Imagine you have a choice to make.
 
In one scenario, you’d get $8 and somebody else — a stranger – would get $8 too. In the other, you’d get $10; the stranger would get $12.
 
Economists typically assume you’d go for the $10/$12 option because of the belief that people try to maximize their own gains. Choosing the other scenario would just be irrational.
 
But new research conducted in collaboration with a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management shows that if a person is feeling threatened, or concerned with their status, they are more likely to choose the option that gives them less. And although this choice might seem irrational from an economic perspective, this choice satisfies an important psychological need.
 
People who do this, “have a reason for their behaviour, and that reason is to protect themselves from low status,” described as a low position or rank in relation to others, says Prof. Geoffrey Leonardelli.

{ University of Toronto | Continue reading }

image { Tony Oursler }

We are approaching the time when we will be able to communicate faster than the speed of light. It is well known that as we approach the speed of light, time slows down. Logically, it is reasonable to assume that as we go faster than the speed of light, time will reverse. The major consequence of this for Internet protocols is that packets will arrive before they are sent.

{ R. Hinden | Continue reading }

image { Dustin Arnold | Thanks Tim }

What do you do if you drop your sandwich on the floor? Pick it up within five seconds and just continue eating? […]

American researchers wanted to test  how long food has to be on the floor before it becomes contaminated. They dropped sausages and bread onto different surfaces, such as carpet, wood and tiles, and examined  the transfer of Salmonella bacteria.

They found that of all the bacteria that contaminated the food, 99 percent of them  had transferred already in the first five seconds. The time it took them was influenced by the kind of surface the bacteria were on, yet only a little. Bacteria on carpet took more time to get onto the sausages than those on wood or tile.

{ United Academics | Continue reading }

photo { Bobby Doherty }

German flea circus hit by freeze. Entire troupe wiped out. “This is no April Fool’s.” [more]

The county where no one’s gay.

Gay Men, Straight Women: What’s the Attraction? New research suggests at least part of the answer lies in their ability to give one another trustworthy mating advice.

More than half of the rivers previously thought to exist in China appear to be missing.

New research predicts that rising temperatures will lead to a massive “greening,” or increase in plant cover, in the Arctic (as much as 50 percent over the next few decades).

Network Theory Approach Reveals Altitude Sickness to be Two Different Diseases.

Are we rapidly approaching a time when progress in mathematics effectively comes to an end?

Forget next-day delivery. The standard in online shopping is rapidly approaching next-hour delivery. How Robots and Military-Grade Algorithms Make Same-Day Delivery Possible.

Deadly Hospital Superbugs: How to Protect Yourself

Is there such a thing as a left-handed cat?

Tokyo renters paying $568 for tiny coffin-sized apartments.

Find the pattern for the following series of numbers:

8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 7, 6, 3, 2, 0

{ Solution }

One of the frequent laments of the “great stagnation” era is that younger people today won’t do better than their parents. […] Over the past 150 years, or about 6 generations, the average income in one generation has been about 60 percent higher than the average income in the prior generation. […] Improvements in well-being were very closely tied to wealth.

Today, however, we are in a position to derive much of our happiness from pursuits internal to our minds. We do this by blogging, watching House of Cards on Netflix, listening to a symphony from iTunes, tweeting with friends and acquaintances, seeing their pictures on Facebook or Path, and learning and collaborating on Wikipedia. As a result, once one secures a certain income to cover basic needs, greater happiness and well-being today can be had for virtually nothing. What is the point, then, of doing materially better than one’s parents?

In his 1930 essay, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” John Maynard Keynes imagined a future 100 years later in which per capita income had increased fourfold or more. With 17 years to go, his prediction was right. But Keynes also thought that this increase in per capita production would result in people working fewer hours—only 15 hours a week to maintain a reasonable standard of living in 2030. The real challenge, he worried, would be filling up our leisure time.

{ Jerry Brito/The Umlaut | Continue reading }

photo { Maxime Taillez }

Spending so much time texting and updating, tweeting and watching, calling and playing at every free moment, from every location, never alone with our thoughts, never allowing our thoughts to drift, impacts our creativity, which in turn can limit our full potential. […]

Edward de Bono, business consultant and self-described “father of lateral thinking” has authored numerous works on creative thinking. de Bono calls moments of boredom “creative pauses,” which allows the mind to drift, and avails the person to new forms of input and understanding.

Boredom may be even more important for children than adults. Spending so much time on gadgets may “short circuit the development of creative capacity” in children, according to educational expert Dr. Teresa Belton. […]

A study last year by UK carrier O2 examined the amount of time the typical user spends each day on their smartphone. It’s a lot - more than two hours a day, everyday. Most of that is spent browsing the Internet, on social networking sites, playing games, listening to music, calling, emailing and texting - and not, for example, learning a new language.

{ReadWrite | Continue reading }

Nearly one in five high school age boys in the United States and 11 percent of school-age children over all have received a medical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

These rates reflect a marked rise over the last decade and could fuel growing concern among many doctors that the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and its medication are overused in American children. […]

About two-thirds of those with a current diagnosis receive prescriptions for stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, which can drastically improve the lives of those with A.D.H.D. but can also lead to addiction, anxiety and occasionally psychosis. […]

More teenagers are likely to be prescribed medication in the near future because the American Psychological Association plans to change the definition of A.D.H.D. to allow more people to receive the diagnosis and treatment. A.D.H.D. is described by most experts as resulting from abnormal chemical levels in the brain that impair a person’s impulse control and attention skills. […]

A.D.H.D. has historically been estimated to affect 3 to 7 percent of children. The disorder has no definitive test and is determined only by speaking extensively with patients, parents and teachers, and ruling out other possible causes — a subjective process that is often skipped under time constraints and pressure from parents. It is considered a chronic condition that is often carried into adulthood. […]

Fifteen percent of school-age boys have received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, the data showed; the rate for girls was 7 percent. Diagnoses among those of high-school age — 14 to 17 — were particularly high, 10 percent for girls and 19 percent for boys. […]

The medications — primarily Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta and Vyvanse — often afford those with severe A.D.H.D. the concentration and impulse control to lead relatively normal lives. Because the pills can vastly improve focus and drive among those with perhaps only traces of the disorder, an A.D.H.D. diagnosis has become a popular shortcut to better grades, some experts said, with many students unaware of or disregarding the medication’s health risks.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Loretta Lux }

We are swimming in a sea of good advice. Yet we often refuse to take it, and end up drowning.  In a series of clever experiments described in her new book Sidetracked Harvard social scientist, Francesca Gino has found that despite evidence from hundreds of studies over the past two decades showing our decisions greatly benefit from another pair of eyes, we routinely sabotage ourselves by refusing to take advice.

The question is why?

In one study, Gino and her colleagues discovered that making people feel powerful—even temporarily—[…] significantly reduced their willingness to use advice. […]

In another experiment, [they] made one group of people feel angry. […] Others were induced to feel gratitude. […] The gracious bunch proved three times more likely than the mad men and women to accept advice.

{ Psychology Today | Continue reading }

Man arrested with 21 tons of stolen cheese.

Looking like a prostitute is now LEGAL in France after bizarre law banning ‘passive’ soliciting is overturned.

New York State ranks dead last in personal freedom.

Female students just as successful as males in math and science, Asian-Americans outperform all.

Waiters’ tips and the weather: Analysis of a possible connection.

How Climate Change Could Eventually End Coffee.

15 minutes of fame? Study finds true fame isn’t fleeting.

Older, more experienced therapists cry more often in therapy.

New study shows that neuroimaging data can predict the likelihood of whether a criminal will reoffend following release from prison.

Killer Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto provides a valuable resource for those studying the narrative and discursive dimension of crime.

In the United States, nearly one in five women have been raped at some point in their lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — most of them before age 25. Across the planet, more than one in three women will be physically or sexually abused by men.

Why Your Next Phone Will Include Fingerprint, Facial, and Voice Recognition.

How to Make a Computer from a Living Cell. Genetic logic gates will enable biologists to program cells for chemical production and disease detection.

Gartner predicts 3D printers will cost less than a PC by 2016.

HBS Case: LEGO. How LEGO-one of the most profitable toymakers in the world-grew to global dominance from humble beginnings; the mistakes that led it near bankruptcy; and why one turnaround attempt failed while a second succeeded.

The Biological Basis Of Orchestra Seating.

15 Swedish Words We Should Incorporate Into English Immediately.

The 25 Least Visited Countries in the World.

More creepy bunnies.

Ghost-hunting Basquiat in his old East Village apartment .

DETETCIVE: (looks at floor) Im cant beleave it.Its is… (turns to camera) coverd in Crimes.

Body Scripture.

When Engineers Have Dogs.

The U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York dismissed collector Jonathan Sobel’s lawsuit against photographer William Eggleston. […]

The lawsuit was spurred by Christie’s sale last March of 36 poster-size, digital prints of images that Eggleston had shot in the Mississippi Delta more than 30 years ago. Some were created from negatives he had never printed before, while others were based on iconic works, such as “Memphis (Tricycle).” (Sobel owns a 17-inch version of that photograph, for which he reportedly paid $250,000.) The sale was a massive success — by the time it was over, the large digital works accounted for seven of the artist’s top 10 prices. (The five-foot “Tricycle” came in on top, selling for a record $578,500.)

For Sobel, who owns 190 Eggleston works, the success of the sale was part of the problem. “The commercial value of art is scarcity, and if you make more of something, it becomes less valuable,” he told ARTINFO last April.

The judge disagreed. Egggleston may have profited from the Christie’s sale, she concluded, but not at Sobel’s expense. Eggleston could be held liable only if he created new editions of the limited-edition works in Sobel’s collection using the same dye-transfer process he used for the originals — a move that would directly deflate their value. In this case, however, Eggleston was using a new digital process to produce what she deemed a new body of work. 

{ ArtInfo | Continue reading }

China’s population is larger than those of North America, Europe, Russia and Japan combined, and has no tradition whatsoever of liberal democracy and memories are still fresh of the devastating breakup of the Soviet Union. Going further back, China’s more recent history saw chaos and wars, and on average from 1840 to 1978 a major upheaval every seven or eight years. So the Chinese fear of chaos is based on common sense and its collective memory, with very real fears that the country might well become ungovernable if it were to adopt the adversarial Western political system.

China is in many ways unique. It is an amalgam of the world’s longest continuous civilization with a huge modern state. It is a product of hundreds of states amalgamated over its long history into one. A very rough analogy would be something along the lines of the ancient Roman Empire continuing to this day as a unified modern state with a centralised government and modern economy while retaining all its diverse traditions and cultures, and with a huge population still all speaking Latin as their common language. […]

China tried American-style democracy after its 1911 Republic Revolution, and it turned out to be a devastating catastrophe. The country was immediately plunged into chaos and civil war, with hundreds of political parties vying for power and with warlords fighting one another with the support of various foreign powers. The economy was shattered and tens of millions lost their lives in the decades that followed. That lesson remains so sharp that even today ordinary Chinese are most fearful of luan, the Chinese word meaning chaos. Independent opinion surveys on values in China show that public order is generally ranked top, whereas for Americans freedom of speech is the number one value (even though, one may wonder how a politically correct society like the United States can have genuine freedom of speech).

Having myself travelled to over 100 countries, most of them developing ones, I cannot recall a single case of successful modernisation through liberal democracy, and there’s no better example illustrating this than the huge gap between India and China: both countries started at a similar level of development six decades ago, and today China’s GDP is four times greater and life expectancy 10 years longer.

{ Zhang WeiWei/Europe’s World | Continue reading }

photo { Jordan Fox by Jasper Rischen }

Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes.

{ Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1964 | Continue reading }

Viruses are particularly dangerous because they don’t seem to serve any useful purpose for us (unless you count “selecting the fittest humans” as a useful purpose). It is estimated that there are 10 to the 31st power viruses on this planet, compared with 10 to the 10th human beings. We are outnumbered big time. If you have trouble killing all the dozen flies that fly into your living room when you leave the patio door open, imagine trying to kill your quota of 10 to the 21st viruses. It is foolish to think that we can kill all viruses. There are only two winning strategies: 1. quarantine humans from the natural world (e.g. confining cities inside artificial domes), 2. engineer such a strong immune system that the human body will resist any virus attack of any kind.

Ironically, human society has been moving in the opposite direction. On one hand humans travel a lot more than ever, therefore getting in touch with many more viruses than ever. On the other hand, by keeping alive millions of children who would have died of all sorts of diseases and by “protecting” people with all sorts of vaccinations, we are creating a immune system that is now vulnerable to anything, from the dirt in your backyard to the water of mountain creeks.

In other words, we have both of the worst worlds: the human body is getting weaker, and it is getting easier to spread diseases.

Bacteria are far less dangerous than viruses. In fact, most bacteria are useful to us (the “commensal bacteria”). Our body contains many more bacteria cells than human cells, and we need them: they carry out vital functions for us helping us digest and even… fight viruses. Unfortunately, we tend to kill them by the millions when we use (and abuse of) antibiotics.

{ IEET | Continue reading }

While many Americans assume that the Federal Reserve is a federal agency, the Fed itself admits that the 12 Federal Reserve banks are private. […]

Indeed, the money-center banks in New York control the New York Fed, the most powerful Fed bank. Until recently, Jamie Dimon – the head of JP Morgan Chase – was a Director of the New York Fed.

{ Washingtons Blog/Ritholtz | Continue reading }

…the fact that we generally find pleasure to be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very much more painful.

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole!

{ Schopenhauer | Continue reading }

{ Roman Pyatkovka, You Wait…, 2010-2011 }

Store Charging Patrons $5 For ‘Just Looking’, To Offset Losses From Internet Shoppers. [Thanks Glenn]

Next-Gen $100 Bills Prove Hard to Make, Easy to Fake.

Crime has dropped in Juarez, the notoriously dangerous Mexican city. We can thank good, old-fashioned police work.

Darpa Sets Out to Make Computers That Can Teach Themselves.

Why IBM Made a Liquid Transistor.

Women Make Better Decisions Than Men, Study Suggests.

How team conflict can be beneficial.

A single drug can shrink or cure human breast, ovary, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate tumors that have been transplanted into mice, researchers have found. The treatment, an antibody that blocks a “do not eat” signal normally displayed on tumor cells, coaxes the immune system to destroy the cancer cells.

It is widely believed that dietary salt leads to increased blood pressure, and higher risks of heart attack or stroke. This is the “salt hypothesis.” Two major observational studies do not support the salt hypothesis.[PDF]

A study published in the Journal of Hypertension in 2011, which analyzed data from over 6,000 people, failed to find an association between lowered salt intake and lowered risk for heart attacks, strokes, or death.

Chewing accelerates cognitive processing speed.

Research on warning labels printed on cigarette packages has shown that fear inducing health warnings might provoke defensive responses. Reformulating statements into questions can avoid defensive responses elicited by textual- and graphic warning labels.

Climate scientists have linked the massive snowstorms and bitter spring weather now being experienced across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.

A lack of physical exercise causes or contributes to the development of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, some types of cancer, depression, obesity or osteoporosis. And something as simple as physical exercise reduces the risk of getting some of these diseases.

We show that, in books, American English has become decidedly more “emotional” than British English in the last half-century, as a part of a more general increase of the stylistic divergence between the two variants of English language.

Kafka was a fervent womanizer, carrying on numerous romantic involvements (and frequenting brothels) throughout his life. Here, he tries to convince Bauer to marry him.

James Franco: Lindsay Lohan wanted to have sex with me, I said no, because she had “issues.”

On January 26, 2008, a 30-year-old part-time entrepreneur named Mike Merrill decided to sell himself on the open market. He divided himself into 100,000 shares and set an initial public offering price of $1 a share.

Giovanni Di Stefano conned clients like Saddam Hussein out of large sums of money by setting himself up as a lawyer when he had no legal qualifications and was not registered to work as a lawyer.

Debbie Schlussel says, with her usual blend of moderation and critical insight, “every single person involved with this movie is a complete scumbag unworthy of human life” and gives it “four Marxes plus four Obamas plus four Bin Ladens” which must mean it’s really bad. [Thanks Rob]

Room 237 presents a compendium of Shining fans and scholars offering various readings on what the film is really “about.”

Why are the French drinking less wine?

The Joys and Dangers of Exploring Africa on the Back of an Elephant.

So far, Gunnar Garfors has visited 196 of the 198 countries (193 UN members, the Vatican, Kosovo, Palestine, Western Sahara, Taiwan). He set a world record by visiting 5 continents in 1 day on June 18, 2012 using only scheduled transport.

Draw a Tyrannosaurus rex from memory, right now. It’s probably wrong in a very significant way.

Do you know anyone who loves email? I don’t. 10 Rules For Emailing Busy People.

How stores spy on you.

If you’re just dying to get stop-and-frisked, you should either:

Each year since 2004, on the anniversary of the infamous blaze, volunteers fan out across the city to inscribe in chalk the names and ages of the victims in front of their former homes.

Hermes is selling a $91,500 crocodile T-shirt.

I hope your bag is comfortable, asshole.

Howard Family Dental.

Actresses without teeth.

The “Foot-in-the-door” (FITD) is a compliance technique that consists of making a small initial request to a participant, then making a second, more onerous request. In this way greater compliance with the second request is obtained than under a control condition where the focal request is not preceded by the initial request. Most of the studies using this paradigm have tested prosocial requests. So the generalization of this compliance technique to other types of requests remains an open question.

The authors carried out two experiments in which the FITD effect on deviant behaviors was tested. Results showed that the FITD technique increased compliance with the focal request, but only among male participants.

{ Taylor & Francis }

quote { George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922); often misattributed to Plato }

The risk of waking from a general anaesthetic while under the surgeon’s knife is extremely small - about one in 15,000 - research reveals.

Out of nearly 3 million operations in 2011 there were 153 reported cases. […] A third - 46 in total - were conscious throughout the operation.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

The incidence of accidental awareness during general anaesthesia (AAGA) is reported by several studies to be surprisingly high, in the range of 1–2 per 1000 general anaesthetics administered. These studies employ a direct patient questionnaire (usually repeated three times over a period of up to 30 days postoperatively) known as the ‘Brice protocol.’ It is also reported that a high proportion of patients experiencing AAGA suffer psychological problems including posttraumatic stress disorder. There are in fact very few studies reporting an incidence of AAGA much lower than this, an exception being that of Pollard et al., who found an incidence of 1:14 500. However, their methods might be criticised as they administered the questionnaire only twice over a 48-h period, which might only detect two thirds of cases . Anecdotally, anaesthetists do not perceive the incidence of AAGA to be so high. A small Japanese study found that only 21 of 172 practitioners had known of an incident of AAGA under their care, with an overall incidence of just 1:3500. In a larger UK survey of over 2000 consultants, Lau et al. reported that anaesthetists estimated the incidence to be approximately 1:5000, similar to the estimated incidence reported previously by 220 Australian anaesthetists of between 1:5000 and 1:10 000.

{ Anaesthesia/Wiley | Continue reading }