From TED’s About This Talk: Every day there are news reports of new health advice, but how can you know if they’re right? Doctor and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre shows us, at high speed, the ways evidence can be distorted, from the blindingly obvious nutrition claims to the very subtle tricks of the pharmaceutical industry. If…
From the TED’s About This Talk: Behavioral economist Dan Ariely studies the bugs in our moral code: the hidden reasons we think it’s OK to cheat or steal (sometimes). Clever studies help make his point that we’re predictably irrational — and can be influenced in ways we can’t grasp. When I ran across Dan Ariely’s…
Hm. Maybe no longer doodling in meetings is why they seem hard to remember? Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension — and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we’re caught doodling in a meeting? Sunni Brown says: Doodlers, unite! She makes the case for unlocking your brain…
Language is our genes talking; getting things that it wants. … Social learning is visual theft.
60 Minutes said most stock trades are made by computers without human involvement designed by math wizards for pennies of profits per trade over billions of trades. Milliseconds become important to beating the competition (other computers) by being faster. Getting close to or in the stock exchange buildings has physical effects. Of course, a bad algorithm…
I read quite a bit. Not having a spouse, children, or real adult responsibilities, I have much free time to spend. Reading is a preferred way of spending that time. My goals probably are better described as self-challenges to stretch my reading in new ways. Perhaps it is more like a 5K race winner deciding to…
What would be in your sandwich? Richard Feynman wrote a couple of my favorite books: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out and The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist. It was reassuring to find someone who held similar views on the world. Susskind’s The Black Hole War is on my to-read list. Guess…