For several years now, the Fed has been making money available to the financial sector at near-zero interest rates. Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. Because we will be making money in basically the same way as hedge fund managers, we should have to pay only 15 percent in taxes, just like they do. [Sheila Bair/Washington Post] Male doctors found their hysterical and neurasthenic patients especially frustrating. Many doctors suggested that women would feel better if they engaged in sexual intercourse until its natural conclusion with a male orgasm. But given the ineffectiveness of vaginal penetration in… Read More...

Homicidal sleepwalking, also known as homicidal somnambulism, is the act of killing someone during an episode of sleepwalking. [Wikipedia] Six studies demonstrate the “pot calling the kettle black” phenomenon whereby people are guilty of the very fault they identify in others. Our findings indicate that to reduce ethical dissonance, individuals use a double-distancing mechanism. Using an overcompensating ethical code, they judge others more harshly and present themselves as more virtuous and ethical. [Journal of Experimental Psychology: General | PDF] I have heard that higher IQ people tend to have less children in modern times than lower IQ people. And if larger family size makes the offspring less capable, than we are pioneering interesting times. [comment on Marginal Revolution] Recent astronomical observations can not reject theism, but data are slightly in favor of atheism. [Daniel Schoch, Gods as Topological Invariants |… Read More...

The first thing to understand is that if you are still alive five minutes after a small nuclear weapon detonates, you are already very likely to survive. [Jason Lefkowitz] Does it seem plausible that education serves (in whole or part) as a signal of ability rather than simply a means to enhance productivity? (...) Many MIT students will be hired by consulting firms that have no use for any of these skills. Why do these consulting firms recruit at MIT, not at Hampshire College, which produces many students with no engineering or computer science skills (let alone, knowledge of signaling models)? Why did you choose MIT over your state university that probably costs one-third as much? [David Autor/MIT | PDF] What would we do if we encountered an alien race? From astronomers to ufologists to anthropologists, scholars who have contemplated… Read More...

The basic idea is to replace the notion of infinity with a new number that Sergeyev calls grossone, which he writes like this: ?. [The Physics arXiv Blog] Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a "socially disruptive" narcissist, confirming the conclusions of many social media skeptics. [ The Guardian ] A team of researchers has methodically demonstrated that a face’s features or constituents – more than the face per se – are the key to recognizing a person. Their study goes against the common belief that brains process faces “holistically.” [EurekAlert] Faces are considered more attractive when they're moving. [BPS] You’re famous for denying that propositions have to be either true or false (and not both or neither) but before we get to that, can… Read More...