Consumer Theory
kcontreary | October 14, 2007Ask anyone who's spent any time in a strip club, and one of the things he will almost certainly not mention is the ovulatory state of his favorite gal. But, according to a recent paper by Geoffrey Miller et. al., how much money he spent on her may have more to do with where she is in her cycle than he'd comfortably acknowledge.
Miller and his co-authors set out to see if they could find any economic evidence for human estrus, a period of increased sexual attractiveness, receptivity and proceptivity occuring around the time of peak fertility. The prevailing consensus is that human estrus has…
kcontreary | December 10, 2006The Economist has a thought-provoking article out on the implications of "green" food. The newspaper takes on the recent trendiness of organic, fair trade, and locally-produced food, arguing that these practices may perpetuate or even worsen the global status quo they set out to remedy.
On organics (via shortage):
Following the "green revolution" of the 1960s greater use of chemical fertiliser has tripled grain yields with very little increase in the area of land under cultivation. Organic methods, which rely on crop rotation, manure and compost in place of fertiliser, are far less intensive…