Today, in his column for the FT, Tim Harford describes some of the troubles with paying people to do things, they might have done through altruism anyway, the most famous example of which is Richard Titmuss's book about blood donation in the UK, with another example - the Haifa day care centre - brought to light in Freakonomics.  In these examples, paying people resulted in worse outcomes.  Though he doesn't annunciate it, Harford's talking about the crowding...

I'm reading Joseph M. Williams' Style: Toward Clarity and Grace.  I began it some time ago having borrowed it from the library, but I didn't finish it because I had to return it. I bought it recently to finish it at last. In the 'Concision' chapter, Williams describes the following scene:Every teacher of freshman Shakespeare has seen papers that begin with a sentence on the order of "Shakespeare, who wrote Macbeth, wrote many other famous plays." Tell the student...

Ladies and Gentlemen, please take a moment to look at the several blogs below that are part of the (Southern) African Science and Scepticism blogroll. Several new editions to this list since last time.  Our thanks go out to Mike Meadon for his work to keep the list updated.01 and the universeAcinonyx ScepticusAmanuensisAmbient NormalityASSAf BlogBotswana Skeptic Bomoko and other nonsense wordsBullshit FatigueCommunicating Science, the African WayDefollyant's AntiBlogEffortless...

I thought I'd give a couple of comments about recent stuff about gender in the popular and scientific presses. Nothing comprehensive, just a few tidbits.Nature reports that men prefer women who are less powerful than other women (their headline was poorly written, else it could be interpreted as 'men prefer women who are less powerful than them' which could also be true, but wasn't strictly what the study was about). The converse is true for women. Ronald Ehrenburg...

Here's the fiction and memoir section of this books post series. See Part 1 here. Gosh, it feels never-ending. Since writing most of this I've already finished several other books. Oh well, the next books post will arrive in early February, I'm sure. In the interim, enjoy this one.Fiction & MemoirJill Ker Conway - A Woman's Education: A Memoir The third book in Conway's autobiographical series, I do not believe it is as strong as the preceding two books. In...

Julian Baggini reviews a few recent books on Happiness Research at the Financial Times.  I think that most laypeople interested in the subject would benefit from reading the article, particularly how it uses the reviews together to debunk several odd claims that people make when dealing with the happiness or subjective well-being literature.  However, Baggini does not call out the author of one of the books, Carol Graham, on her claim that increasing wealth...

I just read an article in the M&G, 'Cosatu: Tax the wealthy to fund Eskom price hike'.   I shan't discuss the main point of the article, i.e. the proposal by COSATU to tax the wealthy to pay for Eskom's ineptness, sorry, I mean plans for future growth and improvements in infrastructure.  What I thought I'd comment on instead is price elasticity.  The M&G tells us that Eskom plans to increase prices by 35% each year for three years.  A back...