Photographer Eric Lafforgue has ventured into North Korea six times. Using digital memory cards he smuggled out images of the communist nation he was forbidden to take. Mr Lafforgue wanted to show that North Koreans are humans, not robots, who also suffer.
Researchers asked more than 1000 U.S. married couples about their desired and actual sexual frequency. Spouses who weren’t getting as much sex as they desired were less satisfied and thought about ending their marriages more often, had less positive communication with their partners, and reported more conflict. Similarly, the spouses of sexually unfulfilled individuals reported these same negative outcomes (i.e., if you aren’t getting the sex you desire, your partner is less satisfied etc.). While these effects are likely reciprocal, getting the sex you want is associated with better relationship quality for both you and your partner.
Although a common narrative, do the data support the notion that today’s young adults are “hooking up” more than previous generations? In short…no. A sociological study using the General Social Survey comparing hook-up rates among today’s students with students from a decade ago found that both groups reported similar rates of hooking up.3 Specifically, 31.9 % of students from 1988-1996 reported having more than one sexual partner in the past year, whereas 31.6% of today’s college students reported having more than one sexual partner in the past year.
Forget conventional gun-control proposals. These provisions may make sense to deter many kinds of wrongdoing, but they don’t apply to the suicidal young man determined to express his pain and rage by taking innocent people with him. Elliot Rodger, the self-pitying Santa Barbara killer, passed background checks—three times—as he bought his Glock and Sig Sauer pistols. He didn’t need an “assault weapon,” or military-style semiautomatic rifle. Ordinary handguns did just fine. He didn’t need large-capacity ammunition magazines; those are already illegal in California. He planned ahead: three pistols in case one jammed, and more than 40 10-round mags, which provided ample ammo for his deadly mission. California has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the country, far more stringent than what the federal government imposes. Those laws didn’t stop, or even significantly slow, Rodger.
[The 20 most nocturnal metro areas, by the median time of arrival at work] break down into three rough categories. First are those like New York, San Francisco and Boston, which are home to a lot of young, creative professionals. Next are college towns such as Ithaca, N.Y. (Cornell University); Lawrence, Kan. (the University of Kansas); and Logan, Utah (Utah State University). Finally are cities such as Atlantic City, N.J., Orlando, Fla., and Miami, whose economies are associated with recreation, tourism and gambling. A quarter of the workforce in Atlantic City doesn’t begin its workday until 11:26 a.m. or after.
Since its origin on college campuses in the late 1980s, the beer mile has grown into an underground phenomenon. Thousands of people, including some professional athletes, have sought to be the fastest in the world at chugging a 12-ounce beer, running one lap, then repeating the uncomfortable, belch-heavy process three more times. Adherents call it the most “glorified” of the “digestive athletics”—a realm that includes competitive eating contests—but it has remained mostly in the shadows. Mr. Nielsen’s record-setting 4:57 run catapulted the obscure sport onto a larger stage with more than one million views of a YouTube video of his feat. The first world championship is now being planned for this year. Mr. Nielsen, a 34-year-old sales executive who ran competitively in college, says he has been approached with endorsement offers from apparel and beer companies. But sudden fame has come with a price: questions about the record-setting race are being raised by beer-milers who have examined his video like assassination theorists poring over the Zapruder film. In online forums, some accuse Mr. Nielsen of gaining an unfair advantage by somehow de-fizzing the four cans of Budweiser he drank. Others question why he didn’t flip the first can upside down above his head to prove that he had completely drained its contents, as custom demands.
To work well, local currencies require a dedicated administrator who’s able to consistently promote and recruit new businesses. The Ithaca Hours program had that in its founder Paul Glover, who says he once sat down with a business owner who had too many Hours and wanted out of the system. He used his own money to exchange $100 worth of Hours and then helped devise a plan for how the owner could spend the remaining Hours locally on goods and services he needed. But since Glover handed over the Hours to a board a decade ago, the currency’s circulation has greatly diminished. The economic benefits touted by supporters — that local currencies protect mom-and-pop shops against the aggressions of big box retailers that send their profits outside the community — aren’t proven. And, says Loren Gatch, a political science professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, the financial impact is negligible because local currencies represent a tiny fraction of the U.S. dollars circulating in communities. But there can still be an upside: In just three years, the Bnote has gone from 55 participating Baltimore businesses to 220. Eight years ago, BerkShares were accepted at 100 businesses; now more than 400 retailers in the region accept them.
Feel like moving to Pittsburgh? Now there’s a city in a sweet spot, with cheap prices and, according to new BEA data that adjust average incomes for local inflation, relatively high incomes. Pittsburgh is 6.6 percent cheaper than the national average, and residents are the 36th best-paid in the U.S., bringing home almost $48,000 annually per person.
A relative moderate on issues like abortion, immigration and same-sex marriage, she fit the mold of Republicans who have won statewide office in the past. Then, just before the May 20 primary, reports surfaced regarding Wehby’s personal life _ a bitter divorce, a difficult romantic breakup, calls to the police by her ex-husband and a former boyfriend, who both accused her of harassment. Suddenly, her candidacy came under much harsher scrutiny and Oregon became the latest testing ground in the ever-fraught battle over politics and gender. Democrats, already pressed to keep their Senate majority, have quietly pushed the Wehby-as-stalker story, even as the incumbent, Jeff Merkley, distances himself to avert any backlash. Republicans have seized on the revelations, unearthed by Democratic research, to accuse the party of waging a war on women, hurling back the phrase Democrats use to attack GOP candidates on issues like contraception and equal pay.
During every call or meeting, no matter how short it is, I won’t end the discussion until everyone clearly understands their next steps, and until I’ve actually begun any next steps of my own. In other words: Begin your next steps during a meeting, and you will never have to spend a minute reviewing notes or figuring out what’s next…A good rule of thumb is to reserve 20% of every minute to review next steps. If it’s a five-minute meeting, take one minute; a 30-minute meeting, take six minutes; or an hour-long meeting, 12 minutes. During that time, make sure everyone understands what they need to do next, and if there’s time, begin the next steps in earnest.
In a new study, published online last month in Social Science & Medicine, researchers at Penn State University found significantly and consistently lower levels of cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress, in a majority of subjects when they were at work compared with when they were at home. This was true for both men and women, and parents and people without children…The majority of subjects had on average lower levels of cortisol at work than at home. It made no difference what their occupation was, whether they were single or married or even if they liked their job or not. One intriguing finding: The only participants who didn’t have lower levels of cortisol at work—their levels remained the same as at home—were those who earned more than $75,000 a year. (The researchers, who didn’t pursue that finding for this study, said they believe the salary bar would have been higher in a city with a more expensive standard of living.) The study also found that while both parents and childless adults were less stressed at work, the difference was greater for people without children. Researchers say this may be because parents bring some home stress to work with them, or because children may help relieve stress at home. Both men and women showed less stress at work. But women were more likely to report feeling happier there. Men were more likely to feel happier at home. The researchers say this may be because women still do more housework and child care and may feel they have less free time.
When JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s Jamie Dimon got a 74 percent raise in January, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara fumed. He had forced the bank just weeks before to pay $1.7 billion for enabling Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. And yet Dimon was being rewarded. Now, five months later, Bharara’s frustration is directed at another bank.
Graciana del Castillo, one of the world’s leading experts on failed states, has just written a most edifying book on the Afghan war (Guilty Party: The International Community in Afghanistan. Xlibris, 2014). Del Castillo’s book allows us to finally understand just what a fiasco the Afghan war has been. Why is Afghanistan, as Bob Woodward correctly termed it, Obama’s war? Del Castillo’s sharp pencil work shows that during the period 2002-2013, $650 billion have been appropriated for the Afghan war effort, and a whopping $487.5 billion of that (or 75 percent) took place after President Obama took office. If one pulls apart that $650 billion price tag, a variety of interesting sleights-of-hand emerge. For example, about $70 billion was disbursed to what is euphemistically termed “reconstruction.” But, in reality, 60 percent of this $70 billion (or $42 billion) was actually spent on beefing up the Afghan National Security Forces. And not surprisingly, 75 percent of the $42 billion spent on national security forces was spent under President Obama’s watchful eye. To put these outsized numbers into perspective, just consider that the total cost of the Afghan war from 2002-2013 amounts to $7089 per American taxpayer (based on the number of income tax returns). More revealing is the fact that the annual expenditure rate under the Bush administration was already $222 per taxpayer. Then, it exploded to an annual expenditure rate of $1329 per taxpayer under President Obama. In addition to laying out the phenomenal spending magnitudes on President Obama’s watch, del Castillo demonstrates just how unsustainable all this Afghan spending is. For example, in 2013, the United States financed over $5 billion of the $6.5 billion needed to field the Afghan National Security Forces. This $5 billion of U.S. financing was roughly 10 times more than the Afghan government actually spent from its own revenue sources. In fact, the U.S. funding of Afghan forces was almost three times the total revenue collected by the Afghan government.
The study found that high levels of corruption in a state can shape its budget allocation. More corrupt states tended to spend money on construction, highways, and police protection programs, which provide more opportunity for corrupt officials to use public money for their own gain. These states spend less on health, education, and welfare, which provide less opportunity for officials to collect bribes, according to Indiana University’s John Mikesell, who co-authored the report with Cheol Liu of the University of Hong Kong.
Only about 56% of students earn degrees within six years. The National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit verification and research organization, tracked 2.4 million first-time college students who enrolled in fall 2007 with the intent of pursuing a degree or certificate. The completion rate was highest (72.9%) among students who started at four-year, private, nonprofit schools, and lowest (39.9%) among those who started at two-year public institutions.
Nevada Democratic leaders acknowledged earlier this year that they had failed to recruit a credible candidate to face GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval in the fall. And on Tuesday, Silver State Democratic primary voters agreed, casting more votes for the state’s quirky “none of these candidates” option than any one of the eight actual humans on the ballot. “None of these candidates” earned 30 percent of the vote when The Associated Press called the race, outpacing the leading actual candidate, Robert Goodman, a retired state Economic Development commissioner from Las Vegas who’s run statewide twice before and shares a last name with the Vegas mayoral dynasty, at 25 percent. But according to state law, Goodman will win the nomination.
A strong plurality of fans in only three countries — Argentina, Brazil and Spain – predict their own country to win the tournament. (A plurality in the United States also picked the home team to win, against all odds, but that plurality consisted of only 14 percent of Americans; the rest picked another team or said they didn’t know who would win.) Everywhere else, the most common prediction was Brazil. In many countries, the home team was the second- or third-most commonly predicted winner. One notable exception: England. The English just don’t believe in their team anymore.
A couple of weeks ago, National Journal changed its comments policy, opting to eliminate comments on most stories as a way to stem the flood of abuse that appeared on the site. Naturally the comment-section reaction to that announcement helped reinforce the reason editors said comments had to go in the first place. For all the boycott threats and comparisons to Hitler, though… the site seems to be doing better now. If anything, user engagement has increased since the comment policy changed. Pages views per visit increased by more than 10 percent. Page views per unique visitor increased 14 percent. Return visits climbed by more than 20 percent. Visits of only a single page decreased, while visits of two pages or more increased by almost 20 percent…Respondents who saw comments evaluated the article as being of lower quality—an 8 percent difference. In other words, authors are judged not just by what they write, but by how people respond. The presence of comments did not make a statistically significant difference in a person’s likelihood to read more content by the same author, nor did it make an appreciable difference in respondent self-reported mood. The comments used in the sample group are perhaps worse than many Internet comments. They aso represent only a small sample of the whopping 7,725 comments—many of them negative or downright offensive—on the actual article. It’s easy to see how a reader might reassess her opinion of an article after catching a glimpse of thousands of negative opinions about it. There are good options for encouraging reader feedback: nice moderated comment sections, forums that build community, quick exchanges on Twitter, or lengthy feedback over email. But unmoderated comments appear to have a small, but real deleterious effect on readers’ perception of the sites on which they appear. And that appears to have implications for the bottom-line metric on the web: traffic.
As Pollyannaish as Mr. Munger may sound, his view has a profound counterintuitive truth to it: Behavioral scientists and psychologists have long contended that “trust” is, to some degree, one of the most powerful forces within organizations. Mr. Munger and Mr. Buffett argue that with the right basic controls, finding trustworthy managers and giving them an enormous amount of leeway creates more value than if they are forced to constantly look over their shoulders at human resources departments and lawyers monitoring their every move.
Any other market with such varying default rates would feature borrowing rates that are varied to match more appropriately: Students from Stanford and Yale would pay far less than students at the University of Phoenix. That doesn’t happen in the student loan market—and that creates all kinds of skewed incentives. Subsidies go to the wrong people: taxpayers (and high-performing students) subsidize loans to below-average schools, because students at these poor-performing schools are loading up on much more debt than they should take on, at interest rates too low for their high risk of default.
The Bulls had struggled without Jordan during the 1994-95 season; by mid-March, they were 31-31. Then, with a two-word press release — “I’m Back” — Jordan made his glorious return. But when Jordan trotted out on the court on March 19, 1995, it was without his trademark 23 jersey. Upon his return, he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t be wearing number 23 again, since it was the last number his father had seen him play in; the number was immediately retired to Uniter Center’s rafters during a ceremony. This disallowed anyone else in the franchise to wear 23 — including MJ himself. For 22 games, Jordan played as number 45, but things just weren’t the same. Though he performed well (he scored 19 points in his first game back), many claimed he’d lost some of his mojo; the new jersey number became a scapegoat. While the Bulls rallied and managed to make it to the 1995 Eastern Conference Semi-finals, Jordan’s number debacle reached a tipping point. With 10 seconds on the clock in game 1, Orlando’s Nick Anderson stole the ball from Jordan — a play that led to the Magic’s game-winning basket. “Number 45 is not number 23,” Anderson told the press after the game. “I couldn’t have done that to number 23.”
“When I left in April 2009, I said, ‘In five years there’ll be a civil war,’ ” said Keith Widaman, a former Marine staff sergeant who helped train Iraqi law enforcement during his deployment. “The Sunnis were stockpiling weapons and they weren’t using them against us. They were just holding on to them.”
The most visually striking difference is the enormous decline of infectious diseases (pneumonia, influenza, tuberculosis, etc). Advances in medicine and society have largely eradicated many of these diseases that were an overwhelming cause of death in 1900. Nephropathy (kidney disease) and cerebrovascular disease (stroke) have also seen sharp declines in the last century, while cancer, diabetes and heart disease have all now become major causes of death. Senility stopped being recorded as a cause of death in mid-1910. Alzheimer’s started being recorded in the late 1990s. If you’re a silver-linings kind of person, the news is still generally on the upswing: people are dying from what were once the leading causes of death at half the rate as they were in 1900.
In 1988, Nintendo was working on its Game Boy handheld gaming system. When Rogers flew to Moscow to get the rights to “Tetris,” he struck a deal that would change history forever: exclusive pack-in rights for the game to be bundled with the Game Boy, rather than the company’s own game, “Super Mario Bros.” “I convinced the CEO of Nintendo of America, Minoru Arakawa, to include ‘Tetris’ rather than ‘Mario’ by saying to him, ‘If you want little boys to buy your machine include ‘Mario,’ but if you want everyone to buy your machine, include ‘Tetris,'” Rogers tells Business Insider. “I guess it worked. People say ‘Tetris’ made Game Boy and Game Boy made ‘Tetris.’ Both statements are true.”
A survey of 151 life insurance underwriters at a conference last week showed that nine in 10 considered e-cig users to be smokers. The survey, conducted by Munich American Reassurance Company, captured responses from about 20 percent of conference attendees. The majority said their companies didn’t yet have specific policies for e-cigarettes. The dilemma for life insurers is that even if electronic cigarettes turn out to be safer than their tobacco counterparts, the insurers have no way to tell the difference between a smoker and vaper. Underwriters ask people applying for life insurance about their tobacco use and then verify those responses with a blood or urine test for cotinine, a product of metabolizing nicotine found in both products.
Tiger Photos Roam Wild on Online Dating Sites: On Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid, Some Turn to Photos of Big Cats to Help Them Catch the Eye of Potential Mates [Lindsey Gellman on The Wall Street Journal]
The content on this site is provided as general information and entertainment only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author. The author may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.
The Heat Death Hour 
Roundup – Anthropology Rap
Tags: beer mile, berkshire strategy, college graduates, comments shape perceptions, corrupt states, death in 1910 vs 2010, dimon's raise, e-cig insurance, fun with peter king, get rich, Income Inequality, iraq conflict, local currencies, michael jordan, millienials, monica wehby, nobody wins, north korea, obama's war, santa barbara, sex, stress, student loans, tetris, work hack, world cup opinions
http://www.hulu.com/watch/180385#s-p2-sr-i1
Quote o’ the Week:
– Adam, “Fun with PK (Canada Edition)” [KSK]
Best of the Best:
The photos North Korea didn’t want you to see [Jenni Ryall on News AU]
Getting the Sex You Want is Good for Your Relationship [Dr. Benjamin Le on Science of Relationships]
Are Millennials Really the “Hook-Up Generation”? [Dr. Gary Lewandowski on Science of Relationships]
Santa Barbara Massacre Defies Gun Control, Mental Health Proposals: 4 Blunt Points [Paul M. Barrett on Bloomberg Businessweek]
Which Cities Sleep in, and Which Get to Work Early [Nate Silver on FiveThirtyEight]
Breaking the Five-Minute ‘Beer Mile’ Brews Controversy [Zusha Elinson on The Wall Street Journal]
The Return of Local Currencies [Liz Farmer on Governing Magazine]
How to Get Rich Just by Moving [Ben Steverman on Bloomberg]
Monica Wehby’s Run for the Oregon Senate Results in Awkward Questions About Her Personal Life [Mark Z. Barabak on The Los Angeles Times via Governing Magazine]
The 1 Work Hack That Will Save You 900 Hours a Year [Dave Kerpen on Inc.]
Work Creates Less Stress Than Home, Penn State Researchers Find [Elizabeth Bernstein on The Wall Street Journal]
Dimon’s Raise Haunts BNP as U.S. Weighs $10 Billion Penalty [Greg Farrell and Tiffany Kary on Bloomberg]
Guest Post: Afghanistan – Obama’s War [Steve Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University via Zero Hedge]
What Corrupt States Spend Their Money On [Liz Farmer and Kevin Tidmarsh on Governing Magazine]
5 facts about today’s college graduates [Drew Desilver on Pew Research Center]
In Nevada, nobody wins (sort-of) [Steven Shepard on Politico]
World Cup Opinions in 19 Countries: Likes, Dislikes, Predictions [Gregor Aisch, David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy on New York Times Upshot]
How Comments Shape Perceptions of Sites’ Quality—and Affect Traffic [Adam Felder on The Atlantic]
Berkshire’s Radical Strategy: Trust [Andrew Ross Sorkin on New York Times Dealbook]
Here’s Why the Student Loan Market Is Completely Insane [Eric Chemi on Bloomberg Businessweek]
When Michael Jordan Wore 45 [Zachary Crockett on Priceonomics]
Rekindled Iraq Conflict Stirs U.S. Veterans [Ben Kesling on The Wall Street Journal]
How do we die? What killed Americans in 1900 vs. 2010 [Kyle Kim on The Los Angeles Times]
The Complicated History Of ‘Tetris,’ Which Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary Today [Karyne Levy on Business Insider]
Life Insurers Treat E-Cigs Just Like Other Cigarettes [John Tozzi on Bloomberg Businessweek]
Most Income Inequality: U.S. Cities [Bloomberg Visual Data: Bloomberg Best (and Worst)]
Curiously Strong Remains:
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The content on this site is provided as general information and entertainment only and should not be taken as investment advice. All site content shall not be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial product, or to participate in any particular trading or investment strategy. The ideas expressed on this site are solely the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of firms affiliated with the author. The author may or may not have a position in any security referenced herein and may or may not seek to do business with companies mentioned via this website. Any action that you take as a result of information or analysis on this site is ultimately your responsibility. Consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.