Arcade Fire put up a million dollars for Haiti <– At the Festival d’Ete de Quebec, Arcade Fire announced that they will match donations to Kanpe, a Montreal-based NGO working on rebuilding Haiti, dollar for dollar up to one million dollars. You can donate $5 by texting “STAND” to 30333. I don’t know much about [...]
I was listening to an interview with George Dawes Green yesterday on NPR when he said something I’ve noticed without ever really being conscious of it. The time one person can speak uninterrupted in a conversation is getting shorter. Talking specifically about New York City, he said that people have too much ego and/or testosterone [...]
At the Aspen Environment Forum 2010, a moderator of one of the panels stated that British kids could more easily identify Japanese cars than native plants and animals (h/t: Tomorrow’s Table). On one hand, given that cars move fast and do exciting things while plants just sit there, that’s not surprising at all. It also [...]
Clay Shirky, who I have mentioned a couple of times on this blog already, has a new book out. I haven’t read the book yet–and to be honest, I don’t think I’ll find the time–but his idea of cognitive surplus seems like an interesting one to explore. Wired gave a brief description of his book [...]
From Jonah Lehrer’s Wired blog who got it from a blog post by Ross Douthat at the New York Times: Part of the problem with meritocracy is that it homogenizes in the name of diversity: It skims the cream from every race and class and population, puts all of the best and brightest through the [...]
We all like to think we’re in control of our decisions. But, even aside from the fact that we have no free will (thought I’d just slip that in there; UPDATE: here’s another great article about free will), other factors–things we wouldn’t want to admit are affecting our judgment–are influencing our decisions. There are many [...]
I hate to follow up a Peters’ Pick with a deep post like this but here goes: This is an idea that I think about often but have never put it out there. I’ve read a lot about the continuous debate about the role of religion in society and day to day life. One of [...]
The Atlantic had an article a couple years ago asking “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Did I read it? Nope. Because it smelled like an idea concocted more to raise people’s eyebrows than to raise their intelligence. Is that a good reason to not have read it? Nope. Did the article actually contain something interesting? [...]
Having now been immersed in two different scientific fields (ecology and epidemiology), I find it a little ridiculous when people try and characterize who a scientist is and what as scientist does. The scientists I’ve worked with in both ecology and epidemiology are so different–mostly because they have different priorities and different sets of problems–that [...]
It’s Friday. It’s hot. Hopefully everyone is at the pool like I’ve been the last three days. In case you’re actually at your computer, I’ve got three things: Dan Ariely, behaviour economist at Duke, wants you to participate in his new study. Though he describes it as “fun”, it’s more weird than anything else but [...]
