But in the process makes the point of how little we really understand the market
 

Last Friday I was honored with the Ig Nobel award in Medicine for a paper that Rebecca Waber, Ziv Carmon, Baba Shiv and I wrote on the effects of discounts on the efficacy of placebo pain medications. We basically showed that when drugs are discounted they just don’t work as well. We also tried to make the point that this basic effect of expectations might also be the reason that people just don’t experience generic drugs to be as effective as brand name medications. (more…)

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is a great deal of difference.”

This is in my mind the basic lesson we learned this week from the negative reactions of the markets to the bailout.  

Given this, do you think we should revisit the bailout and maybe give the money directly to people who are struggling with their mortgages (maybe buying 1/2 of their mortgages and homes) instead of using the money to buy the financial instruments that represent these mortgages?
Sadly yours

Dan

 Happy new year (the Jewish new year)

When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, my first reaction was that the race was over and the Democrats will win for sure.

Here was my reasoning:
First, McCain has been running on the “old and experienced” ticket and now he was making a choice that would make it impossible to make such claims any more. (more…)

[kml_flashembed movie="http://embed.break.com/NTQyNjQ5" width="450" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Here is a video dedicated to the start of a new academic year.

Today we all have good intentions but what will come of these intentions in the future?

Happy semester

Can divorce be good for a relationship? I think that in some cases only a serious failure can help us better understand our actions and their consequences.

The odd thing about relativity is that we judge almost everything in terms of how it is relative to other things, and not relative to everything, only relative to a few things—mostly to the things that are close by and easily comparable….

This video was produced by Spark Creative and Diamond Consultants — thanks

Would you drink from this toilet?

What if I told you that this is a perfectly new toilet? Would it make a difference?

If you feel uncomfortable, it is because the meaning of the word toilet “sticks” to it. It turns out that this feeling is not just about toilets, and there are many words whose meanings sticks to them. Think about chocolate that looks like a cockroach…….

This picture was taken in the Exploratorium in SF, and it was part of their exhibit on discussing things.