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How The Food Industry Helps Engineer Our Cravings
NPR: It is no secret that the rise in obesity in America has something to do with food. But how much? And what role does the food industry as a whole play? As part of Here & Now's series this week on obesity,America on the Scale, host Jeremy Hobson spoke with investigative reporter Michael Moss of The New York Times. ... They would hire people like Howard Moskowitz, trained in high math at Queens College and experimental psychology at Harvard. Howard was one of the people responsible for some of the biggest icons in the grocery store. For example, he walked me through his recent creation of a new soda flavor for Dr. Pepper. ...
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The Rise of Hate Search
The New York Times: HOURS after the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, and minutes after the media first reported that at least one of the shooters had a Muslim-sounding name, a disturbing number of Californians had decided what they wanted to do with Muslims: kill them. ... In November, there were about 3,600 searches in the United States for “I hate Muslims” and about 2,400 for “kill Muslims.” We suspect these Islamophobic searches represent a similarly tiny fraction of those who had the same thoughts but didn’t drop them into Google.
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The Creativity Bias against Women
Scientific American: More than ever, creativity has become a hot commodity in the workplace. Businesses compete ferociously for new ideas, and Silicon Valley — with its extreme focus on innovation — is the current bright spot of the US economy. Companies need employees who can tackle difficult problems, learn new skills fast, and identify opportunities in unexpected places. Top employers are increasingly looking to hire individuals who excel at creative thinking. But whether you are seen as creative or not may depend on whether you’re a man or a woman.
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Superforecasters
BBC Radio 4: Professor Philip Tetlock explains why his newly discovered elite group of so-called Superforecasters are so good at predicting global events. Read the whole story: BBC Radio 4
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The One New Year’s Resolution That Usually Works
TIME: Realistic financial resolutions are relatively easy to achieve. We all know the drill by now: Make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight or reduce spending or finally finish that novel. Fail in miserable fashion. Feel bad about yourself and scarf down a tub of double-chocolate ice cream. ... “If it’s a few seconds to New Year’s and you’re just throwing something up in the wind, then it’s not going to work,” said Dr. John Norcross, a psychology professor at the University of Scranton who has conducted multiple studies on the subject. “It requires preparation. You have to be serious about the endeavor.” Read the whole story: TIME
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Pot luck
The Economist: MEN want sex and sex leads to fatherhood. If these two statements were propositions in a syllogism, then the logical conclusion would be that men want fatherhood. Observation, however, indicates that this is not always the case. As the number of women left, literally, holding the baby shows, quite a few men run a mile from fatherhood. Of course, the statements are not part of a syllogism, for the word “fatherhood” has different meanings in the first sentence and the second and third ones—the first meaning is biological and the second social. Moreover, there are quite a few men who do not run a mile from the social form of fatherhood.
