Sometimes – well quite often – I come across a little film or piece of writing that identifies something I’ve long felt and articulates it better than I could. This piece from the School of Life, on what some time behind the wheel on the open road does for you, encapsulates why I’ve come toContinue reading “Drive to Swindon and find inner peace”
Tag Archives: happiness
“To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus …” Loss aversion and the human cost of economic cycles
Those with a passing familiarity with behavioural economics will have heard of “loss aversion”: as described by Tversky and Kahneman, it’s the idea that losses have twice as powerful an effect psychologically as gains. No surprise then to come across an article, Out Of The Loop, while leafing through the ESRC’s “Britain in 2015” magazine, with theContinue reading ““To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus …” Loss aversion and the human cost of economic cycles”
Have you done the triangular ironing yet?
You can have it fast, good, or cheap. Pick two. Oliver Burkeman’s latest This Column Will Change Your Life piece for the Guardian Weekend magazine is about this formula, or “the iron triangle” as it is sometimes called. Oliver Burkeman in Guardian Weekend: Constraints Can Be Liberating. It encapsulates neatly the problem with imagining you can have itContinue reading “Have you done the triangular ironing yet?”
Too much choice?
Peter Curran hosts an interesting debate on whether too much choice is actually bad for society, on the iai online tv channel. Making the case is Renata Salecl, opposing is Lou Marinoff and somewhere between them is Lynne Segal. Choice: debate from the Institute of Art and Ideas
Start The Week: on “big data”
Start The Week (Radio 4): Big Data Here’s a link to this morning’s Start The Week, discussing “big data” and mathematical modelling of data. Well worth a listen. Contributions are from James Owen Weatherall on physicists in finance, Marcus du Sautoy, Kenneth Cukier and sociologist Tiffany Jenkins. While there is an unstoppable logic to gatheringContinue reading “Start The Week: on “big data””
Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan
Kahneman discusses Thinking Fast And Slow at LSE with Evan Davies and Paul Dolan For those interested in psychology and behavioural economics, here is a quick link via Prof Paul Dolan’s site to an hour’s discussion between Evan Davies, Dolan and Kahneman about Thinking Fast and Slow, which took place a while back when theContinue reading “Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan”
The Happiness Objective: the ONS Reports on British Well-being
The ONS’s first reporting of the “happiness” statistics – based on “subjective” answers to specific survey questions, rather than so-called “objective” forms of data – came out on Tuesday 24th July. No big surprises and it will only become really interesting, I think, once it beds in and we get year-on-year comparisons going. I wasContinue reading “The Happiness Objective: the ONS Reports on British Well-being”
Driving Our Man Machines Towards Distraction: Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”
The Sunday Times described it as a “bold reactionary book” – and so it is. I’ve just finished reading Nicholas Carr‘s The Shallows (subtitle: How the internet is changing the way we read, think and remember). Its main point is a simple one: the Internet is a medium that revolves around distraction and our usageContinue reading “Driving Our Man Machines Towards Distraction: Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows””
Motivating performance: Dan Pink and some thoughts on “bonus culture”
The debate about earnings, bonuses and fairness rumbles on and isn’t going to end soon. With the financial squeeze most of us are feeling, it is inevitable we look at the City in particular and wonder why they are still paying themselves so much, after all we now know about their endemic failures. Yet thereContinue reading “Motivating performance: Dan Pink and some thoughts on “bonus culture””
How (Not) To Party: the bizarre ending to last night’s Andrew Neil show
If you want to laugh at people who have held some of the highest offices of state, dancing to Underworld’s Born Slippy, read and view on … Picture the scene: you’ve just come home from moderating a discussion group across in Peterborough, you’re a bit tired and you flop down to watch the end ofContinue reading “How (Not) To Party: the bizarre ending to last night’s Andrew Neil show”
Strangers on the Shore 