i.want.world

Sin Tax

The results of this experiment might have been well explained through the Hawthorne Effect concept. However, it is undoubltely remarkable and a must to note that in all possible soloutions this might be much more cost effective than just the plain old assumption of "through education the consumer can wise up."

Epstein and colleagues simulated a grocery store, "stocked" with images of everything from bananas and whole wheat bread to Dr. Pepper and nachos. A group of volunteers -- all mothers -- were given laboratory "money" to shop for a week's groceries for the family. Each food item was priced the same as groceries at a real grocery nearby, and each food came with basic nutritional information. The mother-volunteers went shopping several times in the simulated grocery. First they shopped with the regular prices, but afterward the researchers imposed either taxes or subsidies on the foods. That is, they either raised the prices of unhealthy foods by 12.5%, and then by 25%; or they discounted the price of healthy foods comparably. Then they watched what the mothers purchased.

To define healthy and unhealthy foods, the scientists used a calorie-for-nutrition value, or CFN, which is the number of calories one must eat to get the same nutritional payoff. For example, nonfat cottage cheese has a very low CFN, because it is high on nutrition but not on calories; chocolate chip cookies have a much higher CFN. The researchers also measured the energy density- essentially calories- in
every food.

The results, just published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that taxes were more effective in reducing calories purchased over subsides. Specifically, taxing unhealthy foods reduced overall calories purchased, while cutting the proportion of fat and carbohydrates and upping the proportion of protein in a typical week's groceries.

By contrast, subsidizing the prices of healthy food actually increased overall calories purchased without changing the nutritional value at all. It appears that mothers took the money they saved on subsidized fruits and vegetables and treated the family to less healthy alternatives, such as chips and soda pop. Taxes had basically the opposite effect, shifting spending from less healthy to healthier choices.

entertain physics, don't ponder upon it

The sciences of astronomy and physics, specifically quantum physics, has always fascinated me. I've tried often to keep abreast of the sciences with any free time that I may gather. Consequent of the many hours spent on the MIT Open Course Ware site, my understanding has certainly come a long way further from my physics class in 10th grade. Recently, I came across a paper written by a physicist named Jia Liu entitled Dark Matter as a Possible New Energy Source for Future Rocket Technology and later this article. An excerpt:

Crane first started thinking about artificial black holes 12 years ago when physicist Lee Smolin, now at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, asked Crane to read the manuscript of his book The Life of the Cosmos.

Nobody knows what happens at the singularity of a black hole, the point where space and time become so warped that the laws of relativity break down. In his book, Smolin suggested that a new universe could be created and bud off. So universes in which black holes are likely to arise will give birth to more and more such universes.

This means that our universe could be a baby universe, and is more likely to have come from one that is good at making black holes than one that isn't. Crane then wondered what would happen if intelligent civilizations could make black holes. This would mean that life in these universes played a key role in the proliferation of baby universes. Smolin felt the idea was too outlandish and left it out of his book. But Crane has been thinking about it on and off for the last decade.

He believes we are seeing Darwinian selection operating on the largest possible scale: only universes that contain life can make black holes and then go on to give birth to other universes, while the lifeless universes are an evolutionary dead end. His latest calculations made him realize how uncanny it was that there could be a black hole at just the right size for powering a starship.

"Why is there such a sweet spot?" he asks. The only reason for an intelligent civilization to make a black hole, he sees, is so it can travel the universe. "If this hypothesis is right," he says, "we live in a universe that is optimized for building starships!"

Yes I know. Just don't think about it too much.