A fascinating man that I'm sorry to see lost. Here's the links to his interviews with Colbert, which are very revealing about some of his more unexpected traits:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/406796/january-24-2012/grim-colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt--1

and

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/406902/january-25-2012/grim-colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt--2

So, following the link and watching the commercial, I can't help but notice that if you served Nutella as recommended in the commercial, it would actually probably be just fine. Nutritionally, it's about the same as peanut butter (which is high calorie, but if your child is active and growing, they need those calories).

If you don't want to watch the commercial, the recommended a thin layer of nutella spread on two pieces of toast, with milk and a piece of fruit. That's probably ~700 calories or so, which is a decent breakfast for an active, growing child. Now if you let your kid sit on their butt all day, that's a different matter, but it's not he food's fault.

This isn't really a new discovery, but more an incremental update. They've been researching and testing this material at UC Berkeley for a while now (first paper in 2002 I think): http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/%7Eronf/Gecko/index.html

It sounds like they're using a slightly different approach here, but similar concepts (although they're vague enough it could me more different). Still, always exciting to see improvement in the field. Our bloated defense budget does at least get partially routed to basic research.

There's some confusion people are having because they're attempting to answer a different question. When asking what the opportunity cost is, the value of the activity you are doing is not relevant. That is only needed when attempting to determine the optimal activity. The opportunity cost is simply the net value of the alternative (total value minus costs).

When attempting to determine your optimal course of action, you then compare the value of the free ticket (the amount you'd normally spend on the Clapton ticket - 0 cost) to the opportunity cost of the Dylan concert. But they're different questions, although obviously is a natural follow up to the other.

This seems like the inverse solution to the job supply problem. Salaries should be high for positions where there is more demand for workers than supply. If higher paying jobs cost more, you're simply causing an even tighter supply side, which would drive wages up, and education costs up.

It makes perfect sense from a business point of view, but horrible sense from a societal point of view. Which, again, is why pure free market systems are a poor choice for humanity overall. They have a natural propensity to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.

It's a misleading quote to use too, since it seems to imply that long mandatory holidays quotas lead to poor economies, when Brazil actually has a rapidly expanding economy, and Germany is as solid as you'll find in the world in the current global environment. Both of those countries are in the top 10 most vacation time. And Japan, while not having experienced strong growth in a while, is not collapsing either, and is also in the top 10.

I think my takeaway is that it's very possible to have a highly productive labor force, and still provide ample free time to enjoy life, which at this point in human history should be about something more than bare survival.

i would guess that many games involve a non-trivial mental exertion that actually does require nutrient replenishment. However, its very likely many gamers are not getting the specific nutrient their bodies crave, but rather attempting to satisfy that craving with whatever is handy. If you don't give your body the nutrient it needs, you end up feeling hungry even though you already ate.

Oops, clicked submit too fast. Was going to add though that I agree with Anise that the only reason my social circle is decently sized is that I'm blessed enough to have a job that (usually) permits me enough free time to engage in hobbies where I can meet and interact with people. Those struggling to makes ends meet are probably far more restricted to socializing with family and co-workers simply due to where you have to spend most of your time.

I'm not sure I'd really agree with their method of measurement. I have a fair number of good friends, but those aren't the same as a confidantes. I think most people only have a couple people they would consider confidantes, and I think that has more to do with our need for a feeling of secrecy than poor social development. I've observed plenty of people who've become someone's confidante even though they've already known them for years, just because the other person lost a previous confidante ad needed to fill that void. Secrets just don't feel much like secrets if you're sharing them with a bunch of people......

That.....is some of the worst science I've ever seen. Having more potential energy does not increase the mass of an object. I don't even understand his argument about "freely floating around" versus "still". Formatted flash memory isn't random data; it's still a fixed value whether it contains a book or not. I can't believe this guy is a real computer scientist if he's being accurately reported.

I don't believe this just applies to everyone else, I think it's just a load of philosophical garbage standing on thin stilts on psychological research. Reasoning is most definitely not an artifact of social structure because animals use it all the time to find food. It's an extension of pathfinding (I see food over there and need to figure out how to get there). In fact, its appropriated use in social situations is why it doesn't function well there. In pathfinding, you start with a target goal and work backwards to find the chain that leads there. When co-opted for social interaction, that becomes rationalization.

You could make the argument that the "goal" in social interaction is to win the argument, but reasoning didn't come about specifically to fulfill that goal, it just is used for that purpose.

And because I've been correcting for my own personal bias while writing this, I'll note that they could be referring to "reasoning" as specifically the act of verbally communicating with someone (as opposed to the more abstract concept of "figuring something out"). I would agree then that its true, but only to the extent that you're dealing with someone whose goal is to convince the other person of something. That's probably a default action, but not a unavoidable one.

I think the mistake for most of these people is buying a used car on credit period. You can get a reasonable used car for a couple thousand if you look, and a drivable one for less than a thousand if you're desparate. That's an amount you can save up for in a reasonable amount of time, and if you can't save up that amount, you shouldn't own a car, because you won't be able to afford the cost of owning it (gas, registration, insurance, saving for basic maintenance/repairs).

I tried this before at another place, but it wasn't quite as much fun as I'd hoped. Most of the cool looking tricks actually just make you an easier target because once you're in the air, your momentum is fixed, so its easier to predict where you body mass is going. The balls they used (at least at the place I went) where disappointingly light, squishy, and rough surfaced, to purposefully slow them I think.

All in all, it wasn't bad, but didn't really live up to my expectations. I didn't really gain the type of increased mobility for which I was hoping (but maybe that was due to my lack of trampoline skills), so it didn't have that extra edge I wanted.

I'd note that the top contenders seem to mostly be towns with large universities. Considering that many students now use Amazon to buy their textbooks, I don't think its all that surprising to see this results list. Especially Cambridge being at the top, considering the extremely high density of colleges in the area (notice that they are also the leading consumer of non-fiction books).

@Bearfoot, defaulting on your loan isn't a violation of the loan contract, its a fulfillment of it. This is why the bank can't (successfully) sue you for defaulting; it was part of the contract.

This is why you're required to put a down payment into the house. The incentive not to lose that money is supposed to reduce the risk of you just walking away. That's also why the lower the down payment, the higher the interest rate on the loan (greater risk, greater reward). They're not expecting you to repay the loan out of the goodness of your heart; they're making sure you have financial incentives that align your best option with theirs.