Новости за 25.07.2016

On common cats, cat shows, and the transformational effect of Kitty Litter. “The semiconductor was the most important invention of 1947, but considering that 100 million house cats live in 37 per cent of American homes, Ed Lowe’s highly absorbent granulated clay was a close second. Cats evolved in the desert. Their urine is highly concentrated and extremely noxious. Kitty Litter meant a cat could live exclusively indoors, thereby completing 10,000 years of domestication”

“I’m going to have to be blunt. Gun control advocates rely excessively on a public health case that is not only much weaker than they believe it to be but also crowds out the kind of arguments that might actually win over their opponents. Their confidence that they are on the right side of history has blinded them to the fact that they have chosen to fight on the wrong ground. They keep harping on about guns killing people. As if guns were like cigarettes, and as if the numbers were big enough to... Читать дальше...

Discussion of books by James Joyce, Conor Cruise O’Brien and others. “Irish intellectual life is deeply indebted to its literary culture. There’s been a relative dearth of what you might call dedicated intellectuals, and, by comparison, a dominant role played by the image of the writer. This undoubtedly has something to do with the subtle hegemony exercised by priestcraft in Ireland, coupled, over the longer term, with the declining fortunes of philosophical ingenuity within Catholic thinking”

We tend to attribute our successes to our own talent and hard work, and to deny the part of luck in our lives; which betrays a clear cognitive bias, but a useful one, if it serves to motivate us. We are more likely to work hard if we think that hard work brings success. “Denying the importance of luck may actually help people summon the formidable efforts generally required for success … Pride in one’s achievements is often one of the most powerful motivations to expend the effort it takes to succeed”

The Bank of England blog reflects on whether central banks should create digital currencies. Doing so would probably put an end to most commercial banking, because a government-issued digital currency would offer so many technical advantages, including risk-free deposits and instant transactions. The central bank would assume complete control of money supply. Private banks would “lose their power to create money and become pure intermediaries of loanable funds”