Telluride Festival of Nothing

The town of Telluride has a festival of nothing coming in July:1. Sunrises and Sunsets as normal 2. Gravity will continue to be in effect. 3. The earth’s rotation will be increased to add a few thrills. 4. The laws of physics will be on...

Presidental Candidate’s Value

Intrade.com is a prediction market. An interesting market that they cover is the value of presidential candidates. You can currently purchase a contract for Barack Obama that costs around $30. If he wins the Democratic nomination, then the owner of the contract gets...

Ecstasy and Verbal Memory

A study in JAMA found a correlation between ecstasy use and difficulty remembering words.[The doctors] recruited 188 volunteers (average age 22) who had not used Ecstasy but reported that they were likely to try it soon. Within three years of the initial evaluations,...

Traveler’s Dilemma

From the Freakonomics Blog:This month in Scientific American, Cornell economics professor Kaushik Basu revisits his twist on the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. Called the Traveler’s Dilemma, the game involves two travelers who find that identical belongings of theirs...