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Today is one of the great days with no items about DC miscreants.
And we have late night humor from Andy Malcolm.
BBC arms us with a piece on the subtle science of selling.
If I told you this is the most important article you’ll read this week, you probably wouldn’t believe me. But what if I could say that 75% of your friends agreed? Or if I could pull out the fact that nine out of 10 people of your age, education and income judged the article as relevant to them?* Then, perhaps, you might be more likely to read on.
Many of us are probably aware that salespeople often use psychological tricks to persuade us to buy their products, even if they themselves aren’t aware of how these techniques mess with our mind. We might even like to think we are immune to that sort of manipulation. But the scientific evidence strongly suggests we aren’t. So why are the following hidden sales tricks so effective?
Take, for starters, the techniques of used car sales. In the name of research, Robert Levine, a professor of social psychology at California State University, Fresno, masqueraded as a salesman at a used car dealership in the early 2000s. As he recounts in his book, The Power of Persuasion: How We’re Bought and Sold, he was worried that he would fail to shift many cars because he wouldn’t be able to remember all the stats about the various models on the lot. Levine quickly learned, however, that plenty of used car salespeople don’t carry this information around in their heads either – to sell a car, they only really needed to memorise a few basic facts that applied to all the models on the lot. What mattered more was showing the cars in a strategic order.
In doing so, the salespeople are making use of the concept of the “base rate fallacy”. When a shopper isn’t aware of the intrinsic value of a product – and the value of used cars can be difficult to judge without some homework – a base rate can be established and then used to emphasise the exceptional value of another product by comparison.
“If a bunch of $200 espresso machines are sitting next to one overpriced $400 espresso machine that does basically the same thing, the $200 machines suddenly look like an obvious good deal,” Levine explains. “This is especially true if you have a skilled salesperson who divulges that the $400 machine isn’t really any better than the others. But the reality is, most of us probably have no idea how much an espresso machine should cost.” …
And Authority Nutrition says coffee makes you live longer.
Coffee is one of the healthiest beverages on the planet.
It is more than just dark-colored liquid with caffeine… coffee actually contains hundreds of different compounds, some of which have important health benefits.
Several massive studies have now shown that the people who drink the most coffee live longer and have a reduced risk of diseases like Alzheimer’s and diabetes.
When hot water runs through the coffee grounds while brewing, the substances in the coffee beans mix with the water and become part of the drink.
Some of these substances are well known, including caffeine, but there are hundreds of other compounds in there as well, many of which science has yet to identify.
Many of these compounds are antioxidants that protect our bodies from oxidation, which involves free radicals that damage molecules in the body. …
Tesla introduces a “whole house battery.” Discovery has the story.
Electric car pioneer Tesla unveiled a “home battery” Thursday that its founder Elon Musk said would help change the “entire energy infrastructure of the world.”
The Tesla Powerwall can store power from solar panels, from the electricity grid at night when it is typically cheaper, and provide a secure backup in the case of a power outage.
In theory the device, which typically would fit on the wall of a garage or inside a house, could make solar-powered homes completely independent of the traditional energy grid.
“The goal is complete transformation of the entire energy infrastructure of the world, to completely sustainable zero carbon,” Musk told reporters shortly before unveiling the Powerwall in a stylish warehouse space outside Los Angeles. …
NY Times has an article about coping with arthritis. Says you have to find a way to keep moving.
… The big question now is how the growing millions of adults with arthritis will cope with a painful, disabling and as yet incurable disease. Although several commonly affected joints — hips, shoulders, ankles, wrists and elbows as well as knees — can be replaced by artificial ones, not everyone affected is a candidate for surgery, and the operation itself leaves some people with activity limitations.
According to Patricia A. Parmelee, a professor of psychology and the director of the Alabama Research Institute on Aging, arthritic pain and disability often force people to abandon activities they love. “Some stop moving altogether, brood over what they had to give up and become depressed,” she said in an interview.
“The depression is not necessarily severe, but low-level depressive symptoms can interfere with daily functioning,” Dr. Parmelee said. “People tell us ‘I’m not functioning as well as I could,’ ‘Life isn’t as good as it could be.’ ”
The trick to not losing quality of life “is to find a substitute for the activities limited by arthritis,” she said. “Can’t play golf? Can’t garden? What can you do? Walk, swim, walk in water — anything that gets you moving. The bottom line: As we get older, if we don’t get up and move around as much as we can, then we soon won’t be able to move at all.”
In a 10-year study of more than 2,000 men and women with arthritic knees, Jungwha Lee and her colleagues found that fewer than 10 percent met the national guidelines of doing 150 minutes a week of moderate physical activity. But if they improved their physical activity, “they functioned better and had less disability,” said Dr. Lee, a biostatistician at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. …
Popular Mechanics says tires, with proper care, can last up to 10 years.
Chances are, there’s some sourceless bit of knowledge rattling around in your head. You don’t know how it got there or where it came from, but you believe it. Maybe your convictions on tire life falls into that category. We’ve always held that that our favorite round rubber bits had a use life of about two years before age had a serious negative impact on performance. Turns out, we were wrong. Way wrong.
Woody Rodgers, a tire product information specialist, has been with Tire Rack for sixteen years, and he says that given proper storage and care, tires can last you up to a decade.
“I won’t say a tire has the shelf life of gravel,” Rodgers said, “but it’s close to that.”
When properly stored in a climate controlled warehouse, tires have an almost unlimited shelf life, and once they’re on the road, proper care can add many years to a tire’s life. …
We can make tires last 10 years, but how have Russians kept Lenin looking ready to lead a revolution? Scientific American reports.
For thousands of years humans have used embalming methods to preserve dead bodies. But nothing compares with Russia’s 90-year-old experiment to preserve the body of Vladimir Lenin, communist revolutionary and founder of the Soviet Union. Generations of Russian scientists have spent almost a century fine-tuning preservation techniques that have maintained the look, feel and flexibility of Lenin’s body. This year Russian officials closed the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square so that scientists could prepare the body for public display again in time for the Soviet leader’s 145th birthday anniversary today.
The job of maintaining Lenin’s corpse belongs to an institute known in post-Soviet times as the Center for Scientific Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies in Moscow. A core group of five to six anatomists, biochemists and surgeons, known as the “Mausoleum group,” have primary responsibility for maintaining Lenin’s remains. (They also help maintain the preserved bodies of three other national leaders: the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and the North Korean father–son duo of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, respectively.) The Russian methods focus on preserving the body’s physical form—its look, shape, weight, color, limb flexibility and suppleness—but not necessarily its original biological matter. In the process they have created a “quasibiological” science that differs from other embalming methods. “They have to substitute occasional parts of skin and flesh with plastics and other materials, so in terms of the original biological matter the body is less and less of what it used to be,” says Alexei Yurchak, professor of social anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. “That makes it dramatically different from everything in the past, such as mummification, where the focus was on preserving the original matter while the form of the body changes,” he adds. …
Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.
Meyers: George W. Bush is reluctant to talk about the 2016 election, fearing he might be unhelpful to his brother Jeb. Jeb Bush commented, “I don’t have a brother.”
Conan: Ford has recalled almost 600,000 vehicles for steering problems. Owners are being told to bring their cars in as close to the dealership as they can get.