The American Scholar – What F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tax returns reveal about his life and times:
e publication of This Side of Paradise when he was 23 immediately put Fitzgerald’s income in the top 2 percent of American taxpayers. Thereafter, for most of his working life, he earned about $24,000 a year, which put him in the top 1 percent of those filing returns. Today, a taxpayer would have to earn at least $500,000 to be in the top 1 percent. The 1920 census reported the American population as 106,021,537. That year only roughly 7 percent…
2 minutes
SPIEGEL ONLINE – Humor Under Communism – East German Jokes Collected by West German Spies:
d East Germans originate from apes? Impossible. Apes could never have survived on just two bananas a year. Such jokes were whispered in communist East Germany -- and West German spies recorded them diligently to gain insights into the public mood, according to recently released intelligence files. "What would happen if the desert became communist? Nothing for a while, and then there would be a sand shortage." Jokes like that made the rounds among East Germans during the communist era,…
3 minutes
Finance Profs Won’t Bet:
el tempted to play the markets? How much more tempted would you be if you were a professor of finance, certified as an expert whose main job was to study such markets? Turns out, most finance profs know enough to know they don’t know enough to bet: Employing a survey distributed to over 4,000 [finance] professors, we obtain four main results. First, most professors believe the market is weak to semi-strong efficient. Second, twice as many professors passively invest than…
1 min read
TED – Paul Debevec animates a photo-real digital face:
in over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
1 min read
Are humans still evolving? Absolutely:
though advances in medical care have improved standards of living over time, humans aren't entirely sheltered from the forces of natural selection, a new study shows. "There is this idea that because medicine has been so good at reducing mortality rates, that means that natural selection is no longer operating in humans," said Stephen Stearns of Yale University. A recent analysis by Stearns and colleagues turns this idea on its head. As part of a working group sponsored by the…
2 minutes
When is the most agreeable time for a meeting?
fehacker brings the answer: Meeting scheduling service When is Good looked at 100,000 responses to 34,000 events logged to their service over 2 years and found that 3pm—specifically Tuesday at 3pm—seems to be the most agreeable time for a meeting. Other interesting results from the study: • Very little variation exists between the days of the week. We found no evidence that people tend to be any more flexible in the middle, or at either end, of the week. • While…
1 min read
Computer Card Counter Detects Human Card Counters:
e anti-card-counter system uses cameras to watch players and keep track of the actual "count" of the cards, the same way a player would. It also measures how much each player is betting on each hand, and it syncs up the two data points to look for patterns in the action. If a player is betting big when the count is indeed favorable, and keeping his chips to himself when it's not, he's fingered by the computer... and, in the…
1 min read
Which Americans have been married the most?
a economist.com According to Census Bureau data gathered for the first time in 2008, the keenest on remarriage are those in Arkansas and Oklahoma, where over 10% of women who have ever been married have been hitched at least three times. The proportion of men (of those ever married) who go on to have at least three weddings is lower: 9.7% in Arkansas and 9.3% in Oklahoma. Southern and western states have the highest shares of those who are thrice (or…
1 min read
