Author: Lloyd Morgan
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Seven Threats to a Sustainable ‘Food Future’
In a hugely captivating and comprehensive look at the food supply chain in Britain, Jeremy Harding provides a look at “the future of food and its supply”–including food ethics, food security and the dire need for a sustainable future. Harding’s case is the most cogent I’ve read and it offers much more than a condemnation…
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India and the Definition of Middle Class
A newly proposed international definition of the middle class for developing countries, produced by the Center for Global Development for the World Bank, has some surprising conclusions for India. The report, produced by the president of the Center for Global Development, Nancy Birdsall, suggests that “middle class” is defined as everyone with an income above…
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In Praise of Self-Tracking: The Data-Driven Life
It is a natural desire to strive for self-improvement andĀ seek knowledge about oneself, but until recently it has been difficult or impossible to do so objectively and quantitatively. Now, through self-tracking systems and applications that are becoming prevalent in many of our lives thanks to a number of technological advances and sociological changes, we can,…
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The Religiosity-Racism Link
Admitting that there are “so many, many positive aspects and benefits to religiosity”, the authors of a meta-analysis on the subject have shown a positive correlation between religious affiliation and racism. Organized religion [ā¦], by its very nature, encourages people to accept one fundamental belief system as superior to all others. The required value judgment…
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After Procrastination, Self-Forgiveness Limits Further Procrastination
In a short article summarising six “surprising insights from the social sciences” we are told how those in powerful positions show little restraint when presented with food and are informed that the perceived “attractiveness advantage” of more sociable people is there simply because they groom themselves better. However I feel that the only constructive insight…
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Why Preserve Endangered Languages?
With his book on “the politics of language” due to be published next year, international correspondent for The Economist, Robert Lane Green,Ā is interviewed in More Intelligent Life. The discussion I find mostĀ intriguingĀ is this onĀ the saving of threatened world languages: Half of today’s languages may be gone in a century. Is there a book that explains…
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The Relationship Between Police and Crime
Does an increased police presence decrease crime? That’s the seemingly simple and obvious question that Mark Easton poses on his BBC blog before explaining the difficulty in attempting to discern if a greater number of police helps to reduce crime. To set the scene, Easton quotes from a Steven Levitt study (pdf) that attempted to…
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The Cognitive Impact of Evaluative ‘Grade’ Letters
Priming students with “evaluative letters” (i.e. letters used to grade papers, such as A and F) has a significant influence on their performance on cognitive tests. As you can imagine, primed with an A their performance on the cognitive tests improve, while those primed with an F displayed degraded performance. That’s what researchers found when…
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Faith in Probability
Following the publishing of his first book–Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives—David Eagleman is interviewed about religion and his beliefs, providing a refreshingly new andā¦ empiricalā¦ take on religious faith, atheism and agnosticism. Every time you go into a book store, you find a lot of books written with certainty ā you find the atheist…
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Happy Citizens are Good Citizens
By fostering happiness in our cities, towns and villages we are simultaneously cultivating inhabitants that will give more blood, donate more to charity, and generally be better citizens. That’s the conclusion from a study looking at how happy people become better citizens as a result of being happy. Happier people trust others more, and importantly,…