Link Banana

I apologize heartily for the cringe-worthy title. I bear no responsibility for it’s creation, merely it’s prorogation. But Reihan Salam, among others, thinks that men and machoness are unlikely to emerge from this recession unscathed. While part of me is screaming “bogus trend story,” I can’t condemn it as meritless:

As behavioral finance economists Brad Barber and Terrance Odean memorably demonstrated in 2001, of all the factors that might correlate with overconfident investment in financial markets—age, marital status, and the like—the most obvious culprit was having a Y chromosome. And now it turns out that not only did the macho men of the heavily male-dominated global finance sector create the conditions for global economic collapse, but they were aided and abetted by their mostly male counterparts in government whose policies, whether consciously or not, acted to artificially prop up macho.

(via Idea of the Day)

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An interesting theory: the reason ineffectual folk cures spread is that their ineffectiveness raises their visibility. So that’s why all those people take Emergen-C and Airborne…

(via Idea of the Day)

They ask us compare angles, but we tend to underestimate acute angles, overestimate obtuse angles, and take horizontally bisected angles as much larger than their vertical counterparts.

The piece’s thesis: that data visualization cannot save you, is certainly one worth taking to heart.

(via Idea of the Day)

Apparently, economists think there are better and worse ways for us to spend our way out of the recession. Some of their most interesting suggestions:

Tyler Cowen, George Mason University: In my view, fixing the banking sector is more important than getting the stimulus right. So if you can afford to lose the money, go to a large bank (more likely to be insolvent), find their most overpriced service, and buy as much of it as you can. That way you are doing your part to recapitalize our banking system.

Ethan Harris, Barclays Capital: Get a haircut. It is a purely domestically produced service with extremely high labor content. This means no drain in spending power out of the country: it is “Buy American” without violating any trade agreements.

Robert Shiller, Yale University: I suggest using it to give an extra-generous tip to taxi drivers. They talk to lots of people, especially active business-oriented people, and they will be feeling more upbeat, sensing that some people are feeling flush, and they will communicate this feeling to numerous people, thereby helping restore confidence.

(via Ideas)

I swear this article appears at least semiannually in some paper somewhere. This one chose the “epicenter of artistic talent” angle.

(via Ideas)

I’ve always been curious about Esperonto, so when this post led me to this story which pointed to this site where I found the introductory course in the title link, I had to spend a few minutes working through the very straightforward and informative introduction.

John Parkers offers a welcome counterweight to the unavoidable, and often inane, argument that people are dumber than ever before. A snippet:

Millions more people are going to museums, literary festivals and operas; millions more watch demanding television programmes or download serious-minded podcasts. Not all these activities count as mind-stretching, of course. Some are downright fluffy. But, says Donna Renney, the chief executive of the Cheltenham Festivals, audiences increasingly want “the buzz you get from working that little bit harder”. This is a dramatic yet often unrecognised development. “When people talk and write about culture,” says Ira Glass, the creator of the riveting public-radio show “This American Life”, “it’s apocalyptic. We tell ourselves that everything is in bad shape. But the opposite is true. There’s an abundance of really interesting things going on all around us.”

(via Ideas)

I’m increasingly leery of news stories proclaiming that academics have proven or demonstrated something or other. That said, some Dutch researchers have experimental evidence showing that signals of low-level crime make people more likely to litter or steal.

(via Ideas)

Hypothetical question: You’re heartsick about global warming, so you’ve just paid $25,000 to put a solar system on the roof of your home. How do you respond to news that it was manufactured with a chemical that is 17,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide as a cause of global warming?

I’d probably say, “Really!? Wow. That sucks. Is there any replacement.” To which the article says nothing.

(via Ideas)

The Ideas Blog brings up a topic I’ve never considered: who deserves credit for a photo of graffiti (or other street art), the photographer or the creater of the object being photographed?

Obviously you wouldn’t want to use this to judge a proud carnivorium (that is: steakhouse), but I definately think this idea has some merit.

I have a theory that you can tell how much a restaurant thinks about its food by the quality of its veggie burger. The item has become the quintessential menu add-on for restaurants that want to show that they “care” about vegetarians. Restaurants, let me share a tidbit right now: Warming a pre-packaged Gardenburger, slapping it on a bun, and charging $9 for it is not caring for vegetarians. It’s caring for vegetarians’ friends who want to go to a restaurant and say, “Oh, look, they serve something for you.” Meaning: you eat boring meatless crap, and this place serves one boring meatless item.

(via Ideas)

Robert Frank points to new evidence he was right all along:

According to a new survey by Prince & Associates, voters worth $1 million to $10 million are favoring Sen. John McCain, while voters worth $30 million or more are favoring Sen. Barack Obama. …

The reason? Taxes.

(via Ideas)

I found Theodore Dalrymple’s argument against modern apologies for past wrongs — Kevin Rudd apologizing to Aborigines, Tony Blair’s apology to the Irish — to be fascinating and challenging. The most interesting paragraph:

In some case, it is a substitute for importance, or for a loss of importance. Europe (or at least its intellectual class) now feels more than ever responsible for Africa, precisely because its power over it has waned. If Europe cannot feel itself responsible any longer for all that is good and progressive in Africa, such as modern medicine, roads, railways, telephone, etc., it can at least feel responsible for all that is bad in it, such as starvation, civil wars, and so forth. For it is far better, from the point of view of self-esteem, to be responsible for great evil than to be completely or even relatively unimportant. If in the process of false apologizing the participants render Africans themselves inert and inanimate, responsible themselves for nothing, or nothing very much, that is a small price to pay.

(via Ideas)

I link to this mainly to pointlessly say: I thought of this first. Like, when I was 14. That is not to say, I should note, that I think the idea’s completely correct. In any case, the idea:

“In ancient times half our children would have died by the age of twenty. Now, in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to the age of 21. Our life expectancy is now so good that eliminating all accidents and infectious diseases would only raise it by a further two years. Natural selection no longer has death as a handy tool.”

(via Ideas)

Richard Wilson writes an incredibly enjoyable list of ten books you probably shouldn’t read before you die. His reasons are probably the most fun. On The Lord of the Rings:

The best I can say about this book is that it was a very useful tool at school for helping to choose your friends. Carrying a copy of Tolkien’s monstrous tome was the equivalent of a leper’s bell: ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ I knew I would have nothing in common with anyone who had read it. Their taste in music, clothes, television, everything was predetermined by their devotion to Gandalf. Without a shadow of a doubt, in a few years, these people would be going to Peter Gabriel gigs and reading Dune.

(via Ideas)

I’ve liked this idea for a while — it makes more sense to me than trying to derive energy from a dance floor. That said, this makes me wonder if it will ever be sensible:

“It’s a little humbling — a person can make about a penny’s worth of electricity an hour. So it’s not a lot,” said Michael Tagget, president of Henry Works, adding that on his or her own, an individual can create 50 to 100 watts of electricity.

(via Ideas)

While recent unemployment numbers give us more reason to fear, it’s worth considering the oddball effects of the recession, like that the toothfairy can now only afford about $1.50 per tooth. The rate was over $2 not more than six months ago.

(via Ideas)

Postscript: I’m aware I may be inaccurate in calling this a recession, but I prefer it’s brevity to “economic crisis”, “credit crunch”, “economic readjustment”, etc.