TIFI

In the Economist:

In the late 1990s a generation of academic economists had their eyes opened by Mr LeDoux’s and other accounts of how studies of the brain using recently developed techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed that different bits of the old grey matter are associated with different sorts of emotional and decision-making activity. The amygdalas are an example. Neuroscientists have shown that these almond-shaped clusters of neurons deep inside the medial temporal lobes play a key role in the formation of emotional responses such as fear.

These new neuroeconomists saw that it might be possible to move economics away from its simplified model of rational, self-interested, utility-maximising decision-making. Instead of hypothesising about Homo economicus, they could base their research on what actually goes on inside the head of Homo sapiens.

However, not everyone is convinced. The fiercest attack on neuroeconomics, and indeed behavioural economics, has come from two economists at Princeton University, Faruk Gul and Wolfgang Pesendorfer. In an article in 2005, “The Case for Mindless Economics”, they argued that neuroscience could not transform economics because what goes on inside the brain is irrelevant to the discipline. What matters are the decisions people take—in the jargon, their “revealed preferences”—not the process by which they reach them. For the purposes of understanding how society copes with the consequences of those decisions, the assumption of rational utility-maximisation works just fine.

See also: Commodity traders superior to chimpanzees, research shows

Eben Harrell in Time:

At the station before Queensway, Lancaster Gate, he had broken from protocol to announce to the pranksters holding up the doors not the scripted “Mind the closing doors” but the more personal “please stop doing that or you will injure yourselves and end up in hospital.” The statement had a slight, “I-know-better” air, but it was also improvised, and showed concern for passengers’ well-being. I remembered this minor act of kindness as our driver addressed us on the intercom to announce the evacuation. He kept repeating: “This train is not going anywhere for some time. We have a man under the train, so the train is not going anywhere for some time.” It became a sort of mantra: “I repeat: this train is not going anywhere for some time.”

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

PostSpectacular:

Late in April the super friendly people from Print Magazine commissioned me to create a cover design which would conceptually support the main feature article about “kinetic typography” of their special summer issue.

Via Bruce Sterling at Beyond the Beyond.

The Reg:

The first, most basic, skill: be able to distinguish the different versions of the web.

Web versions, 1.0 to 2.0

Version	Characteristics
Web 1.0	Programming model equivalent to that of a slightly up-market 3270 terminal. Forms are filled in with the sequence: tab tab tab tab tab tab bonk.
Web 1.00001	The beginning of the rich web experience: the first ever, primitive Javascript code fragment is written. It generates an unwanted popup, and snaffles your credit card details.
Web 1.1	No visible difference from Web 1.0, apart from IE showing the text ‘Javascript error’ in its status bar.
Web 1.2	Standard buttons are upgraded with smart 3D-looking GIFs. These react to mouseover events by bobbing up and down politely over their drop shadows. Remember when we were excited by this sort of scriptery? (None of your CSS cleverness then.) It seems so quaint now. It makes me want to cry, thinking about the good old days of ugly web pages loading slowly.
Web 1.3	When you get to the home page of a V1.2 site with FireFox, it displays badly. When you go to a V1.3 website such as www.fdms.com with FireFox, it tells you to eff off and get IE. (These traditionalists in fact would seem to prefer it if you used IE4.) The age of ‘you aren’t good enough for our website’ has begun, reaching full fruition at Web 1.5, see below.
Web 1.4	Basic client-side validation added. Forms are filled in with the sequence: tab tab tab tab tab What do you mean 'invalid post code' you bloody thing? The dread phrase ‘next generation of 3d smileys’ is encountered for the very first time.

Via Tim Bray.

Originally found The Big Picture via Gruber at Daring Fireball.

Via the previous item on Polaroids, I found this:

When Jamie Livingston, photographer, filmmaker, circus performer, accordian player, Mets fan, and above all, loyal friend, died on October 25th (his birthday) in 1997 at the age of 41, he left behind hundreds of bereft friends and a collection of 6,000 photographs neatly organized in small suitcases and wooden fruit crates.

Jamie took a polaroid once a day, every day, including his last, for 18 years.

This photographic diary, which he called, “Polaroid of the Day,” or P.O.D., began when Jaime was a student at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. The project continued when he moved to apartments in New York City including the incredible circus memorabilia-filled loft on Fulton Street, which he shared with his best friend. That loft was the site of many a Glug party, an “orphans thanksgiving,” a super-8 festival of Jamie’s lyrical Super-8 films, and a rollicking music jam.

Info here and the complete collection of photos is here.

Via Jason Santa Maria.

Jason Santa Maria:

Sometime next year, Polaroid will stop producing instant film. There have been lots of people jumping in to help save the format, and others writing some striking eulogies, as the rest of us start mourning the oncoming loss. But one thing I can’t quite shake is what Polaroid represents to me, something that will likely be on its way out the door too: the visual metaphor of a photograph.

Via Gruber at Daring Fireball.

zach kowalczyk:

one in a series of food that takes the shape of its container

Via Marcus Trimble at Super Colossal.

Martijn Hendriks:

Give Us Today Our Daily Terror
2008 – ongoing
Exact copy of Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds from which all birds have been removed
Single channel video, color, 119 minutes

Via Marcus Trimble at Super Colossal.

End of June – every year the same procedure… On a former Russian military airfield in the middle of nowhere in the fields of northern Germany FUSION arises, the biggest holiday and party camp all over the place. 4 days of holiday communism is the motto and as such the programme covers it all.

Where’s Waldo?:

Photo by phogel

Good overview of the camp and my favorite stage:

Rumor was 40k people by sunday.

Remute midnight friday:

Whoa:

Sunday morning, DJ Koze: