1. Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet (via Bryan Caplan at Econlog). I’ve been realizing more and more how much of my news reading is just a waste of time. I now spend more time reading non-fiction books and bigger-picture articles from smart people about ideas, rather than articles about politician X visiting country Y or bill Z which is being considered by Congress. This article gives some good explanations why spending too much time on news is a waste:

Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career, your business – compared to what you would have known if you hadn’t swallowed that morsel of news. . . .

Assume that, against all odds, you found one piece of news that substantially increased the quality of your life – compared to how your life would have unfolded if you hadn’t read or seen it. How much trivia did your brain have to digest to get to that one relevant nugget? Even that question is a hindsight analysis. Looking forward, we can’t possibly identify the value of a piece of news before we see it, so we are forced to digest everything on the news buffet line. Is that worthwhile? Probably not. . . .

People find it very difficult to recognize what’s relevant. It’s much easier to recognize what’s new. We are not equipped with sensory organs for relevance. Relevance doesn’t come naturally. News does. That’s why the media plays on the new. (If our minds were structured the other way round, the media would certainly play on the relevant.) The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the modern man. . . .

Go without news. Cut it out completely. Go cold turkey. . . .

If you want to keep the illusion of “not missing anything important”, I suggest you glance through the summary page of the Economist once a week. Don’t spend more than five minutes on it.

Read magazines and books which explain the world – Science, Nature, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly. Go for magazines that connect the dots and don’t shy away from presenting the complexities of life – or from purely entertaining you. The world is complicated, and we can do nothing about it. So, you must read longish and deep articles and books that represent its complexity. Try reading a book a week. Better two or three. History is good. Biology. Psychology. That way you’ll learn to understand the underlying mechanisms of the world. Go deep instead of broad. Enjoy material that truly interests you. Have fun reading.

2. Hormone That Affects Finger Length Key To Social Behavior. It is thought that the ratio of the length of your ring finger to your index finger indicates how much androgens (hormones like testosterone) you were exposed to in the womb. The higher the ratio (IE the longer your ring finger is in comparison to your index finger), the more androgens. Most men’s ring fingers are longer than their index fingers, whereas most women are the opposite. In this study, the researchers examined the finger ratios of different primates and discovered that species with longer ring fingers (IE species which are exposed to more androgens in the womb) “tend to be highly competitive and promiscuous, which suggests that exposure to a lot of androgens before birth could be linked to the expression of this behaviour.”

3. Long-Neglected Experiment Gives New Clues to Origin of Life. In the 1950s “Stanley Miller of the University of Chicago in Illinois . . . . repeatedly sent electric sparks through flasks filled with the gases thought to resemble Earth’s early atmosphere . . . . After 1 week . . . the simulated lightning had converted a substantial portion of the gases into organic compounds, including several of the amino acids needed to produce proteins, indicating that this might be how life began on our planet.” A reexamination of some of the chemicals produced in some of his later, similar experiments “yielded 22 amino acids, 10 of which hadn’t been detected in the original 1952 experiment.” This further supports claims that early conditions on the Earth could have led to the natural generation of the amino acids necessary for the start of life.

4. Law of Averages: Why the law-school bubble is bursting. Applications to law schools have gone down this year. After the economic crash in 2008, many lawyers found themselves unemployed, and graduating law students found it difficult to get a job. Perhaps the decrease in applications indicates that more students have become aware of these problems are choosing other career paths.