The Suburbanization of Poverty - Emily Badger - The Atlantic Cities
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The researchers think it’s essentially because by trying to be too specific, we trip ourselves up. For example when you try to guess the score of a soccer match, you are more likely to focus on specific factors like the form of the striker, their goalie’s recent divorce settlement or the colour of the manager’s shirt. In doing so you neglect the fact that the match is an away fixture.
When you just try to predict the outcome of the match, though, you’ll tend to take a more global view. This encourages you to concentrate mainly on really important factors.
” — How to Pick a Winner: A Psychological Trick to Improve the Odds — PsyBlog“A friend of mine, Glen Chiacchieri, has created a Chrome extension to help solve this problem: Dictionary of Numbers. It searches the text in your browser for quantities it understands and inserts contextual statements in brackets. It might turn the phrase “315 million people” into “315 million people [≈ the population of the United States]“.” — Dictionary of Numbers | xkcd
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“Full-contact armored fighting events grew out of participation in historical re-enactments, which are largely theatrical and tame. More common re-enactment fighting involves wooden weapons in the United States. The Battle of the Nations, in its fourth year, is the first international full-contact competition of this scale that uses steel armor — a heightened risk factor that has attracted a certain breed of fighters. It has been won by Russia every year.” — Battle of the Nations, a Holy Grail of Battle Re-enactments - NYTimes.com
kottke.org: How to prevent protests in China -
Taking a page from Orwell, officials in Chengdu, China endeavored to prevent recent protests by moving the weekend and scheduling security exercises at the same time and place as the scheduled protest.
As text messages circulated calling for another protest, authorities decided to fiddle with…
“In Afghanistan, everything is divided according to population size of the ethnicities,” he says. “The military, government jobs, spots in universities — if we are shown as less, then we get less.” Author Interviews
First Western War In Afghanistan Was An ‘Imperial Disaster’”
— Afghans Confront Sensitive Issue Of Ethnicity : NPR
kottke.org: Peregrine Falcon killing a duck in mid-air -
The Peregrine Falcon is the world’s fastest animal1; it can reach speeds of more than 240 mph during dives. It uses that speed to kill other birds in mid-air. Here’s a video of a Peregrine diving and killing a duck, shot with a camera mounted on the falcon’s back.
It’s cool watching…
(via Charts: Why You’re in Deep Trouble If You Can’t Afford a Lawyer | Mother Jones)
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