Swapping selection for value turns out not to be much of a tradeoff. Customers may think they want variety, but in reality too many options can lead to shopping paralysis. “People are worried theyll regret the choice they made,” says Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore professor and author of The Paradox of Choice. “People dont want [...]
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Heard about this recently on an episode of This American Life talking about the Fine Print in life. One of the stories was about the story behind Van Halen’s contract rider specifying there should be M&Ms backstage, but the brown M&Ms needed to be removed, and failure to do so resulted in full payment of [...]
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““I think a lot of it goes back to the irony of the Amish and an electric fireplace,” he said. “How can that be? It’s like skintight baggy pants.” Amish Space Heater: Is That an Oxymoron? is an interesting article in the NY Times details the strange product that is apparently right here from Ohio that [...]
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“A year ago, when I heard that some audiophiles were using Sony’s original PlayStation 1 as a CD player—my friend Michael Lavorgna, who writes for 6moons.com, was the first to cross my attention—I was more than a little confused. Sure, I’d heard of the Sony PlayStation, just as I’ve heard of the Game Boy and [...]
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Apparently vision experts in England have concluded that the gains in resolution via Blu-Ray aren’t worth it for many folks, as they can’t see the difference. Why is that? They don’t have good enough vision. “But many consumers are wasting hundreds of pounds on high-definition equipment because their eyes are not sharp enough to pick [...]
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“Fast-food chain Burger King has created “Whopper Sacrifice,” a Facebook app that will give you a coupon for a free hamburger if you delete 10 people from your friends list.” via Delete 10 Facebook friends, get a free Whopper | The Social – CNET News. Gotta give them some points for creativity, Burger King ads [...]
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“”It won’t come as a surprise that they love nature documentaries, but they also like soaps like Coronation Street and Emmerdale.” via the Telegraph (UK) one of those heartwarming stories that everyone seems to love and half the time I hate, but occasionally even I can get into (come on this is [...]
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“Tea is said to have fueled the Industrial Revolution; caffeine has been credited with modern physics and chemistry. “A mathematician,” the prolific, nonsleeping Paul Erdos liked to say, “is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.” – One Latte, Hold the Milk (NYT) On the subject of Espresso there is not consensus: “We could sit [...]
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I might not have mentioned the Wire on here in a long time, probably haven’t thought about it as often as I used to. So it came as a bit of a surprise a week or two ago I got a late night phone call from a friend of mine, who after having just a [...]
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This past week on This American Life (one of my favorite things of the week is listening to this) had a unique show: 20 Acts in 60 Minutes Instead of the regular “each week we choose a theme, and bring you three or four stories on that theme” business, this week we throw all that [...]
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