Remember when we wondered if stricter regulations and restrictions on executive compensation would spark an exodus of talented bankers from top Wall Street firms? Turns out it’s happening, and it’s probably not a bad thing. [%comments]
Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than 70 locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring — in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the U.S.D.A. have kept show that those same lilacs . . .
Terry Teachout, meditating on a rare outburst of booing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, wonders if classical music and theater are being diminished by a superabundance of standing ovations and a scarcity of negative feedback. What if theater and orchestra audiences behaved more like blog commenters? Not too long ago, they did; in 1849, to pick an extreme . . .
| If you’re browsing the internet to increase your workplace productivity, why not brush up on your geography at the same time, with this punkish roast of the 50 state capitals — animated with M&M’s. [%comments]
| For those of you who enjoy dollar origami, we bring you a gallery of Mark Wagner‘s intricate and beautiful dollar bill collages. His portrait of Marxism is our favorite. [%comments]
| A new study by Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg of Cornell University argues that the stress associated with living in poverty reduces the memory capacity of poor children, making it harder for them to learn and escape poverty. Makes you wonder how poverty might be fought in the future. Perhaps more focus on mental-health services, or even church attendance? . . .
| Next month, a small army of meteorologists armed with 40 sensor-loaded vehicles and a flying drone will stalk America’s southern plains, trying to get an unprecedentedly detailed look at tornadoes as they form. The project, the largest and most ambitious of its kind, aims to unravel some mysteries of how these giant storms are born. Once we understand that, . . .
| Zappos created a map on its site showing, in real-time, orders being placed for its shoes across the U.S. Other than hypnotizing Zappos employees and allowing New Yorkers to see for themselves whether they have better fashion sense than the rest of the country, is the map doing anything to help Zappos sell more shoes? As people embrace thrift . . .
| Polling guru Nate Silver has built a regression model, based on demographic and political trends, to forecast when a majority of the voting public in each of the 50 states might vote against a gay-marriage ban, or vote to repeal an existing one. His findings: by 2016, most states will have legalized gay marriage, with Mississippi alone holding on . . .
| You might want to think twice the next time a stranger asks to befriend you on a social networking site. If this IT World article is to be believed, that stranger might want to use innocuous personal information to create a convincing clone of your identity on another social network. Why clone your identity? To use it in nefarious . . .
| You may have read about the glut of cars abandoned at Dubai’s airport as expats fled the country in the wake of the global financial crisis. Journalist Johann Hari digs deeper and tells the story of a Canadian woman who moved to Dubai with her husband. He got into debt trouble in the emirate and was sent to prison . . .
| About 250 Kindle users are using Amazon’s tagging system to boycott e-books that cost over $10, claiming that an e-book is more “restricted in its use” than a paper book and should therefore cost less, reports Wired. One of the boycotters’ main complaints: you can’t lend out your e-books to friends. When digital music fans were confronted with this . . .
| The economic boom of the mid-2000’s brought horror stories of an air travel system straining to operate well over capacity. But fewer people flew in 2008, and a survey shows that translated into better service — fewer delays and cancellations, fewer lost bags, and fewer overbookings. Maybe it’s time to add airline service quality to the list of economic . . .
| Greenpeace Canada believes Toronto’s Pickering Nuclear power plant is putting the city’s residents in mortal danger. So last week, the group distributed leaflets around town warning of impending radiological disaster, each leaflet carrying a pill made of seaweed that was supposed to represent an anti-radiation iodine pill. Alarmed and bewildered, residents alerted the police, who intervened, ending the campaign. . . .
| On the one hand, URL shorteners are handy tools that shrink long, clumsy internet addresses into cute linklets that can fit into a Twitter message. On the other hand, writes Joshua Schachter, they needlessly slow internet traffic, pose a security risk, and can deprive site owners of valuable visitor information or even revenue. Shorteners can be helpful for individual . . .
| Did this German invent the perfect board game? Wired has the story of The Settlers of Catan, one of the most popular new board games in Europe and, now, the U.S. Why is it so popular? For one, instead of having you conquer or bankrupt your friends and family, Catan makes you cooperate with them in a tabletop free-market . . .
| North Korea launched a threatening-looking rocket over the weekend. It crashed harmlessly into the sea. Wonder what North Korea actually looks like on the ground these days? Two Austrians recently entered the country by train, through a border crossing that has been closed to tourists since 1994, and took these rare and fascinating photos of life in the Hermit . . .
Why are these ominous British posters (photographed by David Byrne) informing you of your rights? Photo: David Byrne A stylistic riff on the “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters from the Blitz, these new posters are a publicity campaign for a promise by police to be more engaged with their communities. The evidence is mixed on whether or not community . . .
| To ring in the new year, Tropicana rolled out a weird, minimalist, futuristic redesign of its iconic orange juice cartons. Sales immediately plunged 20 percent, and after just two months on the market, Tropicana scotched the redesign. The quick rollback is all but unprecedented. Why did people react so negatively? After all, the design switch, from an image of . . .
| We can’t decide whether this blog is best before, during, or after lunch: delicious sandwiches, brought to your screen by an ordinary scanner. Naturally, it’s called scanwiches. (HT: Liz Bloomfield) [%comments]
| Eight states are proposing that people get tested for drugs before receiving government assistance. Proponents say it’s a health issue but, as demand for these programs surges, it surely sends a different kind of message. Meanwhile, a bill in the Tennessee Legislature would cap lottery winnings at $600 for people on public assistance. Considering that poor people play lotteries . . .
| Before the crash of 2008, when commodity prices for everything from oil to copper to lead were at record levels, the news was rife with stories of odd thefts. Manhole covers went missing, stolen and sold off to scrapyards. Foreclosed homes were stripped of their copper wiring and pipes. Lead roof tiles were pilfered from churches. Bruce Schneier has . . .
| … you’re probably 9 percent more productive than your co-workers — unless you’re an internet addict. That’s according to new research out of the University of Melbourne, which found that Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) improves productivity by giving internet-centric workers a chance to refocus their minds between tasks. The increase is startling; workers who spend as much as . . .
| Do bicyclists contribute their fair share to the transportation network? An Oregon lawmaker thinks not, and has proposed a law requiring cyclists to pay a $54 registration fee every two years. A Portland bike blog interviewed the lawmaker in question, who explained the proposal this way: “[B]ikes have used the roads in this state forever and have never contributed . . .
| Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman gave a fascinating talk at the Japan Society recently, on the nature of the financial crisis, the importance of financial regulations, and how the internet and the 24-hour news cycle complicate the recovery. You can watch the talk here. [%comments]
| Reason.com offers a nationwide roundup on (mostly stillborn) efforts at the state level to levy a sin tax on video games. Some proposals aim to tax only violent games (who knows it if would affect the forthcoming adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, in which sinners are the exclusive targets of horrific violence). Seriously, though, one can see the populist appeal . . .
| Earlier, we asked blog readers whether an Israeli arms firm could actually sell missiles to India with a Bollywood song-and-dance number. Apparently, they’ve sold quite a few — but despite, not because of the commercial, which reportedly evoked “incredulity and derision” from the Indian public and defense establishment. One senior defense officer told the Times of India: “We are . . .
| The Chinese city of Guangzhou is set to double the size of its subway system by 2010, with 83 new miles of track at a cost of about $100 million a mile. In New York City, construction of a 1.7-mile tunnel for the Second Avenue subway line, first proposed in 1929, could be completed eight years from now, at . . .
| Leave it to documentary filmmaker (and occasional New York Times blogger) Errol Morris to make the connection in this brilliant commercial. (HT: Jeff Behrens) [%comments]
| Losing your job in this economy is turning out to not be so terrible as long as you’ve bought the right things just beforehand. Suits, cars, airline tickets, and now even condominium mortgages come with unemployment insurance attached. Now if only there were some way to insure your Superfreakonomics pants … [%comments]
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