Author: Lloyd Morgan
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Mister Rogers’ Nine Rules for Talking to Children
Having not grown up in the US, I only became aware of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood as an adult. However, this is entirely due to Fred Rogers himself: his kindness, his humanity, and his ability to draw children into his safe world. In the lead-up to the publishing of The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work…
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Big History: A History Course Covering 13.8 Billion Years
Big History is an academic course covering “our complete 13.8 billion years of shared history”. From the Big Bang to modern-day society, the course is structured around eight “threshold” moments of increasing complexity, synthesising aspects of cosmology, physics, chemistry, geology, and anthropology to weave a unified story of history so far. The eight thresholds: I…
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The Scientific 7-Minute Bodyweight Workout
Back in 2013, Scientists from the Human Performance Institute published an article in the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal titled, High-intensity circuit training using body weight. To address the limitations of traditional exercise protocols, … one of the exercise strategies we use is high-intensity circuit training (HICT) using body weight as…
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Stretch 15: Daily Dose of Stretching Exercises
Stretch 15 is a straight-forward web app designed to get you stretching more. You just indicate whether you’re in the office or at home, and it gives you a timer and indicates which stretches to do, when. The site tracks your total stretch time and your daily stretch ‘streak’, if you’re into that type of…
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Italian food and the ‘Invented Designation of Origin’
Alberto Grandi is an Italian academic and food expert. He’s also, unsurprisingly, an oft maligned and despised figure across Italy. This is because Grandi exposes the myths surrounding Italy’s famous culinary traditions. From panettone’s industrial invention to carbonara’s American roots, and why if you want “real” Parmesan you should head to Wisconsin. In an interview…
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Congestion Tolling at the Supermarket
To help explain why toll lanes might not be the great solution to traffic congestion many believe them to be, Timothy Lee goes to an unexpected place to draw parallels: your local supermarket. Supermarkets are a good analogy, suggests Lee, because they operate in a free market, are ruthlessly efficient, intensely competitive, and employ ‘lanes’ (checkout…
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The Statistics on Link Rot
By sampling 4,200 random URLs spanning a 14 year period, Maciej Cegłowski, the creator of bookmarking website Pinboard.in, decided to gather statistics on the extent of link rot and how it progressed across time. Interested in finding out if there is some sort of ‘half life of links’, he found instead that it is a fairly linear, fast…
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Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Tips and Rules: An Economist’s Take on Eating Out
When it comes to finding, ordering, and eating at ethnic restaurants there’s only one place to look for advice: economist Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide. I’ve mentioned Cowen’s guide before (if only in passing), but it’s time I dedicated a post to this treasure trove of dining advice and, especially, the tips from Cowen’s General…
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Misunderstood Salt: The Facts About Limiting Intake
For decades we have been told, with certainty, to limit our salt intake or risk heart disease and high blood pressure—but is this advice based on sound scientific findings? The short answer is No. The evidence is inconsistent, inconclusive and contradictory, says prominent cardiologist Jeremiah Stamler (who used to be an advocate for the eat-less-salt…
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Equipping for Emergencies: What Items Disappear First?
As someone who lives in an economically, climatically and politically stable Western country, the chances are somewhat remote that I’ll ever encounter an emergency that requires forethought and careful planning1. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop me from enjoying this list of the 100 most in-demand goods during an emergency. This list apparently originates from someone called…