Category: ideas

“Certain values the earl represents (benevolent paternalism toward employees, for instance, or the ability to see when his own inherited attitudes have become outdated and inappropriate) have been carefully chosen. And it is noticeable that the aristocrats in the series, even the ones who are supposed to be the most ridiculous, never lapse into the most offensive kind of upper-class drawl one would expect of them.”

“For me, now, things do get done; books are finished, and other projects are started that are also finished. They take the time they take, and the breaks are as important as the continuities. Only a fool would think that someone should be able to bear boredom and frustration for long hours at a time and that this would be an achievement.”

“Why do we sometimes wrestle with moral dilemmas? A twist on a classic psychology experiment suggests that our minds have two parallel moral systems, and they don’t always agree.”

Historian Timothy Messer-Kruse found a serious error of fact in a Wikipedia article on his particular locus of research. He corrected the error, with citations to the primary sources he’d studied, and his changes were undone within minutes. That was just the beginning …

“In hunter-gatherer societies, [the] strength differential doesn’t allow men to fully dominate women, because they depend on the food that women gather. But … [s]trength gives men an advantage over women once heavy ploughs and large animals become central aspects of food production. With this, men become the sole providers, and women start to depend on men economically. The economic dependency allows men to mistreat women.”

“It turns out — based on the levels of activity in the dopamine, serotonin and ocytocin/vasopressin pathways — it is possible for one person to exhibit that they can love someone more deeply than another person can.”

“Advocates argue that data-management technologies, from low-tech pads to high-tech computers, don’t always function as mere memory-prompting tools. Sometimes, they deserve to be understood as parts of our mind.”

“A newly published study finds people are more likely to be moved and intrigued by abstract paintings if they have just experienced a good scare. This suggests the allure of art may be ‘a byproduct of one’s tendency to be alarmed by such environmental features as novelty, ambiguity, and the fantastic,’ argues lead author Kendall Eskine.”

There’s an old English music hall sketch, “Dinner for One”, that was ubiquitous there in the 1920s and ’30s, was recorded for German television in 1962, and somehow caught on in the ’70s, airing every New Year’s Eve and becoming the most popular program in German history. Philip Oltermann explores what the sketch’s popularity explains about the German sense of humor.

“The fatal misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions. The lesson of Building 20 is that when the composition of the group is right–enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways–the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions add up. In fact, they may even be the most essential part of the creative process.”