Behavioral Economics for Kids [pdf] is a free ebook from the Ivey School of Business that illustrates (to adults, really) the basic principles of behavioral economics, including the Endowment Effect (we value what we have more than what it is worth), Hyperbolic Discounting (the time we wait for rewards influences value in non-linear ways), the dishonesty of honest people, and Base Rate Neglect (why we make bad assumptions based on inherent biases). Though the findings are well-established, the labeling is subject to change, as many social psychologists argue, this is not behavioral economics, it is well-established psychology.
comment posted at 11:27 PM on May-16-13

Angelina Jolie describes having a preventive double mastectomy in a NY Times op-ed. Her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian cancer at age 56, and Jolie inherited the BRCA1 gene, which carries a vastly higher risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
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The New Yorker takes on the MOOC: “One of the edX people said, ‘This is being sponsored by Harvard and M.I.T. They wouldn’t do anything to harm higher education!’ What came to my mind was some cautious financial analysts saying, about some of the financial instruments that were being rolled out in the late nineties or early two-thousands, ‘This is risky stuff, isn’t it?’ And being told, ‘Goldman Sachs is doing it; Lehman Brothers is doing it.’ ” Previously
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"Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value" The Canadian scientific research and development agency has announced a major policy change. Going forward, they will only perform research that has "social or economic gain".
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"The U.S. Department of Justice notified The Associated Press on Friday, May 10, that it had secretly obtained telephone records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP journalists and offices, including cell and home phone lines."
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The fourth studio album by Daft Punk is now available for streaming. For a limited time, the new Daft Punk album, Random Access Memories, will be available to stream for free in the iTunes store. The official release date is expected to be May 21.
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Five reasons why news outlets are even worse than you think. Brett Arends describes five corrupting influences that keep the public from getting the facts.
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Mosses Make Two Different Plants From the Same Genome, and a Single Gene Can Make the Difference

One of the most astonishing secrets in biology is this: every plant you see makes two different plants from the same genome. And, scientists recently reported, a single gene from an ancient, powerful lineage can make the difference.

comment posted at 12:55 AM on May-13-13

I Don't Want Your Fucking App
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In what could be the largest strike of its kind, hundreds of fast food workers in Detroit walked off their jobs on Friday, echoing the rallying cry heard (or not?) across the country that the currently underpaid workers deserve $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. Friday's strike in Detroit comes on the heels of similar actions in other cities—Wednesday and Thursday in St. Louis, and in Chicago and New York City last month.
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Did my wife's cosmetics give her breast cancer? During her first round of chemo in 2009, some volunteers at the hospital came calling with a little red bag [from the Look Good Feel Better program] that contained products from Clinique, Estée Lauder, and Del Laboratories. Upon reviewing the contents of her bag, she realized that several of the products contained parabens — chemicals that mimic estrogen and that according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics are linked to cancer. (previously, previouslier, previousliest in AskMe)
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British capitalism already has many of the hallmarks of Brezhnev-era socialist decline: macroeconomic stagnation, a population as much too bored as scared to protest about very much, a state that performs tongue-in-cheek legitimacy, politicians playing with statistics to try and delay the moment of economic reckoning. Will Davies on the stagnation and repetition of neoliberal economic culture.
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About 200 indigenous people on the Xingu, Tapajós and Teles Pires rivers began an occupation of the largest construction site of the Belo Monte Dam, demanding the withdrawal of troops from their land and the suspension of dam construction. Powerful and searing, this statement from a people pushed to the brink by their own state, Brazil, and who have begun an indefinite protest at the main construction site of the Belo Monte Dam, which is in the Xingu and Tapajós river basins
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The end of blink, the beginning of Blink... The Evolution of the Web, in a Blink
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