Month: May 2009
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Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
Tongue-in-cheek, but parts of this ring true: the basic laws of human stupidity. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or…
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Living Abroad Enhances Creativity
Could living abroad, (or more specifically, adapting to a foreign culture) enhance creativity? Researchers conducting a series of novel and interesting tests (including the candle box functional fixedness test) are starting to suggest so. Across these three studies, the association between foreign living and creativity held even after controlling for personality variables. In other words…
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The Extinction of the Dinosaurs
Was the Chicxulub impact really the K–T extinction event that caused the extinction of (non-avian) dinosaurs? Well… probably, yes. However, if you don’t know the background you can do a lot worse than Ethan Siegel’s comprehensive yet succinct account of what wiped out the dinosaurs. via Seed
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The Infant Brain, Redux
An interesting follow-up if you enjoyed reading about the development of the infant brain last week: Seed Magazine interviews Alison Gopnik, asking about her research and “why everything we think we know about babies is wrong“. Seed: You describe children as being “useless on purpose.” What do you mean by that? AG: It’s related to…
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History of the 160 Character Text Message
I’ve never given much thought to this, and maybe that’s a sign of how well it was designed and implemented: the history and (high-level) technical development of text messaging. Would the 160-character maximum be enough space to prove a useful form of communication? Having zero market research, [the research commitee] based their initial assumptions on…
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Testing Rationality and Bias
How can we test our rationality and various biases? Shouldn’t you get more rationality credit if you spend more time studying common biases, statistical techniques, and the like? Well this would be good evidence of your rationality if you were in fact pretty rational about your rationality, i.e., if you knew that when you read or discussed such…
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Infographic Inspiration
There’s not much I can say about this collection other than giving you its accurate title: 50 great examples of infographics. via @mikaarauz
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Interpreting Hybrid Images
Remember how the Mona Lisa’s famous smile was painted in low spatial frequencies, hence why we interpret the face differently depending on where we look? Now, Mo of Neurophilosophy takes an in-depth look at how our brains interpret hybrid images and complex visual scenes, shedding more light on this effective imaging technique. He also links…
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Procrastination as Newton’s First Law
There’s a lot I identify with in this article of Joel Spolsky’s where he talks of using the Fire and Motion strategy to cope with workplace procrastination. There have been times in my career as a developer when I went for weeks at a time without being able to get anything done. As they say, I’m…
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UK Bank Holidays
Today is the May Day Bank Holiday here in the UK, so I thought I would look at the history of why we have these public holidays. I was sure that the commonly held belief of why ‘bank holidays’ are so called was incorrect, and it appears that Wikipedians confirm this assumption: “Bank holidays are often assumed to…