Calorie Neutral

The real question is could you do these things simultaneouly and be totally calorie neutral?

Can't we all get along? NFL team logos become more menacing over time

Who knew Chuck E Cheese was so dangerous?

Almighty Dollar: Staring at money makes you less collaborative

University of Minnesota professor Kathleen Vohs conducts interesting research into how money impacts our behavior. In one study participants stared at a screensaver - one group watched fish, the other watched dollars bills. After exposure to these images, test participants were told they needed to do a project and asked if they wanted to work alone or together. 80% of those who watched fish decided to work with another person, while only 20% of those who watched money wanted to collaborate. The control group (watching a blank screen) wanted to collaborate ~75% of the time, so this suggests people are naturally team-focused except when you emphasize reward, we become self-interested.

Why do geeks hate partial feed RSS but love Twitter?

In 2007 the hot debate was partial vs full RSS feeds - giving all your content in the post vs enticing a click back to your website with just a teaser via RSS. When some publishers reverted to partial feed in order to drive traffic and actually monetize their audience, they were often flamed with "UNSUBSCRIBE!" comments.

Fast-forward to 2009 and Twitter is loved by these same outraged readers despite the fact it functions often as a partial feed RSS. It's the return of the click! People don't mind now actually visiting a website. I think of my own experience with TechCrunch - pre-Twitter i'd consume 99% of their content in my reader. Now i'm more likely to click on a Tweet and go to their website if there's something of immediate interest, and their feed has become non-timely catch up consumption.

Why do geeks hate partial feed RSS but love Twitter? Because in their mind Twitter's truncation of content delivery isn't a violation of the internet - it's a technical limitation based on the service's SMS origins. No pointy head suit is making the decision to limit their feed in order to monetize you on their site.

So of course the totally illogical reality is that when consuming content on your iPhone, Publisher XYZ's partial feed in your Reader app makes you mad, but Publisher XYZ tweeting the headline and link to their new post makes you happy. Same experience, different context, different user reactions.