Many of you have probably seen maps like these before. The geographic size of each country is adjusted (inflated or deflated) to show the relative size of some non-geographic characteristic. Notice, for example, the map of military spending.
According to this article, Bush's troop surge, which was aimed at reducing violence in Baghdad, already shows signs of failure. While violence has fallen inside Baghdad, as you might expect following an influx of U.S. troops, insurgents have simply moved elsewhere, killing American troops and other people in areas not…
Sometimes I wish I believed in prayer. I wish that I could plead, I wish that I could sacrifice, I wish that I could count beads or light a flame and a great omnipotent being would be coerced or convinced to grant my desire. Some people think that you can pray for anything and that sometimes those prayers are granted. They pray for trivial things, such as a new house, a car, for air in a nearly flat tire, or that they won’t be late for work. My favorite example of this is expressed well in the old Janis Joplin’s song, “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”. For those of you too young to remember Janis Joplin, her gravelly voice belting out those words was unforgettable. The lyrics are:
“Mercedes Benz”
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz ?
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a color TV ?
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until three,
So oh Lord, won’t you buy me a color TV ?
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on the town ?
I’m counting on you, Lord, please don’t let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a night on …
"Payday" lending has been big in the news lately. Payday lending is where you go to a licensed loan shark to borrow money at interest rates in the hundreds (450% is not unusual), generally give the shark a post dated check, and 2 weeks later, end up having to renew…
Such a strange question to ask! Here’s what brought it on. Yesterday, I attended a lecture by Sarah Brosnan, a post-doc who works with Frans de Waal at Emory University (I’ve written about de Waal’s work several times). Brosnan’s lecture, “Fairness and Prosocial Behavior in Non-Human Primates,” was sponsored by the Washington University School of Business, which illustrates the extent to which primate research is no longer just for primatologists.
Brosnan’s task was to measure the extent to which two highly social species (Chimpanzees and Capuchins) recognize and/or deal with inequity. The experiment was designed to see how pairs of animals react to situations where one animal of the pair received a relatively substantial payment (a grape) for completing a simple task while the other got a less valuable payment (a cucumber) or no payment at all, though accomplishing the same task.
The videos of the experiments were entertaining, some of slighted animals putting on intense displays of frustration or sulking. It reminded me of my own young children whenever one of them perceives that I’ve treated the other one even a little better. I’ll always get an earful from the slighted daughter, even (especially!) when the payoff is a relatively worthless trinket. And it seems that I never learn . . .
What Brosnan and De Waal set out to measure sounds simple, but it became clear that the task was fraught with potential confounding factors. For example, how do you parse out greed versus envy? How …