Quotes of the day

A light bulb sits on a store shelf for several weeks, is bought, taken home, and put in the cabinet for months and months. Alone and in the dark, in a way, it could feel that life, alone and in the dark, is a stupid, futile, pointless exercise. When, however, it is taken out of the cabinet and plugged in to the socket, all of a sudden it becomes useful; it serves a purpose, and all of the parts and pieces work together harmoniously to serve as a conduit for light. It is now doing what it was designed for, it is performing the job it was built for. This might be the same as what can happen with human beings. If this is the case, then the whole aspect of "creating" meaning does not work. It would be like the lightbulb taking up yoga or canvas painting in an effort to "create" meaning. While this might work for a little while as a temporary distraction and amusement, the light bulb would not experience permanent relief until it became plugged into the socket, or performed the exact function it was built for.--LiveReal

Psychologists at Boston University paired paintings by famous abstract expressionists with paintings by a child, monkey, chimpanzee, gorilla, and elephant. They presented the images side by side and asked students to judge which painting was of higher quality. One-third of the time, the art students chose the work of children and animals.--Maureen O'Connor

The NBA is a star-driven game unlike any other in American sports. Teams have won Super Bowls with Brad Johnson and Trent Dilfer at quarterback. Teams have won World Series with Jose Rijo as a No. 1 starter, and with Jorge Orta hitting cleanup. But to build a championship NBA team, with almost no exception, you must have an all-time great player. It’s not ENOUGH to have an all-time great player — Utah didn’t win a title with John Stockton and Karl Malone; Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller did not win one; Dirk Nowitzki is a great player who so far has been unable to take his team to a title — but an all-time great player is the admission price.--Joe Posnanski

Women want independence but we are all hard-wired into wanting to be into relationships. The paradox of the post-feminist position is how we create a social system in which both independence and interdependency can flourish.--Roger Dobson and Maurice Chittenden

A chap with a high IQ is going to get a demanding job that is going to take up a lot of his energy and time. In many ways he wants a woman who is an old-fashioned wife and looks after the home, a copy of his mum in a way. “The bright girl, on the other hand, remembers that old saying that at first she sinks into his arms only to spend the rest of her life with her arms in his sink.--Clare Rayner

Intelligent men are able to increase their chances of marriage because they are willing to date outside of their IQ cohort. Intelligent women, it appears, are either unwilling to date and marry outside of their IQ cohort or are unable to do so. ... when a publication like TheGloss asks “why smart men date dumb women,” it is asking the wrong question. It should be asking why smart women refuse to reciprocate. --John Carney

More intelligent American boys are more likely to grow up to value sexual exclusivity in early adulthood than less intelligent boys. So the unwillingness of women to date less intelligent men is rational if they are seeking a mate who values monogamy and sexual exclusivity. But if intelligence and sexual exclusivity go hand in hand, why are men willing to date less intelligent women? Well, it turns out Santoshi's study proved something very interesting: for women, there is no statistically significant correlation between intelligence and valuing monogamy. Smarter women are no more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent women. Or, to flip it around, less intelligent women do not place a lower value on monogamy than more intelligent women. In other words, when women date less intelligent men they pay a cost: a diminished interest in sexual fidelity. Men don't pay this cost, making dating across the intelligence curve easier.--John Carney

... the U.S. effective corporate tax rate on new investment was 34.6 percent in 2010, which was the highest rate in the OECD and the fifth-highest rate among 83 countries. The average OECD rate was 18.6 percent, and the average rate for 83 countries was 17.7 percent.--Duanjie Chen and Jack Mintz

Within a decade after the Community Reinvestment Act was enacted, many banks created separate "community reinvestment" divisions that were often staffed by liberal individuals who sympathiszed with the aims of the community reeinventment movement. Indeed, some of these individuals had themselves been cummunity activitists who were recruited by banks to serve as liaisons with community groups. Activists pressured banks to invest more money in specific urban neighborhoods. Banks forged partnerships with community development corporations. See an Urban Studies professor's fawning praise for this result back in 2003 when it seemed like the model of good governmental activism. The result was a disaster. Not that this was a sufficient condition, but it surely contributed to the debacle in a bad way. The lesson is yet another example of the law of unintended consequences. Trying to do good via indirect methods is very dangerous because the economy is a complex system, and when bad things happen as they often do, there's no accountability, no one in the political system got booted out of office for championing NINJA loans, while investors took it on the chin.--Eric Falkenstein