If I'm asking, you probably already know the answer. It's counterintuitive, it's downright illogical, but whole-wheat bread, not sugar, causes a greater rise in blood sugar. It blew my mind, but it's one of those things that makes you rethink what you thought you knew, and makes you wonder what other self-evident truths you are... Continue Reading →
How the iPad has changed my reading habits, and how it hasn’t
For my birthday this year, my wife gave me an iPad Air (thank you!) Unbeknownst to me, this was to radically change my reading habits. I am--perhaps was, now with the iPad--huge fan of libraries and bookstores: the smell of age-worn books, newspapers and old people; the sounds of teenagers and their gossipy tongues; and... Continue Reading →
Metro Design
WordPress 3.8 has just been released, and it brings with it some rather significant aesthetic changes to the admin interface. While giving it a test drive, I realised how closely it resembled that of Windows Phone/8 (in terms of colours, fonts, and distinctive "flatness"). For all their faults, Microsoft's Metro interface is, to me at least,... Continue Reading →
Zero-Growth and Non-commercial Insurance
Imagine if you were able to take, to accept, a world in which there was "zero growth". What would its implications be? Would it be undeniably negative? I can imagine a world in which insurance is provided by friends and family, by community instead of commerce. If one needs help, one looks for one's own,... Continue Reading →
The problem with following the habits of “successful people”
I was reading an article on what "rich people do" that implied that if you wanted to become rich, you should do what they do. The problem with these sorts of articles, as I'm sure has been explored many times before, is manifold. Firstly, they're talking about what rich or successful people do now. That is, after they're rich... Continue Reading →
The Three Christs Experiment (and Business Superstars)
I came across this nice write up on "The Three Christs of Ypsilanti" experiment (via Marginal Revolution) about how a psychologist put three people -- all of whom claimed they were Christ -- together in a mental institution, in the hope that the effect of their conflicting identities would somehow awaken them to the possibilities that... Continue Reading →
The Unequal Pay Monkeys Experiment
What happens when you give monkeys unequal pay? Surely monkeys won't feel indignant at being paid less than a peer? Well, some scientists decided to find out, and created this ingenious experiment that's now available on Youtube. Watch it below and be prepared to laugh your underpants off. The monkey's reactions are classic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Go8tnl21MU
The Evolutionary Advantage of a Resistance to Change
I was just thinking about organisational change and pondering over how our natural tendency to change is to resist it, when this thought popped up: if resistance to change is so hardwired in our brains, it must serve some purpose -- but what? One of the premises of evolutionary theory is this: if something survives... Continue Reading →
Competitive Intelligence/Analysis
It's strange how today's the first day I realise how closely related competitive intelligence is to so much of what I've been doing and thinking and writing about in the fields of data analysis *slash* business analysis *slash * business intelligence *slash* data science etc. This discipline even has a professional society of called, aptly enough,... Continue Reading →
I haven't been to the kottke.org page for a while (like in five years) and was serendipitously reintroduced to it through Marginal Revolution on CK Chesterton's essay on success (and its associated BS). Talk about coincidence. Glad to see it's still standing and well worth a read.
Donn, fragments 