This BizWeek article about preemies brings up the issue of how much money it is worth spending to save a human life. A popular knee-jerk reaction is to claim that you cannot put a price on the life of a person. It's easy to demonstrate that this is not true. All I need do is point out the large number of people who die every day from causes are ( Read more... )

Apparently I'm a Liberal. Whoda thunk?


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Yesterday I was helping a kid edit an essay at the Pirate Supply Store - it's a front for a writing clinic - and couldn't help but notice some interesting characteristics of the manner in which he used the computer ( Read more... )

Despite having wreaked havoc by tampering with things we don't understand on countless occasions, it seems we humans just can't bring ourselves to stop. One of the 6 ideas that Esquire claims will change the world is the idea of sequestering the CO2 we generate (from burning fossil-fuels to generate power) under the ocean's depths. They quote Kurt ( Read more... )

While watching a baseball game a few weeks ago, I wondered why people have affiliations with sports teams. What makes them care so much about the fortunes of an organization from which they receive no tangible benefit? More surprisingly, why is it that so many people care more about the progress of the sports teams they follow than they do about ( Read more... )

I helped lead a landscaping project at the SF zoo this morning. Some of the volunteers wore wading boots and extracted weeds from a pit filled with mud. Every single one of them ended up covered in some pretty strong-smelling mud by the end. But at one point I overheard one kid saying to another, "I thought this would be boring and we wouldn't get ( Read more... )

In honour of yesterday's festivities, I wish to write about ignorance. And stereotypes. As human beings we all rely upon stereotypes as a means of dealing with the cognitive burden of information overload. The sophistication of those stereotypes depends upon the breadth of knowledge we have about the world. Yesterday I was at an independence day ( Read more... )

Last night, as I was about to fall asleep, I had a great idea for evaluating the effectiveness of marketing materials. I'm not sure if this is a known technique or not but I thought I'd describe it just in case it isn't ( Read more... )

It's a widely held misperception that people are impatient. In reality, people just want to be reassured that progress is being made. As long as they perceive that to be the case, it is possible to keep them waiting indefinately with little to no ill-effect ( Read more... )

Stanford Theatre is trying something new this summer: pay-what-want productions. Last week ayanosuke and I tried to attend one. All seats had been reserved by the time we called them (an hour before the performance began) but they start handing out unclaimed tickets to people on the wait-list a few minutes before the play starts. We added ourselves to the ( Read more... )