Seth's Blog

From the latest episode of The Amazing Race:

[PHIL:] In this detour, teams have to choose between two ways that the people of Guilin [China] express themselves artistically. The choice: choreography or calligraphy. In choreography, teams must  join in a popular exercise in Guilin: dancing. They’ll make their way to the central island, join a group of locals performing their morning dance routine, and learn the dance.

Emphasis added. The dancing, done in pairs, provides plenty of morning face-to-face contact, just what I think everyone needs for good mood regulation.

On the Tsinghua campus, I saw morning groups practicing aikido, which doesn’t provide as much face-to-face contact. The Guilin dancing is perfect. Also good is that it’s done outside. The sunlight will give the light-sensitive circadian oscillator a big push. Faces push a face-sensitive circadian oscillator.

There is one region of China whose residents are known for being laid back and happy. I wonder: Is it Guilin?

From the Financial Times:

“The level of experimentation [at big businesses such as United Airlines] is abysmal,” says Prof List. “These firms do not take full advantage of feedback opportunities they’re presented with. After seeing example after example, we sat down and said, ‘We have to try to do something to stop this.’ One change we could make is to teach 75 to 100 of the best MBA students in the world how to think about feedback opportunities and how to think about designing their own field experiments to learn something that can make their company better.”

The two economists decided to team up to develop a course for [University of Chicago] Booth [Business School] students on “Using Experiments in Firms” – the first time either had taught at the business school.

This is an interesting middle ground between conventional science (done by professors) and what I have done a lot of (self-experimentation to solve my own problems — e.g., sleep better). I’m (a) trying to solve my own problems and (b) it’s not a job. Conventional scientists are (a) trying to solve other people’s problems and (b) it is a job. The MBA students will be taught experimentation that involves their own problems — well, their own company’s problems — and it is a job.

One important effect of this course, if the whole idea catches on, could be a cultural shift: A growing belief that experimentation is good and that failure to experiment is bad. Some of my first self-experiments involved acne. I was a grad student. When I told my dermatologist what I’d done — my results showed that a medicine he’d prescribed didn’t work — he looked unhappy. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

The Levitt/List course has a Martin-Luther-esque ring to it. Science: Not just for other people.

Thanks to Nadav Manham.

They still didn’t know what natto was but had plenty of kombucha. Whole Foods Tribeca had a whole display case of kombucha. Whole Foods Columbus Circle was out of stock.

At a store today I saw two containers of Siggis “Icelandic style” yogurt I wanted. One said “best by 4/27/09″; the other said “best by 5/18/09″. To my shock I realized the older one was better. It had more bacteria.

The opposite of what we’re supposed to think.

Expired food — don’t throw it out, give it to me.

A recent large study concluded:

After a median follow-up of 8.0 and 7.9 years in the clinical trial and observational study cohorts, respectively, the Women’s Health Initiative study provided convincing evidence that multivitamin use has little or no influence on the risk of common cancers, CVD, or total mortality in postmenopausal women.

I think this supports what I’ve been saying. In this blog I’ve emphasized two deficiencies in the American diet:

• Not enough omega-3
• Not enough fermented food

Neither is reduced by a multivitamin pill. As far as I can tell, when either one is fixed with something resembling an optimal dose, there are easy-to-notice benefits. Before I started making these points, there were plenty of reasons to think these are major deficiencies. For example, the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis suggested that we might need more omega-3 than we usually get. The Umami Hypothesis suggested we need a lot more fermented food than we usually eat. In contrast, I can’t think of a single reason to think that Americans suffer from major vitamin deficiencies. I take a multivitamin pill but I’d stop long before I’d give up flaxseed oil or fermented foods.