Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

From my friends at Altos Research, the “catfish” housing recovery. Note that it helps if you blow the presentation to full screen.

The Groupon IPO filing is out, and, as expected, it’s hugely entertaining. The Risks section alone is more than 13,000 words, or around the… [cont.]

[Full post at my Bloomberg blog]

Kind of hard to entirely reconcile this — perhaps it’s sectoral issues, or maybe it’s relative sectoral sizes — but the… [cont.]

[Full post at my Bloomberg blog]

There’s a very dark humor that permeates the culture of field science. Tales of hardship, suffering, and endurance are often told with a peculiar form of irony, filled with braggadocio, and sprinkled with in-house jokes. Nowhere is this strange mixture of hardship, suffering, and dark humor more evident than in Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s celebrated memoir of Antarctic exploration dramatically titled The Worst Journey in the World. Its memorable opening line sets its tone: “Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.”

via The Worst Science in the World.

A few links worth reading on the ongoing EHEC/E. coli outreak that I’ve been tracking. Serious stuff.

• WHO: E. coli Strain Never Seen… [cont.]

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Others’ anger makes people work harder not smarter: The effect of observing anger and sarcasm on creative and analytic thinking.

Miron-Spektor, Ella; Efrat-Treister, Dorit; Rafaeli, Anat; Schwarz-Cohen, Orit

Journal of Applied Psychology, May 16, 2011, No Pagination Specified. doi: 10.1037/a0023593

Abstract

The authors examine whether and how observing anger influences thinking processes and problem-solving ability. In 3 studies, the authors show that participants who listened to an angry customer were more successful in solving analytic problems, but less successful in solving creative problems compared with participants who listened to an emotionally neutral customer. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors further show that observing anger communicated through sarcasm enhances complex thinking and solving of creative problems. Prevention orientation is argued to be the latent variable that mediated the effect of observing anger on complex thinking. The present findings help reconcile inconsistent findings in previous research, promote theory about the effects of observing anger and sarcasm, and contribute to understanding the effects of anger in the workplace. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)

via PsycNET – Display Record.

This is me being more than a little pedantic, but I’m picking a personal nit here. In his latest <a… [cont.]

[Full post at my Bloomberg blog]

• The awfulness of FIFA: An embarrassment to the beautiful game (<a… [cont.]

  [Full post at my Bloomberg blog]

Strange and intriguing stuff:

Psychol Sci. 2011 May 1;22(5):627-33. Epub 2011 Apr 5.

Inhibitory spillover: increased urination urgency facilitates impulse control in unrelated domains.

Tuk MA, Trampe D, Warlop L.

Source

1Department of Marketing Communication and Consumer Psychology, University of Twente.

Abstract

Visceral states are known to reduce the ability to exert self-control. In the current research, we investigated how self-control is affected by a visceral factor associated with inhibition rather than with approach: bladder control. We designed four studies to test the hypothesis that inhibitory signals are not domain-specific but can spill over to unrelated domains, resulting in increased impulse control in the behavioral domain. In Study 1, participants’ urination urgency correlated with performance on color-naming but not word-meaning trials of a Stroop task. In Studies 2 and 3, we found that higher levels of bladder pressure resulted in an increased ability to resist impulsive choices in monetary decision making. We found that inhibitory spillover effects are moderated by sensitivity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (Study 3) and can be induced by exogenous cues (Study 4). Implications for inhibition and impulse-control theories are discussed.

via Inhibitory spillover: increased urination urgency … [Psychol Sci. 2011] – PubMed result.

I’m being driven nearly mad by the arguments and general gas-baggery for and against the existence of a technology bubble. On the pro side… [cont.]

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