Tag Archives: Human behavior

Why The Pedestrian Crosses the Road

James Fallows casts a skeptic’s eye at traditional explanations for why the bigger elbows out the smaller in Chinese traffic. Of course, it’s not just China where this happens, and James is right to be skeptical about such explanations. It happens all across the developing world, from what I can see. Trucks elbow aside buses,… Read More »

Reclining Seats And Passenger Negotiation Management

Forgive me for any typos and errors for this posting. I’m typing this on a screen that is almost vertical so I can barely see it. it’s coach class on Philippines Airlines and of course I’m wedged behind the only person on the plane who seems to have spent the entire flight with her seat… Read More »

Bruce on Phishing: It’s the Banks, Stupid

Bruce Schneier again talks sense, this time about phishing: Schneier on Security: Phishing Financial companies have until now avoided taking on phishers in a serious way, because it’s cheaper and simpler to pay the costs of fraud. That’s unacceptable, however, because consumers who fall prey to these scams pay a price that goes beyond financial… Read More »

How To Get a Good Idea, Part I

Reading at the moment Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who mentions the trick German experimental physicist Heinz Maier-Leibnitz used to do in boring conferences to entertain himself and to measure the lengths of his trains of thought — microflows, in Csikszentmihalyi’s words. The passage is conveyed in full here: Professor Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, a German experimental physicist,… Read More »