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Uncommon Knowledge
Boston Globe: Inequality makes us unhappy - well, some of us Although many people blame modern-day angst and cynicism on a materialistic, media-driven culture, a recent analysis of national survey data going back to 1972 finds that another possible explanation may be income inequality. In years with greater income inequality, Americans perceived their fellow citizens to be less fair and trustworthy and, as a result, were less happy. However, this reaction was only significant in poor people. Controlling for perceived fairness, trust, and income, affluent people were actually happier in years with greater income inequality. Read the whole story: Boston Globe
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Imagining the Downside of Immortality
The New York Times: IMAGINE nobody dies. All of a sudden, whether through divine intervention or an elixir slipped into the water supply, death is banished. Life goes on and on; all of us are freed from fear that our loved ones will be plucked from us, and each of us is rich in the most precious resource of all: time. Wouldn’t it be awful? This is the premise of the TV series “Torchwood: Miracle Day,” a co-production of Starz and the BBC that has been running over the summer and ends in September. The “miracle” of the title is that no one dies anymore, but it proves to be a curse as overpopulation soon threatens to end civilization.
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Wide-faced CEO’s ‘better for their companies’
The Telegraph: Those whose chief executives have fat heads perform better financially than those whose leaders have long faces, according to a study to be published in the journal Psychological Science. Men wider faces tend to have higher testosterone levels, say researchers, making them more aggressive. This could explain the apparently bizarre link between face shape and company performance, they argue. Elaine Wong and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the US looked at 55 Fortune 500 companies, analysing the structure of their chief executive's faces and financial performance indicators.
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Where Some Earn Enmity, Jobs Won Affection
The New York Times: Steven P. Jobs — domineering, short-tempered and anything but warm and fuzzy — has done something few business people in history have ever accomplished: engender genuine affection. His decision to step down as chief executive of Apple brought people to tears, inspired loving tributes to him on the Web and even had some adoring customers flocking to Apple stores on Thursday to share their sentiments with other fans of Macs, iPhones and iPads. “Through the mist in my eyes, I am having a tough time focusing on the screen of this computer,” wrote Om Malik, the prominent technology blogger.
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Width of CEO’s face can predict the company’s success
Yahoo India: Washington, August 26 (ANI): Want to know how successful a company will be? Well, just look at the width of its CEO's face. A new study has concluded that CEOs with wider faces, like Herb Kelleher, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines, have better-performing companies than CEOs like Dick Fuld, the long-faced final CEO of Lehman Brothers. Elaine M. Wong at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her colleagues Margaret E. Ormiston of London Business School and Michael P. Haselhuhn of UWM, based their analyses on photos of 55 male CEOs of publicly-traded Fortune 500 organizations.
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Four Loko Is Just Like The Copenhagen Philharmonic
Scientific American: It’s an ordinary afternoon at Copenhagen Central Station. At 2:32pm, a man who appears to be a run-of-the-mill street performer sets up a drum in the center of a large hall. A cellist joins him. A woman approaches with her flute. The melody is sort of recognizable… It sounds sort of like Ravel’s Bolero. Pretty cool jam session, right? Then the clarinet and bassoons and all the rest of the instruments start playing. People pull out their cell phones and record video. Fathers and children take a seat on the tile floor to listen. Mothers with strollers slow down to watch.
