Things I've learned recently:
The first thing isn't really something I learned so much as it is something that I never really thought of before. My first exposure to character differences was when we were coding the back end system for a client and, since the client needed the data to flow through from multiple countries (i.e. multiple languages), the character spaces needed to be different. Normal Cyrillic or Latin characters typically take up one bit to code. However, Asian characters require double-bit coding because the characters are a bit more complex. "This 78-character tweet in English would be only 24 characters long in Chinese." True fact.
Why is this interesting? Because this partly explains why micro-blogging has caught on so well in China. In a study on the verbosity of languages (fascinating, I know), romance languages tend to be the most verbose. Funnily enough, the most frequent European languages in the Twitterverse after English is Spanish and Portuguese. This has led to a whole new sub-language for Twitter-- in Portuguese for example, "bjs" stands for "beijos" and "abs" means "abracos"-- kisses and hugs.
In "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" (I think The Economist is letting the interns title the articles again, btw) studies have confirmed that attractive women are more likely to be promoted than plain-Jane colleagues. Because people tend to project positive traits onto them, such as sensitivity and poise, they may also be at an advantage in job interviews. However, surprisingly, they found when sending applications with or sans headshot of an attractive women, it took attractive women longer (11 applications before an interview request) than plainer colleagues (7 applications). Strangely, for men, it played out as planned-- hunks were more likely to be called when they included a photo, unattractive men were more likely to be called when they did not include a photo.
How to explain this? At first, researchers had the "dumb-blonde hypothesis", assuming that people associated beauty with stupidity. But since the study also had rated photos on the intelligence level of the candidates, this may not hold. So what else could cause this discrimination? Couple thoughts: HR departments are usually staffed mostly by women--maybe women discriminate against pretty candidates? Who knows. Let's just chalk it up to penance-- let it be harder for the pretty ones. Haha (just kidding! Kind of...).
Knowing that you are paid less than your peers has two effects on happiness ("Pay, Peers and Pride"). The well-known one is negative: a thinner pay packet harms self-esteem. The lesser-known one is called the "tunnel" effect: high incomes for peers are seen as improving your own chances of similar riches, especially if growth, inequality and mobility are high. Interesting.
Here's something more interesting because it means men just can't win--men retiring a year early lower their odds of surviving to age 67 by 13%. Wah wah wah.
John Carter fail. In "How to Make a Megaflop", Schumpeter outlines the way to make things fail out the gate. So here's some characteristics.
1. Slaughter a Sacred Cow: A la Coca-Cola when they took away classic Coke, causing outrage among the caffeinated and obese everywhere. They brought it back. Everyone keep their pants on.
2. Mix Oil and Water: Trying to make things that shouldn't be... For example, trying to turn Hamlet, Lolita and Ernest Hemingway's drunken last days into musicals. In other words-- the McDonald's up-market burger-- the Arch Deluxe. More examples? Ford producing a truck for the luxury market, Bengay stretching its heat rub brand into the aspirin market, Colgate making TV dinners. 'Nuff said.
3. Produce a Genuinely Awful Product. The Ford Pinto catching fire every time it was rear-ended for example. I can see how that would upset people.
So here's what I've done for ya today folks. Social media future trends, the trials of pretty people and some tips on how not to make a megaflop. Don't say I never did anything nice for ya.
No comments:
Post a Comment