Two recent posts from the original Evolutionary Fitness gangster himself, Art De Vany, remind me of how much I appreciated him back in the day. Still posting free content but on Facebook for the most part.
This is sand, magnified:
Sand grains from Maui, Hawaii
Magnified 125x
Dr. Gary Greenberg’s photographs magnify grains of sand 100 to 300 times, exposing swirling microscopic shells, eroded crystals and colorful coral fragments.
Tweet from Amazing Maps (@Amazing_Maps)
Number of Syrian refugees taken in by countries in the Middle East
– http://twitter.com/Amazing_Maps/status/640975452824322049/photo/1
Number of Syrian refugees taken in by countries in the Middle East - pic.twitter.com/SemnglB4CG
— Amazing Maps (@Amazing_Maps) September 7, 2015
Shared via Plume
http://bit.ly/GetPlume
Usually I just pin links, but this is a neat paper:
Make three claims when trying to persuade
Suzanne B. Shu and Kurt A. Carlson have a paper (pdf) on this claim:
How many positive claims should be used to produce the most positive impression of a product or service? This article posits that in settings where consumers know that the message source has a persuasion motive, the optimal number of positive claims is three. More claims are better until the fourth claim, at which time consumers’ persuasion knowledge causes them to see all the claims with skepticism. The studies in this paper establish and explore this pattern, which is referred to as the charm of three. An initial experiment finds that impressions peak at three claims for sources with persuasion motives but not for sources without a persuasion motive. Experiment 2 finds that this occurs for attitudes and impressions, and that increases in skepticism after three claims explain the effect. Two final experiments examine the process by investigating how cognitive load and sequential claims impact the effect.
Here is a NYT summary of those results.
Toronto Public Library has a good obituary with some links to his works.
His last piece in Vanity Fair:
I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.
Bleak!
It goes without saying that this man could write and speak like very few others. There’s lots being posted upon his death, but I like to think back to how he always had the balls to say outrageous things, like Why Women Still Aren’t Funny. This man made me think, and laugh.
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