Certain Habits

New word of the day. Turns out a trilemma is a dilemma on steroids. There are two kinds of trilemmas. One is a situation in which there are three options, none of them good, and you have to pick one. (Wikipedia cites Mill’s argument against censorship, which is bad if it’s true, bad if it’s false, and bad if it’s half true.) The other sort of trilemma is a situation in which there are three options, all of them good, and you may only pick two. Like the client’s choice: “cheap, fast, good: pick two.“ Read the rest of this entry »

A post to the Freakonomics blog at The New York Times reports that the placebo effect has been much stronger than expected in several recent trials. So much stronger, in fact, that it has torpedoed several prominent new drugs. Which obviously has the drug companies worried. The bttom line? “Drug companies could be victims of their own success in this instance: we’ve become so convinced of the power of modern medicine, it works even when we’re off the pill.”

“What is silly to one person is endearing to another.“ “The person who will not risk loneliness cannot live authentically.“

… to discover that politicians are corrupt. Discussion ensues.

Several days ago, Daniel Hamermesh made an observation about our current recession I hadn’t seen before:

The answer is that the welfare effect of unemployment depends on its duration. Society is worse off at 10 percent unemployment if that figure is concentrated on a small number of long-term unemployed than if it’s spread more evenly across the labor force. A few weeks of unemployment don’t exhaust savings and don’t lead to great depreciation of skills. A year of unemployment can do both. Read the rest of this entry »

The world’s oldest hotel, Hoshi Ryokan in Komatsu, Japan. Other fun fact. The 100-room hotel has been run by the same family for 46 generations.

See and download the full gallery on posterous Read the rest of this entry »

Ken Burns on Choosing a Restaurant in Fortune: Read the rest of this entry »

In the Boston Globe’s idea section for August 2, Jonah Lehrer describes research that explores the role perseverance plays in success. The idea that success is tied to hard work isn’t new. What did interest me, however, is: a) that psychologists are calling this quality “grit”; b) that it’s (somewhat) measurable; and c) the outcomes of some of those studies.

For example:

Read the rest of this entry »