on miswanting and the paradox of choice.- January 31, 2007 as someone who occasionally feels that he didn't get The Handbook On Career Planning in particular or life planning in general, the central point of "why career planning is time wasted" rings true to me and makes me wonder how those that do seem able to plot meticulously crafted career trajectories pull it off while maintaining their happiness and sanity: "In reality, people frequently don't know what they want and psychology has proved it. That's why career planning, or at the very least...http://snowdeal.org/2007/01/on-miswanting-and-paradox-of-choice.html is corn a food or fuel- January 15, 2007 even just a few years ago it would have been inconceivable to imagine that people would be wondering if corn is food or fuel. but with nearly 80 ethanol plants under construction and estimates that our increased, er, appetite for the fuel could use as much as half of america's corn crop next year it's suddenly become a timely question. think it's an academic point tell that to the mexican poor hit by the 400 per cent increase in tortilla prices fueled, ahem, by demand for...http://snowdeal.org/2007/01/is-corn-food-or-fuel.html organic foods and environmental stewardship- January 13, 2007 if you look at market research reports that detail why people buy organic foods, you'll typically see 3 different groups of buyers categorized as core, mid-level and periphery; the core group is the most engaged in the organic "lifestyle" while the periphery folks believe it's all a bunch of unsubstantiated hoo-hah and the mid-level folks fall somewhere in between. surprisingly, even amongst core consumers, "environmental stewardship" ranks fairly low on the list of reasons to buy organic...http://snowdeal.org/2007/01/organic-foods-and-environmental.html higher education leads to memory deficits- January 13, 2007 msnbc: going to college may be bad for your brain: "Participants in a new study, all more than 70 years old, were tested up to four times between 1993 and 2000 on their ability to recall 10 common words read aloud to them. Those with more education were found to have a steeper decline over the years in their ability to remember the list, according to a new study detailed in the current issue of the journal Research on Aging." one wonders if they controlled for differences in collegiate...http://snowdeal.org/2007/01/higher-education-leads-to-memory.html art garfunkel's library.- January 12, 2007 wow. it's kind of depressing to know that if i started reading 12 books a year, i probably wouldn't be able to make it through all of the books in art gafunkel's library ( or, more properly, the books that art garfunkel had read ) before i died. i'm sure he's a busy guy - how on earth has he found time to read 1,000 books since the late '60s via kottkehttp://snowdeal.org/2007/01/art-garfunkels-library.html wsj: checked out.- January 8, 2007 What are libraries for Are they cultural storehouses that contain the best that has been thought and said Or are they more like actual stores, responding to whatever fickle taste or Mitch Albom tearjerker is all the rage at this very moment"http://snowdeal.org/2007/01/wsj-checked-out.html the self-esteem myth.- January 8, 2007 until reading debunking the self-esteem myth is hadn't even occurred to me to question the validity of the conventional wisdom that self-esteem, or the lack thereof, is the cause of this or that woe: "Of course, the science on self-esteem has matured over the past few decades and weve determined that, in fact, we were dead wrong in our initial inferences about the effects of self-esteem on peoples abilities to function and perform in society. More recent studies tracked the behavior of...http://snowdeal.org/2007/01/self-esteem-myth.html the peakend rule.- January 7, 2007 the new yorker: boom and gloom: "When people assess a past experience, they pay attention above all to two things: how it felt at the peak and whether it got better or worse at the end."http://snowdeal.org/2007/01/peakend-rule.html from the nothing-new-under-the-philosophical-sun department- January 5, 2007 Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Dont: "A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control." wow. that's the most concise description i've seen of how i feel every morning when i wake up :-)http://snowdeal.org/2007/01/from-nothing-new-under-philosophical.html |