Is a married man as likely to cheat on his wife as he is to experience a flight delay?
a freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com What’s more dangerous: a playground jungle gym or your office chair? As it happens, one in every 3,759 fatal accidental falls starts from a piece of playground equipment. You’re 85 times more likely, meanwhile, to fall to your death from a chair. That’s one of the many odd pairings waiting to be discovered in The Book of Odds, an online statistical encyclopedia launching tomorrow. Some other probabilistic tidbits I found digging through the site: The average American is…
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New Yorker – Full text of Malcolm Gladwell’s new article on Football, dog fighting, and brain damage:
œI remember, every season, multiple occasions where I’d hit someone so hard that my eyes went cross-eyed, and they wouldn’t come uncrossed for a full series of plays. You are just out there, trying to hit the guy in the middle, because there are three of them. You don’t remember much. There are the cases where you hit a guy and you’d get into a collision where everything goes off. You’re dazed. And there are the others where you are…
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The New Yorker – Malcolm Gladwell on football injuries: Audio Slide Show:
a newyorker.com Join 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
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The ‘Average American’ Is Dying Off:
his census will show that no household type neatly describes even one-third of households," Mr. Francese writes. "The iconic American family -- married couple with children -- will account for a mere 22% of households." The most prevalent type of U.S. household? Married couple with no kids, followed closely by single-person households, according to Mr. Francese's projections. via businessinsider.com Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You…
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Want Your Name On A Building? Now It Costs Less:
ve you always dreamed of having your name on a building to honor your philanthropy and general awesomeness, but just didn't have the cash on hand? You may be in luck: the threshold for building or wing names at colleges, hospitals, and other nonprofits is falling as charitable giving slumps. If you have money, now may be the best time for immortality. Some organizations are struggling to find revenue as wealthy donors as well as corporate sponsors reduce contributions, said…
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The Economist – American feelings on gun control over time:
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
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When the Powerful Feel Incompetent, the Rest of Us Feel Their Wrath:
.the findings from these experiments ...point to a strong conclusion: people in positions of power who do not perceive themselves as competent are far more likely to aggressively lash out against others.  The result is ironic, because we typically think of those who attain power as being especially competent – how else can they get so far?  But what this study suggests is that power may enhance self critique of competence, and the more someone questions whether they really have…
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Mimicry improves women’s speed-dating success
a bps-research-digest.blogspot.com Further analysis showed that in the mimicry condition only, a woman's perceived sexual attractiveness was linked to how much a partner subsequently wanted to share his contact information with her, even after factoring out the general influence of how well the man felt the date had gone. In other words, mimicry seemed to increase the influence of a woman's sexual attractiveness. "By using an experimental approach in a real context it was found that mimicry is associated with greater…
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