Rotundus.com

How long, for example, did it take you, when you were in college, to decide how good a teacher your professor was? A class? Two classes? A semester? The psychologist Nalini Ambady once gave students three ten-second videotapes of a teacher - with the sound turned off - and they found they had no difficulty at all coming up with a rating of the teacher's effectiveness. Then Ambady cut the clips back to five seconds, and the ratings were the same. They were remarkably consistent even when she showed the students just two seconds of videotape. Then Ambady compared those snap judgments of teacher effectiveness with evaluations of those same professors made by their students after a full semester of classes, and she found that they were also essentially the same. A person watching a silent two-second video clip of a teacher he or she has never met will reach conclusions about how good that teacher is that are very similar to those for an entire semester. That's the power of our adaptive unconscious.

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, p. 12/13

It's a bit cold outside at the moment, but seemingly nothing like Edmonton. Here's what happened there this morning:

The mercury dipped to a frigid -46C at the Edmonton airport, making it the coldest place in Canada, he said. With the wind chill, it felt more like -59C. Spiker said it crushed the same day coldest temperature record of about -33C set in 1968.

- Excerpted from: Macleans

There's finally a book out about this topic - Scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays published by Princeton University Press. Here's an excerpt from an NPR interview with the author:

LUDDEN: So on a personal level, I'm all for saving money. But for society, can you explain what is it about holiday spending that doesn't make economic sense.

Mr. WALDFOGEL: Well, sure. And by the way, I'm not against spending, just sloppy spending. So normally when I go out and shop for myself, I'll only buy something that costs $50 if it's worth at least $50 to me. So with normal spending, outside of the gift-giving context, spending provides some rough measure of satisfaction.

When I'm buying gifts, it works very differently. Now, I'm at a huge disadvantage when I set out to spend $50 on you, because I don't know what you like, and I don't what you already have. So I could spend $50 and buy something that's worth nothing to you. So the problem with gift spending is that it just tends not to produce nearly as much satisfaction per dollar spent as regular spending.

But the minister said one cause for concern over the pace of recovery is that Canadians might be carrying too much debt as they rush to take advantage of historically low interest rates.

The Bank of Canada stressed in a report Thursday that households are becoming "increasingly vulnerable" to any further economic shocks. The central bank noted Canada's debt-to-income ratio had climbed to a new high of 142 per cent as of the end of June.

Flaherty said the government expected to see some increases in household debt, but warned it is keeping a close eye on the issue and will act swiftly if necessary.

"We're not in a position now where we feel we need to act in that way," he said. "But we are watching."

Flaherty urged Canadians to be mindful of what mortgage payments they can afford assuming interest rates "will eventually increase."

- Excerpted from Calgary Herald

When will people realize that increased debt is - in most cases - not exactly a way to wealth or economic stability? On the other hand, what use is it saving money if you get a negative return on investment (interest paid - inflation), with how the government has set interest rates. My "high interest" savings account at the moment pays a whopping 1.00%!

I was thinking of getting into the stock market in hopes of actually attaining a positive return on investment. With (a) the lack of diversification and proportionally high trading costs in small investments, and (b) the complexity of tax laws (which the TFSA makes even more of a mess), I think that I may wind up buying more mutual funds instead. Maybe shuffle things around directly into stocks if I have $50k or so to play with.