Category: interesting
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The Mars Bar Unit of Account
The fluctuating weight of the Mars Bar is quite a contentious issue here in the UK. Answering a query as to whether economists take this into account (and not just price fluctuations) when calculating inflation using the Retail Prices Index, economist Tim Harford offers some entertaining information regarding the Mars Bar unit of account. The Mars…
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Female Sexuality Research: What Women Want
The question ‘What does a woman want?’ was, according to Freud, “The great question that has never been answered”. One person trying to answer this question, however, is Meredith Chivers—a psychologist specialising in sexual behaviour whose work was extensively discussed in The New York Times earlier this year. The article, focusing on female sexuality, is…
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Language Incomprehensibility Flowchart (It’s All Greek To Me)
Language Log was asked; When an English speaker doesn’t understand a word one says, it’s “Greek to me”. When a Hebrew speaker encounters this difficulty, it “sounds like Chinese”. […] Has there been a study of this phrase phenomenon, relating different languages on some kind of Directed Graph? To answer the query, Mark Liberman checks…
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Adoption and Abandonment of Tools and Ideas
Jason’s post discussing economist Lant Pritchett’s thoughts on how people perceive ‘game-changing ideas’ over time Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Obvious. Or, more eloquently: Silly, controversial, progressive, then obvious. reminded me of research on the rise and fall of an item’s popularity that found the fall mirrored the rise. According to the results, the quicker a cultural…
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Media Usage Over Time (1800–2020)
Accepting its unscientific’ness, Thomas Baekdal presents an inforgraphic depicting the usage of different types of media over time—from 1800 to 2020. In the past 210 years we have seen an amazing evolution of information. […] But 2009 is also going to be the start of the next revolution. Because everything we know is about to…
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What Maketh A Man?
The Observer asks what five ‘brilliant’ writers believe ‘makes a man’. Jackie Collins goes for talent, Tony Parsons votes for pride, and Jonathan Coe says chivalry… and confusion? If I’m confused about masculinity, in any case, I think that puts me in pretty safe company – the company of every other thinking male in the country.…
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George Carlin’s Last Interview
Shorty before his death last year, comedian George Carlin gave what was to become his last wide-ranging interview—with Jay Dixit, senior editor of Psychology Today. Carlin discusses many things in this interview; from detailing his method for coming up with material to his use of technology and this on the advantages of being an older…
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The Perils of Pop Psychology
In response to Jane O’Grady’s Open Democracy article critiquing the ‘neuro-social-sciences’, Julian Sanchez outlines his thoughts on the perils of pop psychology: There are arguments that simply can’t be made in the span of even a longish newspaper or magazine article. If one is writing for a lay audience, in fact, I feel pretty confident that…
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Rethinking Prison Design
Justice Center Leoben is a fantastically-designed prison in Austria that can’t be ignored. Designed by architect Joseph Hohensinn, views on the prison are varied and emphatic. The New York Times takes a tour of the prison, offering some novel thoughts on imprisonment and rehabilitation. Before the prison opened, late in 2004, [Joseph Hohensinn] had a…
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Benjamin Kunkel on The Information Age
In an essay looking at the changing roles technology takes in our lives and how this changes us, Benjamin Kunkel articulates what many journalists have tried and failed to do in recent times: produce an expressive piece about the ‘information age’ without resorting to tired analogies and scaremongering. Critiques, as opposed to mere descriptions, of…