Author Archives: jps75

About jps75

I might have been born yesterday, Sir, but I stayed up all night.

The Age of the Selfish Meme

Posted on March 27, 2013

The times, they are a-changin’. The image above (via Reddit) comes from an Australian store that has started charging $5 to customers who peruse the goods but don’t buy anything, assuming they are just looking around to buy elsewhere later (possibly … Continue reading →

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Why You’ll Hate the New Facebook Redesign

Posted on March 18, 2013

Why does everyone always complain when Facebook gets a new design? As soon as the changes appear, people start moaning. It’s happening right now, as the Timeline is getting its first facelift, and things will go off the scale as the … Continue reading →

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The Up-Goer Five and Quantum Mechanics

Posted on January 22, 2013

What you see above is something called The Up-Goer Five Text Editor. It’s an online text editor that uses only the 1,000 most common words in the English language as its word database, giving you a warning every time you … Continue reading →

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When Space Pioneers Play It Safe

Posted on December 14, 2012

NASA has recently announced that a new rover will be sent to Mars by 2020. Another one? They already have three there. Spirit and Opportunity landed first, in 2004. While Opportunity is still scuttling around, Spirit has been stuck in a sand pit … Continue reading →

Posted in pop culture, science, astronomy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Darkness Around Suicide

Posted on December 11, 2012

The tragic death of the nurse who was the victim of a prank call at Kate Middleton’s hospital a few days ago highlights how little is known, or understood, about the complex issue of suicide. After the news broke that … Continue reading →

Posted in effects, psychology, sociology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Perils of Gift Giving

Posted on November 28, 2012

The gifting season is upon us. Like several things that require you to interact with others, gift giving is an apparently simple, benign activity that can quickly turn into a can of worms. The main problem is that the giver … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, pop culture, psychology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The 11 most annoying things on Facebook

Posted on November 22, 2012

There are a number of things on Facebook that just rub me the wrong way. Here’s a list. 1. The Plea to stop unwanted requests. Let me tell you how this works: those requests are automatic. When you play a … Continue reading →

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Do You Have to be Mad to be a Scientist?

Posted on November 16, 2012

Great Scott! “Doc” Brown, from Back to the Future, is peculiar among fictional scientists, because he’s not a villain. A survey of about about 1,000 horror films released between 1930 and 1980 reveals that in about a third of the movies, … Continue reading →

Posted in pop culture, psychology, science | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Infinite Blades Hypothesis

Posted on November 14, 2012

How many blades does your razor have? If you’re a customer of one of the two leading brands and you’re on their latest products, it’s likely to be either four or five. Gillette and Schick (known as Wilkinson Sword outside … Continue reading →

Posted in branding, marketing, pop culture | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Snooze Dilemma

Posted on November 8, 2012

Waking up is hard to do. So, to snooze or not to snooze? Well, it turns out that snoozing, like many enjoyable things in life, is critically bad for you. And you shouldn’t do it. Here’s why. First of all, … Continue reading →

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