Category: interesting
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The Efficacy of Hand Sanitizers
Given their prevalence in offices, hospitals and pharmacies (how naïve?), I would have thought the effectiveness of hand sanitizers would have been a lot greater than it is: In 2005, Boston-based doctors published the very first clinical trial of alcohol-based hand sanitizers in homes and enrolled about 300 families with young children in day care. For…
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The Benefits of Touching
‘Touchier’ basketball teams and players (those who bump, hug and high five the most) are more successful than those who limit their non-playing physical contact. Similarly, higher satisfaction has been reported in romantic relationships in which the partners touch more. Just two of the findings from research looking at the importance of touching in relationships.…
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The Cognitive Importance of Good Sleep
After a week of surviving on minimal sleep you may assume that a lazy weekend will allow you to recover in time for the coming days. Not so: research has shown that not even a full week of quality sleep can reverse the cognitive and physiological ‘damage’ just five days of poor sleep can inflict on…
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De Beers and the Diamond Market
I’ve previously mentioned, in passing, how the concept of the diamond wedding ring was manufactured. I’ve now been reminded of this upon rediscovering Edward Jay Epstein‘s comprehensive 1982 article in The Atlantic charting the story of how De Beers created the entire market for diamonds through supply/demand manipulation and PR. De Beers proved to be the most…
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How to Disagree
To aid the understanding and construction of quality arguments, Paul Graham has created a “disagreement hierarchy”: a study on how (and how not) to disagree. We can use this classification system to ensure that when we respond to a person’s reasoning, we respond to it in a way that is constructive for the conversation (by…
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How to Be Interesting
Russell Davies offers ten activities that will lead to you being more interesting; including Start a blog, Keep a scrapbook, and Read. I believe you can sum them up into one piece of advice: Do something. Davies compiled the ten activities, believing they will make a person more interesting, based on two assumptions. However I believe the two assumptions…
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Derren Brown’s Bertram Effect Experiment Text
I love the Bertram effect. It’s likely the cognitive bias / psychological experiment that I think of the most. While the text from the original experiment is good, it’s from 1948. In the brilliant Tricks of the Mind and his 2000s TV show of the same name, Derren Brown updated the experiment, using his own text (reproduced…
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Buying Cashmere
Like linen, buying cashmere is a matter of discovering the important metrics and discarding the unnecessary. The truth about quality cashmere is much more complex than simply looking for that pure cashmere label. Pure is not an absolute term. The finest cashmere consists only of the whitest, longest, thinnest hair from the underfleece, whereas lower-quality cashmere…
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Buying Linen: Thread Count Marketing
Remember that numerical specifications drastically influence our choices: even if they’re meaningless and contradict our personal experience? The same goes for thread count, it seems: Textiles expert Mark Scheuer calls it a “marketing ploy” and tells you to forget about it when purchasing, while Linenplace says it is a metric we should consider–just not the most…
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Reasons for Compassion and Charity
Tackling the idea that human empathy is self-serving, Dacher Keltner, for UC Berkeley’s Greater Good magazine, reviews a number of studies looking at why we are compassionate. In other research by Emory University neuroscientists James Rilling and Gregory Berns, participants were given the chance to help someone else while their brain activity was recorded. Helping others…