Category: ideas

“Some prominent institutions, such as Columbia University or the University of Chicago, are famous for what they require of all undergraduates. Brown University has for the last 40 years been much loved in some circles, and disdained in others, for what it doesn’t require.” Now, Brown is overhauling its so-called “no requirements” curriculum…

When a web site encourages users to share old college exams with the world, is it cheating, or an example of the truly democratic online world, in which information rules and ethics are malleable?

“While the growth of online retailing has resulted in the expansion of products that are available for sale in the long tail, there is little evidence to show that sales of niche products have significantly increased.”

“Whenever we choose a shorter grocery line over a longer one, or a bustling restaurant over an unpopular one, we rally our approximate number system, an ancient and intuitive sense that we are born with and that we share with many other animals.”

Researchers measured popular websites. “Web pages that hadn’t existed when the year began accounted for just under half of the winners – displacing an equal number of older, more established pages in the process. That proportion held even when the bar for success was raised, suggesting there is a general tendency for young websites to out-compete established websites half the time.”

When it’s appropriate to applaud is an old debate in concert halls and theaters, and the rules seem to be different for every artistic setting. Is the answer to the question of when it’s okay to applaud to be found in good old common sense, or have our traditions and biases twisted applause into an impenetrable rulebook guarded by the cognoscenti?

Strictly speaking, some spam, email viruses and mutating programs fit the definition of life, as defined by NASA. It’s just not chemical biological life.

Recent research by economists suggests that you’ll get a bigger bang for your consumer buck by spending while you’re healthy, before old age starts to take the fun out of life’s indulgences.

“It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India’s or Zimbabwe’s than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge.”

In general, an animal must balance the cost of being right with the cost of being wrong, Foster says. Throw in the chances that a real lion, and not wind, makes the rustling sound, and you can predict superstitious beliefs, he says.