestrian would. It takes them a while, though, to adapt to the crossings after a new one is constructed: about four to five years for elk and deer, five to seven years for the large carnivores. | The Atlantic Cities | full story }
And so the housing “recovery” comes to a screeching halt, which is not surprising as there never was a recovery to begin with. Moments ago cheerleaders of the second housing bubble were shocked to learn that in July a tiny 35K new houses were sold (with just 3K sold in the Northeast, and just 19K in the otherwise strong South), of which 13K houses were not even started. This translated into a puny 394K seasonally adjusted annualized sales, missing expectations of 487K by nearly a massive 100K, and in addition the June print was revised much lower from 497K to 455K (which back in July beat expectations of 484K and was trumpeted as the highest print since 2008 - so much for that). Yet one thing that did not change is that the median home sale price decline continued, and in July dropped to $257.2K down from $258.5.
The world’s first bullet-proof couch.
How North Korea got itself hooked on meth.
Florida Keys considering drones to fight mosquitoes.
Single men change bed sheets just four times a year.
Sex workers are operating on Linkedin.
Glasses That Solve Colorblindness, for a Big Price Tag.
The purpose of this study is to estimate whether sexual activity is associated with wages, and also to estimate potential interactions between individuals’ characteristics, wages and sexual activity. [PDF]
Does High Intelligence Mean Low Cognitive Bias?
Compulsive lying makes you smarter.
How does a brain generate consciousness?
Don’t panic but psychology isn’t always a science.
An Intriguing Correlation between the Distribution of Star Multiples and Human Adults in Household.
Scientists Investigate Whether the City Mouse Is Smarter Than The Country Mouse.
Everyone would save a sibling, grandparent or close friend rather than a strange dog. But when people considered their own dog versus people less connected with them—a distant cousin or a hometown stranger—votes in favor of saving the dog came rolling in. And an astonishing 40% of respondents, including 46% of women, voted to save their dog over a foreign tourist.
The Steve Jobs email exchange that perfectly captures Apple’s strategy.
Code By Voice Faster Than Keyboard.
They want to rebuild the internet — one block at a time.
Millions stolen from US banks after ‘wire payment switch’ targeted.
Rich-Get-Richer Effect Observed in BitCoin Digital Currency Network.
The mystery of China’s missing millionaires.
In a World Where Women Never Narrate Movie Previews.
Usually, the weather — often referred to as an “act of God” in a ticket contract — is a perfectly legitimate reason for a delay or a service interruption. How travelers can challenge the industry’s ‘act of God’ excuses.
Ever had the feeling that your job might be made up? That the world would keep on turning if you weren’t doing that thing you do 9-5? David Graeber explored the phenomenon of bullshit jobs.
Unscientific Science and the Insignificance of “Significance” [via Bookforum]
Le Corbusier painting in the nude. [more]
Follow the Frog. [Thanks Tim]
Ronen, I’m just going to jump in here, as someone who is not employed by PandoDaily, can’t speak for PandoDaily but who has been BCC’d on the conversation so far. Fuck you Ronen, you condescending sack of shit.
As it turns out, high-functioning sociopaths are full of handy lifestyle tips. […]
After being hired at an elite law firm, Ms Thomas exploited her company’s “non-existent” vacation policy by taking long weekends and lengthy vacations abroad. “People were implicitly expected not to take vacations, but I had my own lifelong policy of following only explicit rules, and then only because they’re easiest to prove against me,” she explains.
How to apply to your own life: Ignore “suggested donation” pleas at museums, always help yourself to more food and drinks at dinner parties and recline your seat all the way back when flying. […]
Ms Thomas’s opportunism applies to the social as much as the professional realm. “I have learned that it is important always to have a catalogue of at least five personal stories of varying length in order to avoid the impulse to shoehorn unrelated titbits into existing conversations,” she writes. “Social-event management feels very much like classroom or jury management to me; it’s all about allowing me to present myself to my own best advantage.” […]
One of Ms Thomas’s favourite activities is attending academic conferences. Since she doesn’t teach at a top-tier school, she captures her colleagues’ attention by other means: “Everything about the way I present myself is extremely calculated,” she writes. “I am careful to wear something that will draw attention, like jeans and cowboy boots while everyone else is wearing business attire.” The goal, Ms Thomas says, is “to indicate that I’m not interested in being judged by the usual standards.”
High frequency trading. I won’t go into the details, but basically it has become an arms race of being a millionth of a second faster than the other guy. The exchanges (Nasdaq and NYSE) started offering co-location within their facilities and traders started fighting for the best physical real estate within the co-location center (ie. literally trying to be a few feet closer to the exchanges’ computers). Some of the high frequency traders complained about how ‘unfair’ it was to be a few feet farther away. The exchanges conceded and added ‘latency’, basically a few feet of cable, so everyone within the co-location center is equidistant. It baffles me financial progress is moving in this direction.
Prediction by ‘experts’/pundits. Why do people still believe in pundits and ‘experts’ on TV? If ‘experts’ could predict the future with any accuracy, they would be doing something else. They are not always wrong, they are simply not right consistently enough to provide meaningful value. I’m always surprised how confident and certain people sound on CNBC (I rarely feel sure of anything). Keynes got it right when he said, “If you must forecast, forecast often.”
“What makes somebody who they are?” In other words, what makes it right to say of somebody who occupied my body and went by my name last month that they are the same person as I am now? Anyway, don’t we also want to say that I am not morally responsible for the actions that “I” performed as, say, a 4 year old? […]
Some of the main (wrong) answers are: Physical Continuity (disproof: I do not have any of the same cells or matter that I did one year ago), Memory (disproof: I can remember being 10 but not 5, yet when I was 10 I could remember being 5), and Psychological Continuity (disproof: I am not the same person that went by my name as a child; I am not guilt-worthy and praise-worthy for his crimes and achievements, yet there is psychological continuity between us).
photo { Bruce Nauman, Failing to Levitate in My Studio, 1966 }
The economics of “happiness” shares a feature with behavioral economics that raises questions about its usefulness in public policy analysis. What happiness economists call “habituation” refers to the fact that people’s reported well-being reverts to a base level, even after major life events such as a disabling injury or winning the lottery. What behavioral economists call “projection bias” refers to the fact that people systematically mistake current circumstances for permanence, buying too much food if shopping while hungry for example. Habituation means happiness does not react to long-term changes, and projection bias means happiness over-reacts to temporary changes. I demonstrate this outcome by combining responses to happiness questions with information about air quality and weather on the day and in the place where those questions were asked. The current day’s air quality affects happiness while the local annual average does not. Interpreted literally, either the value of air quality is not measurable using the happiness approach or air quality has no value. Interpreted more generously, projection bias saves happiness economics from habituation, enabling its use in public policy.
Every word in this sentence is a gross misspelling of the word “tomato.” –Doug Hofstadter
[…]
There is a well-known joke about Talmudic interpretation. A Jew is talking to his Rabbi.
Rabbi,” the man said, “Explain the Talmud to me.”
“Very well,” he said. “First, I will ask you a question. If two men climb up a chimney and one comes out dirty, and one comes out clean, which one washes himself?”
“The dirty one,” answers the man.
“No. They look at each other and the dirty man thinks he is clean and the clean man thinks he is dirty, therefore, the clean man washes himself.”
“Now, another question: If two men climb up a chimney and one comes out dirty, and one comes out clean, which one washes himself?”
The man smiles and says, “You just told me, Rabbi. The man who is clean washes himself because he thinks he is dirty.”
“No,” says the Rabbi. “If they each look at themselves, the clean man knows he doesn’t have to wash himself, so the dirty man washes himself. Now, one more question. If two men climb up a chimney and one comes out dirty, and one comes out clean, which one washes himself?”
”I don’t know, Rabbi. Depending on your point of view, it could be either one.”
Again the Rabbi says, “No. If two men climb up a chimney, how could one man remain clean? They both are dirty, and they both wash themselves.”
The confused man said, “Rabbi, you asked me the same question three times and you gave me three different answers. Is this some kind of a joke?”
”This is not a joke, my son. This is Talmud.”
art { Tim Hawkinson, Emoter, 2002 }
Researchers at the University of Kentucky were interested in the link between low glucose levels and aggressive behavior… […]
When you go several hours without eating, your blood sugar drops. Once it falls below a certain point, glucose-sensing neurons in your ventromedial hypothalamus, a brain region involved in feeding, are notified and activated resulting in level fluctuations of several different hormones. Ghrelin, a hormone that increases expression when blood sugar gets low and stimulates appetite through actions of the hypothalamus, has been shown to block the release of the neurotransmitter serotonin. The serotonin system is incredibly complex and contributes to a number of different central nervous system functions. One of the many hats this neurotransmitter wears is modulation of emotional state, including aggression. […]
If you have a predisposition to aggression, low serotonin levels circulating in your brain may lead to altered communications between brain regions that wrangle aggressive behavior.
The evidence for a flat earth is derived from many different facets of science and philosophy. The simplest is by relying on ones own senses to discern the true nature of the world around us. The world looks flat, the bottoms of clouds are flat, the movement of the sun; these are all examples of your senses telling you that we do not live on a spherical heliocentric world.
[…]
People have been into space. How have they not discovered that the earth is flat?
The most commonly accepted explanation of this is that the space agencies of the world are involved in a conspiracy faking space travel and exploration.
{ Flat Earth Society | Continue reading | More: The Flat Earth Society now has a podcast! }
The biggest problem in the business world is not too little but too much—too many distractions and interruptions, too many things done for the sake of form, and altogether too much busy-ness. The Dutch seem to believe that an excess of meetings is the biggest devourer of time: they talk of vergaderziekte, “meeting sickness”. However, a study last year by the McKinsey Global Institute suggests that it is e-mails: it found that highly skilled office workers spend more than a quarter of each working day writing and responding to them. […]
Creative people’s most important resource is their time—particularly big chunks of uninterrupted time—and their biggest enemies are those who try to nibble away at it with e-mails or meetings. Indeed, creative people may be at their most productive when, to the manager’s untutored eye, they appear to be doing nothing.
Many scholars have argued that Nietzsche’s dementia was caused by syphilis. A careful review of the evidence suggests that this consensus is probably incorrect. The syphilis hypothesis is not compatible with most of the evidence available. Other hypotheses – such as slowly growing right-sided retro-orbital meningioma – provide a more plausible fit to the evidence.
{ Journal of Medical Biography | PDF }
From his late 20s onward, Nietzsche experienced severe, generally right- sided headaches. He concurrently suffered a progressive loss of vision in his right eye and developed cranial nerve findings that were documented on neurological examinations in addition to a disconjugate gaze evident in photographs. His neurological findings are consistent with a right-sided frontotemporal mass. In 1889, Nietzsche also developed a new-onset mania which was followed by a dense abulia, also consistent with a large frontal tumor. […] An intracranial mass may have been the etiology of his headaches and neurological findings and the cause of his ultimate mental collapse in 1889.
The more you multitask, the worse you get at it.
{ Priceonomics | Continue reading | More: Media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability | PDF }
Chinese zoo under fire for trying to pass off dog as African lion. Related: The Serengeti Lion.
A man who enjoys dressing up as a dog has been arrested for having sex with a cat in Idaho.
Israeli Arrested in International Art Forgery Ring.
Study: How long do little kids stand sitting still?
Seemingly Unimportant Mutations Can Foster Disease. Initially innocuous genetic changes known as neutral mutations may play a role in disorders ranging from the flu and bacterial infections to schizophrenia.
The official list of “never events” in surgery includes operating on the wrong part of the body, performing the wrong procedure, leaving instruments or swabs inside the body, or having the wrong prosthesis or medical device implanted.
Shadows Alter Facial Expressions of Noh Masks.
Are “soft” sciences, like psychology, actually science?
More eye-wateringly egregious neuromarketing bullshit from Martin Lindstrom.
Overview of the Brain In Just Under 4 Minutes.
Who would have guessed that a famous Chongqing pickle, the preserved mustard tuber made in the town of Fuling, would be used by the Chinese government to measure labour migration? The preserved mustard index.
How Chess Explains the World. And predicts the rise and fall of nations.
Facebook to Test PayPal Competitor.
Paying Some Cabbies Won’t Involve Cash or a Card Swipe.
Google is preparing for screenless computers.
My Life as a Cellphone Holdout.
When e-mail was created 40 years ago, security or anonymity wasn’t part of the design.
A missile command game comes up and starts to attack the video.
Banana equivalent dose [Thanks Tim]
At this very moment, your eyes and brain are performing an astounding series of coordinated operations.
Light rays from the screen are hitting your retina, the sheet of light-sensitive cells that lines the back wall of each of your eyes. Those cells, in turn, are converting light into electrical pulses that can be decoded by your brain.
The electrical messages travel down the optic nerve to your thalamus, a relay center for sensory information in the middle of the brain, and from the thalamus to the visual cortex at the back of your head. In the visual cortex, the message jumps from one layer of tissue to the next, allowing you to determine the shape and color and movement of the thing in your visual field. From there the neural signal heads to other brain areas, such as the frontal cortex, for yet more complex levels of association and interpretation. All of this means that in a matter of milliseconds, you know whether this particular combination of light rays is a moving object, say, or a familiar face, or a readable word. […]
This post is about a question that’s long been debated among scientists and philosophers: At what point in that chain of operations does the visual system begin to integrate information from other systems, like touches, tastes, smells, and sounds? What about even more complex inputs, like memories, categories, and words?
We know the integration happens at some point. If you see a lion running toward you, you will respond to that sight differently depending on if you are roaming alone in the Serengeti or visiting the zoo. Even if the two sights are exactly the same, and presenting the same optical input to your retinas, your brain will use your memories and knowledge to put your vision into context
photo { Harry Callahan }
A surge of electrical activity in the brain could be responsible for the vivid experiences described by near-death survivors, scientists report.
A study carried out on dying rats found high levels of brainwaves at the point of the animals’ demise.
US researchers said that in humans this could give rise to a heightened state of consciousness.
Dogs trained to sniff out ovarian cancer.
Two Xiamen Airlines stewardesses kneel in prayer at a shrine dedicated to being “on time”.
Spain: “Every job has 100 applicants, and you only get work now based on who you know…”
Herb used as Chinese herbal remedy for centuries can cause cancer, two studies say.
A man who suffered a stroke can no longer feel sadness.
Testicle-Biting Amazon Fish Caught in Denmark
Fish Fear Robotic Predators, Unless They’re Drunk.
Some innovations spread fast. How do you speed the ones that don’t?
Why are sales of non-alcoholic beer booming?
How Can You Redeem Stolen Airline Miles?
All Bitcoin Wallets On Android “Vulnerable To Theft.”
UK bars ad firm from using Wi-Fi-enabled trash cans to track passersby through their smartphones.
New delivery service brings retro video game machines right to your door for $75 a month.
40 maps that explain the world.
Map of Manhattan Using Only Handwritten Directions From Strangers.
Currency Collages by Mark Wagner. [More]
