Letter to Joseph Priestley.

How to make decisions like Benjamin Franklin, web outline

Measure all ingredients precisely. Small variations can make the drink less effective or even harmful. Mix the following:

* 1 quart (950 mL) water

* ½ teaspoon (2.5 g) baking soda

* ½ teaspoon (2.5 g) table salt

* ¼ teaspoon (1.25 g) salt substitute (potassium-based), such as Lite Salt or Morton Salt Substitute

* 2 tablespoons (30 g) sugar

via Rehydration drinks.

-Sweet!

A night out in a bar is all the more enjoyable if you can digest some science too. That’s the lesson of a growing movement whose character may be local but whose reach is potentially global — and at a small cost.

via The rise of cafe culture : Article : Nature.

The Denver café, organized by University of Colorado immunologist John Cohen, performs another social function: “I know that people have got together after meetings,” he says. “So when people come in alone, we carefully direct them to potential partners.”

via Pop science pulls in public as cafe culture goes global : Article : Nature

What’s next, science hook-ups?

I’m looking for new venues to host the San Antonio Science Cafe.

Previous cafes were at Ruta Maya, which is now closed , Old Town Helotes Bar and Grill, and Lion & Rose Pub and Restaurant. Radius Cafe seems cool, if we can coordinate around their choir events during the week.

On another note, Liberty Bar has my favorite Ethiopian coffee and I need to find out what brand it is. Mmm…

via The pathos of studying happiness : bioephemera.

This is a great introduction to an article by Joshua Shenk on happiness.

The channel we investigate in this paper is related to the fact that many laws that put constraints on women did so for married women, but not single women. This suggests that husband’s were benefitting from these constraints. It seems quite plausible that a husband prefers to keep his wife’s outside option low because this will give him a better bargaining position with his wife.4 This hypothesis is supported by some of the arguments made by the anti-suffrage movement. People were concerned about the threat to families if women gained the right to vote (e.g. Orestes Brown, a prominent protestant minister, argued in 1873 that the family would fall apart as soon as women were allowed to enter the public sphere). Why, then, would men ever agree to grant more rights to women?

The idea put forth in this paper is that there is a trade-off between what rights men want for their daughters relative to their wives. We interpret rights broadly here and model it as a bargaining parameter in marriage. That is, women without rights have no bargaining power relative to their husband, while full rights will be captured through equal bargaining power. Men ideally want their wives to have no rights, while they do want full rights for their daughters. We assume that rights are extended by law and thus will affect all women (i.e. daughters and wives) equally. If daughters have no rights, then their future husbands will treat them poorly, which fathers of daughters would like to avoid. In addition, a wife’s education matters for producing high-quality children. A husband prefers his children to find high-quality mates, and therefore stands to gain from increasing the power of his children’s mothers-in-law. If men can vote on the extent of women’s rights, they will vote to give them rights just enough to equalize the marginal loss from rights to their wive with the marginal benefit from rights to other men’s wives (daughters and mothers-in-law of own children etc.). We argue that this trade-off changes over time, because of an increasing importance of human capital. More specifically, as returns to human capital increase, the efficiency loss from under-investment in human capital increases. Eventually, men will benefit from voting for full rights for all women.

From http:economics.uwo.ca/newsletter/misc/2007/tertilt_dec7.pdf

Interesting article. Seems obvious after reading it.

“Men are less suited than women to the knowledge economy, which rewards supposedly female traits such as sensitivity, intuition, and a willingness to collaborate,” reports Peter Coy in Business Week. “Men have tended to do better in the hierarchies, following orders and relying on positional power.”

via Women will lead Generation Y – what will men do? | Modite.

I’m not sure I’m ready to embrace the conclusion of this article — that marriage is the solution for making men grow up in a world of gender equality.

Infinite games, on the other hand, do not have a knowable beginning or ending. They are played with the goal of continuing play. An infinite game continues play, for sake of play. If the game is approaching resolution because of the rules of play, the rules must be changed to allow continued play. The rules exist to ensure the game is infinite. The only known example is life. Beginning to participate in an infinite game may be involuntary, in that it doesn’t require conscious thought. Continuing participation in the current round of game-play is voluntary. “It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely” p. 4.

Carse applies these to human endeavor further along in the book; he describes human pursuits as either dramatic requiring participation or theatrical participation is optional. Largely this depends on one’s point of view. If motherhood is a requirement and a duty, there are rules to be obeyed and goals to be achieved. This is motherhood as tragic drama. If motherhood is a choice and a process, it becomes ennobling theatre.

via Finite and Infinite Games – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

It looks like an interesting read. I’ve always liked the analogy, that much of what we do is play. But if that’s true, what is work?

via NPR’s How Low Can You Go $10 Meals – Farfalle With Potatoes | Mamaliga.

The democratization of knowledge. Additionally, traditional hierarchies may have less significance to today’s trainees due to the democratization of knowledge. With availability of information to all on a handheld device, medical students, residents, and even patients have as much data available on rounds as highly experienced clinicians. Rather than information flowing only downhill from attending to resident to medical student to patient, information may flow up the chain of command, as well.38 Everybody will need to adjust to the new possibilities this entails, but it is likely that the greatest challenge, as in most revolutions, will be for those who are accustomed to being at the top of the hierarchy. There is already evidence that competence declines with time after training; studies have provided evidence that there is an inverse relationship between time in practice and quality of care delivered,48 though some have questioned these findings.49 This decline with time could accelerate as the pace of scientific and technological change increases, further augmenting the differences between the generations. In the future, it is possible that each generation will offer complementary skills in educating the others to provide optimal care.

via Teaching the next generation of neurologists — Elkind 72 7: 657 — Neurology.

The conflict in the medical workplace that triggered this recent dialogue on professionalism is between the Baby Boomer Generation and Generation X. Baby boomers define professionalism predominantly in terms of hours worked and “complete” dedication to the job. Dedicated to life balance, Generation Xers do not aspire to be like baby boomers. They believe baby boomers are hypocritical and susceptible to early burnout. In fact, having been raised by absentee, workaholic baby boomers, their priorities are very different from their parents. Their focus on caring for themselves and their families is a positive attribute of Generation X.

via ScienceDirect – The American Journal of Medicine : Medical professionalism and the generation gap.

But what about Generation Y (or the Millennium generation)?