Linkdump

If you make a living by breaking & entering, maybe tattooing your face to look like a clown isn’t the best way to remain anonymous-looking. Just sayin’. Clownface.

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Subjecting the “rational consumer” hypothesis to scientific scrutiny. I know, I know, your eyes just glazed over. But what made me want to read the book is the following, which I feel perfectly describes the Nameless Enginerding Company At Which Tim and I Used To Work.

For example, Ariely describes a series of experiments that measure work performance among randomly selected groups of people where one group is paid nothing, one group is paid a little, and a third is paid a lot. The group that was paid a little did a little. The group that was paid a lot did a lot. The group that was paid nothing did even more. Ariely and colleagues go on to refine this experiment by changing the reward to gifts (chocolates) instead of money, then to gifts whose value is enumerated (“you will receive a $5 box of Godiva chocolates”) and examines how this effects performance. He also examines what happens to performance in situations in which one is at first paid to work, then asked to do the same work again for free.

The results are fascinating, and point to the idea that we work hard for money, and we work hard for social reasons, but that one can short-circuit the other, and lastingly so. He then goes on to explain how companies that ask their employees to work harder for social reasons (“you’re part of the team”) but dismiss the employees for economic reasons (“we need to cut costs”) end up in an impossible place. So do companies that ask customers to come make a purchase as a social transaction (“join the family!”) but then treat the transaction after the fact as a purely economic matter (“you should have read the fine-print”).

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Ronald Howes, inventor of Easy-Bake Oven, dies at 83. I always wanted one of those, but now that I’m grown up and my friends tell me they never really did cook very well, I guess I’m glad I didn’t have one. :shuffles feet: … …. I still wanted one, though.

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Oh, TSA, you’re killing me. TSA forces traveling policeman to remove his disabled four-year-old son’s leg-braces. Add this to the checklist of why I never want to fly again. Sigh.

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Architectural drawings of TV houses, as if they were real houses. Fun!

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Here’s one for Sharon – Is beauty informed by contemporary culture? Extreme plastic surgery alert, for those squicked out by such things.

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Hahaha, visual humor. It’s time to let the cat out of the bag. Hahaha! See what they did there? HAHAHAH! Funny.

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