Keys Corner

Ruth told me about a program she heard while drving home yesterday – about how apparently 53% of all Americans believe the world was created around 6000 years ago and that the bible is to be understood literally (about creating the world in 6 days and so on).

I found this web site which is run by a multi-faith group, which has done some analysis on the figures, which seem to be in that ballpark. While all the statistics quoted on the site are interesting, I thought the statistics near the bottom of the page particularly interesting:

Beliefs elsewhere in the world:

Belief in creation science seems to be largely a U.S. phenomenon among countries [in] the West. A British survey of 103 Roman Catholic priests, Anglican bishops and Protestant ministers/pastors showed that:

• 97% do not believe the world was created in six days.
• 80% do not believe in the existence of Adam and Eve.

Perfect hindsight is a wonderful thing – we really shouldn’t have sold our UK house when we moved to Germany in 1980! Thanks to the The Economist for pointing it out.

Update: At least we are considerably better off, than this family in Morocco, who don’t have anything to laugh about.

The issue of whether the toilet seat should be left up or down after use seemingly generates a lot of passion among the parties concerned, however, scientific inquiries into the matter are almost non-existent. Notable exceptions are Choi (2002) and Harter (2005). Choi (2002) argues that the rule of leaving the toilet seat down after use is inefficient in the sense that there is at least one other rule that outperform this rule. The unit of analysis in Choi (2002) is the household and the efficient rule is defined as one that minimizes the total cost of toilet seat operations per household. Choi (2002) does not model the issue as a situation of conflict, hence ignores the game theoretic aspects of the problem. Harter (2005) models the situation as a cooperative game and proposes a contract that splits the costs of toilet seat operations evenly among the parties. Both papers agree that the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down is inefficient in the sense that it does not minimize the total cost of toilet seat operations per household. However, both papers fail to address an important concern: If a female finds the toilet seat in a wrong position then she will most probably yell at the male involved. This yelling inflicts a cost on the male. Based on this omission, women may argue that the analysis in these papers is suspect…

Hammad Siddiqi (associated with the Lahore University of Management Sciences) has applied game theory to look at the best strategy for men and women when they finish using the toilet.

The music industry has been complaining for years that CD sales are falling, and blaming it on piracy, especially people uploading files to the internet. But could there be a far simpler explanation? Business Week has a very plausible suggestion – we simply don’t have enough time to listen to more music.

(Seen at doom9.net)