In Japan 78% of music sales are still physical. On the surface, for such a technologically sophisticated country this looks like a success story for the CD. But all is not as it may at first appear. The Japanese music business mastered the skill of using the CD as a tool for driving revenue…
From 1480 to 1913, married female monarchs were more likely to wage war than male monarchs were. The researchers think this is because they had more capacity to do so, precisely because they were women. This was a more complicated study than you might think…
The «-phobic» suffix has emerged as the activist’s most trusted term of art for pinning prejudice on an opponent. Any blowhard who spews bigotry against a group – or any journalist who pens an article perceived as insufficiently sensitive – risks being called out for an irrational anxiety…
The discrepancies between the number on the label and the calories that are actually available in our food, combined with individual variations in how we metabolize that food, can add up to much more than the 200 calories a day that nutritionists often advise cutting in order to lose weight…
Despite seeming incongruous, a page in a book without words is something we encounter so often we rarely stop to think about it. Pick up virtually any hardcover or paperback title and you’re bound to see at least one or two blank pages in the front, back, or both. Why?
Ever wonder why, when you go somewhere, the trip back seems to cover less distance and take less time? This happens because we don’t concretely know the length of the distances we travel – we estimate distances from other cues, like how many new memories we form…
Every year I seem to have the same resolution: say «no» more often. Despite my black belt in economics-fu, it’s an endless challenge. But economics does tell us a little about why «no» is such a difficult word, why it’s so important – and how to become better at saying it…
In the west, there’s generally one word that a large number of non-Indians use to describe most Indian clothes: Sari. But it is just one of the many traditional outfits that are popular among women in South Asia. Following is a guide to some of the most common Indian dresses…
For most of my life, I have been severely prejudiced against the potato. I regarded potatoes as among the most banal of vegetables. Potatoes were just generic lumps of starch best used as couriers for salt, fat and ketchup. But that was before I went to Peru…
Getting to space is easy. The problem is staying there. Gravity in low Earth orbit is almost as strong as gravity on the surface. The Space Station hasn’t escaped Earth’s gravity at all; it’s experiencing about 90% the pull that we feel on the surface…
Exercising on a treadmill often feels like torture, and that’s not exactly a coincidence. In 1818, an English civil engineer devised a machine called the «tread-wheel» to reform stubborn convicts. Prisoners would step on the 24 spokes of a paddle wheel, climbing it like a modern StairMaster…
On the night after the young Rafa and his family celebrated his winning the Spanish under-12 championship, his uncle Toni poured cold water on the proceedings by reading out a list of the previous 25 winners of that competition. How many of them have you heard of? he asked him…
The idea that some languages have 100 words for snow has long been discredited. English has more than one word for snow – powder, flurry, pack, slush, hail, sleet, ice, black ice, and so on. And the structure of the Eskimo-Aleut languages is more conducive to producing multiple «words» for snow…
If I’m successful in communicating with people about this, there’ll be a kind of upfront warning in articles: These data are based on multiple regression analysis. This would be a sign that you probably shouldn’t read the article because you’re likely to get non-information or misinformation…
Bacteria are typically a few millionths of a metre long. To them, a human mouth is an entire world. The tongue, teeth, and gums are all very different habitats, each with their own fauna. There are even differences between the microbes below and above the gum line of a single tooth…
If you spend all your time thinking about money, chances are, you’re going to get pretty good at thinking about money. Indeed, new research suggests that the poor – for whom concerns about cash are inescapable – are not as prone to certain financial mistakes often made by the affluent…
Everyone tells you to eat at the stalls with the longest line of locals. I always add that it’s important to look at who is in line. I know my stomach is potentially less resilient than that of a taxi driver, so I try to opt for street stalls with both women and children in line…
The «monomyth» is Joseph Campbell’s attempt at tossing all heroic stories together to find their common core. This supposed common core is surprisingly complicated. Mircea Eliade’s description of the heroic trope is much simpler and comprehensible, comparing it to the solar cycle…
At the Consumer Reports testing labs in Yonkers, New York, Emilio Gonzalez cooks chili, eggs, soup, oatmeal, and 13 other foods a few times per month. No one eats any of it. Instead, Gonzalez smears carefully measured quantities of the foods on a set of 113 pieces of dishware…
Michael Mann is as seasoned in his filmmaking as the guys in «Heat,» who time their armored-car heist with a stopwatch; or the guys in «Public Enemies,» who time their bank heist with a stopwatch; or the guys in «Straight Time» who time their jewelry heist with a stopwatch…
Gonzague Saint Bris says he first realized the marquis’ influence as a 20-year-old during the May 1968 student riots in Paris. «I looked at all the placards, reading ‹It is Forbidden to Forbid,› and ‹Do Whatever You Desire.› I suddenly understood that our revolutionary phrases were from Sade»…
The present contract between the undersigned parties has been drafted in order to define special rights which may be exercised by the husband upon his young wife during sessions of a particular nature, sessions during which the woman will be subjected to ill treatment, humiliation and torture…
Credit card numbers are often typed in, input, transferred and quoted. All of this transmission can cause errors, especially considering that humans are involved. Humans often make mistakes in transferal. To try and minimize this, credit card numbers contain a check digit…
The economy that supports EVE is all founded on in-game currency InterStellar Kredit and currency-like Pilot License Extensions (Plexes); Plexes can be purchased through real-life currency as well. That’s where the economist Eyjolfur Guðmundsson comes in…