| A group of federal researchers reports that there were 100,000... |
[09 Nov 2007|03:01pm] |
03:20 08.11.2007
A group of federal researchers reports that there were 100,000...
A group of federal researchers reports that there were 100,000 fewer deaths in 2004 among the overweight than would have been expected of people of normal weight.
Overweight people have a lower death rate because they are much less likely to die from a grab bag of diseases that includes Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, infections and lung disease. And that lower risk is not counteracted by increased risks of dying from any other disease, including cancer, diabetes or heart disease.
(link)
read more at kottke.org
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| ● Malcolm Gladwell's new book on the workplace of the future |
[09 Nov 2007|03:01pm] |
16:49 08.11.2007
● Malcolm Gladwell's new book on the workplace of the future
A few days ago, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell noted that he's almost finished with his third book. I've learned that the subject of this book is the future of the workplace with subtopics of education and genius. (That topic dovetails nicely with business consulting/speaking, no?) As with his previous books, hints of what the book will cover appear in his recent stories and interviews. Most relevant is an October interview with Gladwell in The Globe and Mail on "our working future".
We will require, from a larger and larger percentage of our work force, the ability to engage in relatively complicated analytical and cognitive tasks. So it's not that we're going to need more geniuses, but the 50th percentile is going to have to be better educated than they are now. We're going to have to graduate more people from high school who've done advanced math, is a very simple way of putting it.
Other recent and not-so-recent writings and talks by Gladwell on working, education, and genius include:
- his talk on genius from the 2007 New Yorker Conference
- The Risk Pool - What's behind Ireland's economic miracle and G.M.'s financial crisis? (more, more)
- The Myth of Prodigy and Why It Matters
- Getting In - The social logic of Ivy League admissions
- Brain Candy - Is pop culture dumbing us down or smartening us up?
- Gladwell's personal work space
- Making the Grade
- The Talent Myth - Are smart people overrated?
- The Social Life of Paper - Looking for method in the mess
- The Bakeoff - Project Delta aims to create the perfect cookie
- Designs For Working - Why your bosses want to turn your new office into Greenwich Village
- The New-Boy Network - What do job interviews really tell us?
read more at kottke.org
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| The closure, it draws near. Remember the epic thread about... |
[09 Nov 2007|03:01pm] |
19:17 08.11.2007
The closure, it draws near. Remember the epic thread about...
The closure, it draws near. Remember the epic thread about the plane and the conveyor belt from last year...the one that pitted pilot against physicist against random internet commenter? In an upcoming episode of Mythbusters, they're going to air the results of a test they conducted with an ultralight and a quarter-mile-long conveyor belt:
If a plane is traveling at takeoff speed on a conveyor belt, and that conveyor belt is matching the speed in reverse, can the plane take off? "We put the plane on a quarter-mile conveyor belt and tested it out," says Savage about the experiment using a pilot and his Ultralight plane. "I won't tell you what the outcome was, but the pilot and his entire flight club got it wrong."
Awesome. If the laws of physics hold, that plane should take off. (thx, matt) (link)
read more at kottke.org
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| Po Bronson's 1999 article about Epinions, then a nascent startup,... |
[09 Nov 2007|03:01pm] |
20:39 08.11.2007
Po Bronson's 1999 article about Epinions, then a nascent startup,...
Po Bronson's 1999 article about Epinions, then a nascent startup, is a neat little time capsule of the period just before almost everything in Silicon Valley went poof.
Everything is faster. Zero drag is optimal. For a while, new applicants would jokingly be asked about their "drag coefficient." Since the office is a full hour's commute from San Francisco, an apartment in the city was a full unit of drag. A spouse? Drag coefficient of one. Kids? A half point per. Then they recognized that such talk, even in jest, could be taken as discriminatory in a hiring situation.
Epinions is still going and is now owned by eBay. (via sippey, who is somewhat of an internet time capsule himself) (link)
read more at kottke.org
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| ● The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman |
[09 Nov 2007|03:01pm] |
21:59 08.11.2007
● The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman
Michael Ruhlman is partially responsible (along with my wife, Jeffrey Steingarten, Thomas Keller, Bryan Boyer, and Lance Arthur) for my interest in food. His The Making of a Chef and The Soul of a Chef are two of my favorite books on the subject. His latest is The Elements of Cooking, a Strunk and White's for the kitchen. Ruhlman explains who this book is for:
Every home cook who cares about getting better and every soul who is in or about to attend culinary school. I want all the young cooks who never went to culinary school and have always been nagged by the not-knowing-what-they-missed (probably not as much as they imagine) to buy it. I want every chef to buy it for his or her line cooks. And maybe most of all, beginners -- I can't imagine a better starting reference for cooking terms to go along with other food books. I want every professional cook to buy it for the people who cook for them when they're not at work. In short I want everyone who cares about cooking to buy this book.
(More about this book...)
read more at kottke.org
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| As David Foster Wallace argued in Consider the Lobster, a... |
[09 Nov 2007|10:02pm] |
15:08 09.11.2007
As David Foster Wallace argued in Consider the Lobster, a...
As David Foster Wallace argued in Consider the Lobster, a recent study indicates that lobsters feel pain, an unpleasant finding for an animal that's often boiled alive. But as Wallace says:
Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribusiness and eating practices in much the same way as we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme -- and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human beings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.
(link)
read more at kottke.org
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| ● The Mafia's ten commandments |
[09 Nov 2007|10:02pm] |
16:50 09.11.2007
● The Mafia's ten commandments
When Italian police recently arrested Salvatore Lo Piccolo, the suspected head of the Sicilian Mafia, they also found a list of ten commandments that served as a guide for the behavior of Mafia members.
1. No one can present himself directly to another of our friends. There must be a third person to do it.
2. Never look at the wives of friends.
3. Never be seen with cops.
4. Don't go to pubs and clubs.
5. Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty - even if your wife's about to give birth.
6. Appointments must absolutely be respected.
7. Wives must be treated with respect.
8. When asked for any information, the answer must be the truth.
9. Money cannot be appropriated if it belongs to others or to other families.
10. People who can't be part of Cosa Nostra: anyone who has a close relative in the police, anyone with a two-timing relative in the family, anyone who behaves badly and doesn't hold to moral values.
I smell a future bestseller: Leadership Secrets of the Cosa Nostra...it's the new 48 Laws of Power.
read more at kottke.org
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| Title sequences from Doctor Who, 1963-2006. Unfortunately all the videos... |
[09 Nov 2007|10:02pm] |
20:58 09.11.2007
Title sequences from Doctor Who, 1963-2006. Unfortunately all the videos...
Title sequences from Doctor Who, 1963-2006. Unfortunately all the videos are in Real format, which in the age of YouTube is just silly. Not unfortunately, most of the opening titles videos are available on YT: first Doctor, second Doctor, third Doctor, fourth Doctor, fifth Doctor, sixth Doctor, and seventh Doctor, as well as other variants. (via quipsologies) (link)
read more at kottke.org
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| Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac?... |
[09 Nov 2007|10:02pm] |
21:41 09.11.2007
Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac?...
Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac? Perhaps because federal subsidies and federal nutrition guidelines don't match up.
The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products -- the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.
(link)
read more at kottke.org
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