Why Do Sandwiches Taste Better When Someone Else Makes Them?

This makes sense to me:

Why Do Sandwiches Taste Better When Someone Else Makes Them?

By Daniel Kahneman

When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, found that imagining eating M&Ms makes you eat fewer of them. It’s a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn’t have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not “preconsumed” in the same way.

Via: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/02/magazine/29mag-food-issue.html#/cooking

 

Progress

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded–here and there, now and then–are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

–  Robert Heinlein, in “Time Enough for Love,” 1973

 

Victory is Tweet

 

For my friend, Beth Massey:

 

Mesmerizing

Go here http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7066/main.swf

and move your cursor around.

Then let it sit and watch the changes.

 

Clever Librarians

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Card catalogues were once vital components of libraries; most were beautifully crafted of durable materials.  Now some enterprising librarians are finding ways to repurpose card catalogues as storage sites and charging stations for e-book readers.

 

 

 

It turns out that the drawers were just the right size for most of the common eReaders. All the case needed was a few holes drilled in the back, and then running some power cables.

 

 

 

The Bloomington Junior High School Media Center offers a brief how-to photoessay

 

 

 

 

Baby’s Cry Clue to Language Development

 The level of complexity of infants’ cries may help to predict which babies are at risk for language delays, new research suggests.

German researchers compared the cries of three groups of 2-month-old babies: 11 with a cleft lip and palate, 10 with cleft palate only and a control group of 50 unaffected infants.

In infants, a “simple cry melody” consists of a single rising and then falling arc, according to researchers. As children age, their cries become more complex. The ability to intentionally segment melodies by brief pauses, for example, eventually leads to syllable production.

By 2 months of age, healthy infants cries display complex melodies more than 50 percent of the time.

Those whose cries show less complexity are at a higher risk for poorer language development two years later.

So, should we make babies cry, to develop more complexity?

Via http://news.yahoo.com/infants-cries-may-predict-later-language-development-200506124.html

 

The above map of the world, drawn by Facebook data structuring intern Paul Butler using connections between 10 million Facebook friends (full-size link), is interesting enough in itself until you realize that all of the country borders are entirely drawn using Facebook friend connections too. Even if the world was dark and totally unmapped, Facebook could produce a remarkably good approximation of most of its continents’ boundaries, and even the borders of some countries.

 

Incredible

A sublimely cool TED video

http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2011/None/EricWhitacre_2011.mp4

Via   http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_whitacre_a_virtual_choir_2_000_voices_strong.html

 

Prop-driven Train

Just when you thought that the Weimar Republic couldn’t do anything!

In the 1930′s, when most trains were steam-powered, German Rail experimented with an aluminum train pushed by a propeller, which ran as fast as 140 mph.

Conceived and built in 1930 by the German rail company Deutsche Reichsbahn, the Schienenzeppelin was a design alternative to the streamlined steam locomotives of its day. It was a slick and relatively lightweight at 20 tons, running on but two axles and powered by a 46-liter BMW V-12.

The same engine was later used to power the light bombers of the Luftwaffe. The engine sent 600 horsepower to a massive ash propeller, tilted seven degrees to produce downforce. It was one of those designs that would shock and delight even in these times, when aluminum is used not for Bauhaus trains but for high-revving V-8s and computers from the near future.

Originally good for 120 mph — on par with the fastest streamlined steam locomotives — the topped out at a magnificent 140 mph in the summer of 1931. It was a record that stood for 23 years and was never surpassed by a gasoline-powered locomotive.

Unfortunately, the train never made it into production. Problems with propeller safety (!) and reliability kept it from attaining mass production. The prototype that set the speed record was dismantled in 1939 on the eve of World War II.

A train like this  would have given a lot of movie train scenes a very different look.  Somehow, I can’t see Bogey waiting next to the Schienenzeppelin in Casablanca.

 

 

Moses Meets Microsoft

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

 

Apps & the Meaning of Life

 

A Complete Man — Apps

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

 

I want it all! Want it now! And want to text while having it!

XKCD nails it

Source: http://xkcd.com/864/

 

Beware the Parent Who Knows Photoshop!

From a creative mother, with too much time on her hands.  I liked the last item on the flyer.

Wanted to keep the trip to Disney World a secret from the kids, so I made this flyer and told them this is why we’re driving to Florida.

 

Writing about fears improves test performance

According to a new study, having students write about their fears about an upcoming test significantly improves their performance.

Two laboratory and two randomized field experiments tested a psychological intervention designed to improve students’ scores on high-stakes exams and to increase our understanding of why pressure-filled exam situations undermine some students’ performance. We expected that sitting for an important exam leads to worries about the situation and its consequences that undermine test performance. We tested whether having students write down their thoughts about an upcoming test could improve test performance. The intervention, a brief expressive writing assignment that occurred immediately before taking an important test, significantly improved students’ exam scores, especially for students habitually anxious about test taking. Simply writing about one’s worries before a high-stakes exam can boost test scores.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/211.abstract