Cultural myths die hard. Even though a study in Science earlier this year found that men and women uttered nearly the same number of words in a day, yet women are widely perceived to be more chatty. My pet theory is that men see themselves as talking about things that are necessary and important, like […]
Read more...Folks, it’s a slow day in the media and blogland, not even a sighting of Ben Stein to liven things up. So I will pass along this story (warning: gross at points) from the Times of London, which recaps an article from Science Magazine on the ten “wackiest” experiments of all time. Unfortunately, this falls […]
Read more...The article below, from the 12 Angry Men Blog, mourns the dumbing down of home chemistry kits. One has to wonder at these heavy-handed efforts to contain threats, particularly in a society that lacks gun controls. Are we next going to make styrofoam a controlled substance, since mixed with gas, it produces a decent napalm […]
Read more...I must be losing perspective to think this has anything to do with the MLEC rescue proposal. From the BBC: Chimpanzees under attack exaggerate their screams to get help from higher ranking group members, researchers from Fife have discovered.The study found primates produce high-pitched and prolonged screams when they were the victims of severe aggression […]
Read more...Time for some lighter weekend fare…
Read more...The Ig Nobel Prize is given annually by the Journal of Improbable Research to “celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative – and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology”. From the BBC, whose favorite award was for the “gay bomb”: 2007 Ig Nobel Winners Medicine – Brain Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, […]
Read more...According to Bloomberg (hat tip 2Blowhards), well-groomed men do better financially than their rumpled peers. And contrary to popular perception, the impact is greater for men than women. Note that the study measured time spent on primping, and made no effort to assess the efficacy of those efforts. Perhaps the seemingly lower economic impact of […]
Read more...Oh, you are such a good reader! You either care about this site enough to look at notices and/or you found “consulting porn” worthy of attention (probably because you found the expression to be an oxymoron). Like it or not, if you are in a large, or even a medium sized organization, you may have […]
Read more...If this story hadn’t come from the Associated Press, via the Toronto Star, I’d have some doubts as to its veracity: A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday. The 30-year-old man fainted at a cybercafe in the city of Guangzhou on […]
Read more...Tonight we are likely to have a dog’s breakfast of posts. I’m leaving town later today, still haven’t packed, and am at the moment bored with writing about central bankers. This item struck me as useful business trivia. Since almost everyone knows someone who is starting a business, the question of what to call it […]
Read more...In a departure from our usual programming, I thought I would introduce a real estate opportunity (yes this is an ad of sorts). But as you can see, it is particularly attractive and also presents an interesting case example of the issues involving the marketing of unique and illiquid assets. The asset in question is […]
Read more...Will someone, please, teach the reporters at the Wall Street Journal the basics about scientific research? I know it’s hard finding stuff to write about day in, day out. But the story “Scholars Link Success of Firms To Lives of CEOs” is a travesty. The centerpiece of the article is a study by Morten Bennedsen, […]
Read more...The title above is the headline of a story in Science Daily, which reports on the recommendations of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which in turn cites a recent report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The FAO report found that over-reliance on a few highly productive livestock breeds, such […]
Read more...Eeeew…..I much prefer the US solution of neuter and release. From the BBC: Australians have come up with a novel solution to the millions of feral cats roaming the outback – eat them. The felines are the descendants of domestic pets and kill millions of small native animals each year. A recent Alice Springs contest […]
Read more...The BBC reports that a mayor in Russia has gotten tired of bureaucratic buck passing and to put a stop to it, has banned the use of certain phrases, like “Somebody else has the documents.” While some of the now-verboten excuses are peculiar to civil service (“The working day is over”), others are popular in […]
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