In 1994, on his second trip to the United States, Derreck Kayongo was staying at a Philadelphia hotel when he noticed that every bar of soap he’d use in the morning was replaced magically with a new one by the time he returned that evening. “I asked the concierge what they did with the partially used bars, and he actually told me they threw them away!” Though Kayongo grew up in a well-to-do family — his father, in fact, owned a soap factory in Uganda — the 42-year-old Ugandan native ended up living as a refugee with his family in Kenya after Idi Amin came to power. “That was the ... Read More
That’s Disgusting: Researcher Studies Gag Reflex
March 12, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Not many people have had the fortunate pleasure of judging the “Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneakers Contest” held yearly in Montpelier, Vermont. But Rachel Herz, who served as the event’s celebrity judge in March 2008, didn’t just come away with a gag-worthy tale to shock her friends and colleagues. As a fragrance consultant and research psychologist investigating the sense of smell since 1990, Herz was inspired to immerse herself into the study of the emotion of disgust, culminating in her book That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, published by Norton & Company in ... Read More
Conservation’s Earnest Message Could Use Levity
January 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
In a move that stunned environmentalists across the globe: the Coalition of Financially Challenged Countries with Lots of Trees (CoFCCLoT) recently recommended reforesting G8 nations back to pre-industrial levels in the hopes of countering the ravages of climate change. The coalition also has called for reintroducing gorillas into Spain and lions into Greece with the goal of revitalizing the ailing Eurozone economies. OK, the CoFCCLot doesn’t really exist, despite the press release cited above sent out last April 1. But the ersatz organization’s founders, Erik Meijaard and Douglas ... Read More
Simon Johnson Critiques Democracy vs. Financialization
December 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
For many on the right side of the U.S. political spectrum, the financial meltdown that began in 2008 resulted from a government push to bring the American Dream of home ownership to the masses. And while President Clinton made home ownership a central tenet of his economic plan — a goal George W. Bush also embraced — there were greater forces at work, according to Simon Johnson, professor of Global Economics and Management at MIT and the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. In his 2010 bestseller, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial ... Read More