Comedy troupe Uncle Mom want you to cut the plastic that holds six packs. There are many reasons why it’s important to cut six pack rings, but for the real reason watch the video.
Thanks to Evan!
Fun
Economists: Reduce Time Spent Working
Since roughly the end of the 70s productivity at workplaces has increased yet wages have stagnated (except for the top 1%) meaning that we are relatively worse off than before. All one has to do is look at the graph below to get the basic idea of this global issue.
With this in mind, it’s great to see economists calling for a reduced work week. In North America, a standard full-time week is 40 hours, and the economists are calling for a 30 hour work week.
The benefits of working less are huge for individuals as well as society as a whole. Some may think that fewer working hours would mean lost productivity and GDP, but they’d be wrong. There’s no evidence that the reduction will have larger negative economic impacts.
Anna Coote, head of social policy at the NEF, an independent think-tank, said: “It’s time to make ‘part-time’ the new ‘full-time’.
“We must rethink the way we divide up our hours between paid and unpaid activities, and make sure everyone has a fair share of free time.”
Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have shown it is possible to make changes like these without weakening their economies, the books claims.
It adds: “Time spent providing unpaid care constitutes an important civic contribution that is often unrecognised.
“A shorter working week would both ease the pressure on carers, most of whom are women, and enable their responsibilities to be more widely shared with men. It could therefore help tackle the entrenched domestic bases of gender inequalities.”
The Age of Exploration Isn’t Over
Humans haven’t been on the Moon for over 30 years and as a result it’s easy to think that the “space age” is over and our exploration of the universe is over. I frequent space forums and this attitude is always present, and as a result of all this negative thinking one person decided to react. And the reaction is great.
Annalee Newitz’s response to the idea the space age is dead is a great read and will fill you with optimism about all things space and science related!
Not only are we actually visiting every damn nook and cranny in our solar system — and sending back some of the most awe-inspiring images and data you’ve ever seen — but we are not doing it like idiots. We are exploringbefore we shoot our fragile little bodies out there into the radiation-saturated unknown. That is what a smart species does. Back pats for all the Homo sapiens who decided to send a robot to Mars before sending astronauts.
Making People Laugh in The New Yorker
The New Yorker is one of my favourite magazines and the first thing I do when I open it is to read all the cartoons. Some are hilarious and others just don’t resonate with me and in the TED Talk below you can see that having a mixed bag of humour is important. Regular readers will already know the benefits of laughter so here’s a meta-analysis of what works in making us laugh.
The New Yorker receives around 1,000 cartoons each week; it only publishes about 17 of them. In this hilarious, fast-paced, and insightful talk, the magazine’s longstanding cartoon editor and self-proclaimed “humor analyst” Bob Mankoff dissects the comedy within just some of the “idea drawings” featured in the magazine, explaining what works, what doesn’t, and why.
“Weirdos” Make Cities Better
Joi Ito, the director of the Media Lab at MIT, proposes that one way to make cities a better place for people and economies is to let weirdos flourish. What he’s getting at is that cities attract creative people who can generate wealth and culture so therefore we need to let these creative people do what they do best. The best way to do this, he says, is to have government step out of the way in some neighbourhoods because developing the place may change the weirdos who live there.
What’s more, the very effort to attract such talent by building infrastructure in advance, may well backfire, raising costs and destroying the vibe. “Look at New York,†he says. “If you have an area where established businesses have gone away, costs will go down, and entrepreneurs will move in. Scuzzy kids don’t need much space anymore, they just need a network and a place with a critical mass of energy to self-organize. Infrastructure comes later.â€
As technology and the internet have lowered the cost of innovation and expressing yourself creatively, the ability of small groups of people to have a big impact has increased, he says.
“The barrier now isn’t lack of money,†he says, “it’s lack of permission. Untapped capital gets unlocked when authority gets out of the way and lets people do what they would do if given potential and the context in which to do it.â€