10 random things to learn on September 21st

10 random things to learn today:

When given at least 1/20 of a second to look at a man, you can probably form an opinion about whether he’s gay — and be correct at least 70 percent of the time. Remarkably, your first split-second assessment would be as accurate as your impression after a full minute. That was the case, at least, in a study by Tufts University psychologists Nalini Ambady and Nicholas Rule when they asked male and female judges to guess the sexual orientation of 90 faces of gay and straight men (without facial hair or piercings) featured in grayscale photos. Regardless of their own sexual orientation, the judges were astoundingly swift and accurate when it came to identifying most men’s sexual orientation. (Women’s faces weren’t tested.)

Why the Statistics Point Toward Progress – BusinessWeek

Hans Rosling offers an antidote to people grown weary of pessimism. Videos of the 61-year-old Swedish doctor and medical professor have drawn well over 1 million views on YouTube (GOOG). His specialty: harnessing statistics to illustrate dramatically how economic progress has made the world better. Using a bubble to represent each country, his charts map rapid gains across the globe on his Gapminder.org Web site. While Rosling, a co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, also studies scourges such as the HIV epidemic, he argues that history offers cause for hope. He has seen horrors: tracking a rare paralytic disease, konzo, for years in rural Africa, for instance. But he has seen progress: He sleuthed out konzo's cause—hunger and poorly processed cassava—thus helping prevent the disease from spreading. Chief of Correspondents Joseph Weber recently spoke with Rosling.

Face value: Iliad's warrior | The Economist

“IF I commit suicide, or if I die in a car accident in the next three months or so, you will know the threats were serious, because I am not feeling at all suicidal and I drive very slowly.” Xavier Niel, the founder of Iliad, a young broadband firm which has upended France’s internet-access market and wants to do the same for mobile telephony, says he is prepared for any attempts at intimidation. In 2004 an executive from TF1, a French television firm which was withholding its programming from Iliad’s multimedia packages, reportedly told one of Mr Niel’s colleagues: “I am going to nail you down on the wall in blood.”

Lost youth: turning young girls into sex symbols | Life and style | The Guardian

It's called "kids getting older younger" – a marketing construct blurring the line between adults and children, especially with regard to sexuality. The problem is not with children, but with those who knowingly sell products with powerful sexual overtones to young girls, and with adults who then interpret girls' bodies as sexually available.

Six Sigma Makes a Comeback – BusinessWeek

Here's one more reason why the world may face a jobless recovery: Six Sigma. In an attempt to boost earnings without putting more people on the payroll, companies are embracing the controversial data-driven system that aims to radically reduce production defects and improve processes in everything from marketing to manufacturing.

14 Best Times to Make Major Purchases

When it comes to major purchases – like cars, computers, airline tickets – simply buying them “whenever” rarely get you the best deal. The top bargain hunters strategically delay these purchases until off season sales or manufacturer discounts kick in. Applied consistently across all of one’s major spending, this technique delivers savings that many shoppers are completely oblivious to. Furthermore, knowing with certainty when these items can be bought for less takes the annoying guesswork out of endlessly hunting for sales. Here are 14 examples of big purchases and their ideal buying times to get you started saving cash.

How China Cooks Its Books | Foreign Policy

In February, local Chinese Labor Ministry officials came to "help" with massive layoffs at an electronics factory in Guangdong province, China. The owner of the factory felt nervous having government officials there, but kept his mouth shut. Who was he to complain that the officials were breaking the law by interfering with the firings, he added. They were the law! And they ordered him to offer his workers what seemed like a pretty good deal: Accept the layoff and receive the legal severance package, or "resign" and get an even larger upfront payment.

America can't be the world's tech leader without immigration reform

Andy Grove, Intel's former chairman and CEO, was born in Hungary in 1936 and immigrated to the United States in his 20s. Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and moved to San Jose, Calif., with his family as a child. Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google, came to the United States from his native Russia when he was 6. They aren't special cases: About one-quarter of American tech companies are founded in part or entirely by foreigners. The proportion in Silicon Valley is even higher—a recent survey (PDF) by Vivek Wadhwa, an engineering professor at Duke University, showed that more than 52 percent of Valley startups were founded or co-founded by people born outside of the United States. According to Wadhwa's research, immigrant-founded firms produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005.

A better way to market computers: Say what they can actually do

Intel launched a new range of processors on Tuesday, a product line that the company says will mean faster, smaller, cheaper, and more energy-efficient computers for everyone. Hurray! Now if only I could understand what they're talking about. See, the company calls its new microprocessors the Core i5 and the Core i7. People who pay close attention to Intel might find this confusing; after all, didn't the company already unveil the Core i7? Yes, it did—the Core i7 actually came out about a year ago, with Intel billing it as "the fastest processor on the planet." OK, so the new chip is just a faster, better version of that old one, right? Actually, no. The processors that Intel unveiled this week are slower than the Core i7 it put out last year. That's because Intel is now filling out its "midrange" line. It now sells two completely different kinds of Core i7 chips, and the old ones are more powerful than the new ones, violating the computer-industry axiom that newer is always better.

The New Nostradamus | GOOD

Bueno de Mesquita has big ideas, and he’s more than happy to put his career on the line for them. Back in March 2004, when al-Qaeda bombed a Madrid train station, influencing the course of Spain’s general election three days later, a lot of U.S. security folks were nervous. Worried that al-Qaeda might try something similar here in the run-up to the November, 2004, presidential elections, the Pentagon hired Bueno de Mesquita to run some data through his forecasting model to tell them what to expect. The results were unequivocal. “I said there would be no homeland attack. I also indicated that bin Laden’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would resurface around Thanksgiving, 2004,” he says. Just after the elections in November that year, Zawahiri released a new videotape. Bueno de Mesquita was right on both counts. “One of the things government needs most is advice that’s not wishy-washy. I try to be as precise as I can.”

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