26 AUG 2024 by ideonexus
Marketplace of Ideas in COVID Responses
One way of gauging the current diversity of cultures is to consider the range of responses countries made to the COVID-19 pandemic.120 There was, of course, some diversity, from the ultrastrict lockdowns in China to the more moderate response in Sweden. But the range of responses was far more limited than it could have been. For example, both the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were designed by mid-January 2020 over the course of a few days.121 Not a single country allowed human chal...Folksonomies: marketplace of ideas
Folksonomies: marketplace of ideas
26 AUG 2024 by ideonexus
A 1700s Rich Man in Britain
The best that we have seen so far is a poor guide to what is possible. To get some inkling of this, consider the life of a rich man in Britain in 1700—a man with access to the best food, health care, and luxuries available at the time. For all his advantages, such a man could easily die of smallpox, syphilis, or typhus. If he needed surgery or had a toothache, the treatment would be agonising and carry a significant risk of infection. If he lived in London, the air he breathed would be seve...06 AUG 2022 by ideonexus
1979 Dystopian Vision That Came True
I HAVE THIS recurring nightmare. Jonas Salk has just announced his cure for polio. A bill is introduced in Congress to require mandatory inoculation of school children under HEW direction. Opposition then appears. Ronald Reagan urges "free choice by parents rather than compulsion by government." Mobil runs advertisements with the headline, "From gas tanks to bloodstreams. Where will government go next?" An associate professor of economics does a study for the American Enterprise Institute dem...20 NOV 2018 by ideonexus
Seeing Organizations as Biological Systems
There’s a continuing struggle between complexity and robustness in both evolution and human design. A kind of survival imperative, whether in biology, engineering, or business requires that simple, fragile systems become more robust. But the mechanisms to increase robustness will in turn make the system considerably more complex. Furthermore, that additional complexity brings with it its own unanticipated failure modes, which are corrected over time with additional robust mechanisms, which ...- Other takeaways: Resilience, rather than efficiency. Holism, rather than reductionism. Plurality, rather than universality. Pragmatism, rather than intellectualism Experimentation, rather than deduction Indirect, rather than direct approaches
31 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
Exercise Meaningful in Having Good Mental Health
In this cross-sectional study, we analysed data from 1 237 194 people aged 18 years or older in the USA from the 2011, 2013, and 2015 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System survey. We compared the number of days of bad self-reported mental health between individuals who exercised and those who did not, using an exact non-parametric matching procedure to balance the two groups in terms of age, race, gender, marital status, income, education l...31 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
Kayfabe
Although the etymology of the word is a matter of debate, for at least 50 years “kayfabe” has referred to the unspoken contract between wrestlers and spectators: We’ll present you something clearly fake under the insistence that it’s real, and you will experience genuine emotion. Neither party acknowledges the bargain, or else the magic is ruined. [...] The aesthetic of World Wrestling Entertainment seems to be spreading from the ring to the world stage. Ask an average Trump support...27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Young Apes Resemble Human Children
Hartmann, in his work on the Anthropoid Apes (289, p. 301), quotes, approvingly, the words of Vogt: ‘When we consider the principles of the modern theory of evolution, as it is applied to the history of development, we are met by the important fact that in every respect the young ape stands nearer to the human child than the adult ape does to the adult man. The original differences between the young creatures of both types are much slighter than in their adult condition : this assertion, ma...Folksonomies: evolution child development
Folksonomies: evolution child development
27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus