Misc. Arts & Ideas Designs by Samantha Stamas

Ideas

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

AUGUST 27, 2017

Brainiac

BIG IDEAS IN LITTLE BITES

INNOVATION OF THE WEEK

IDEAMOJI

SAMANTHA STAMAS/GLOBE STAFF

detect little support in Europe for the US president, but novelty appar ently sells.

What is it? Trumpshaped ecstasy pills

Fake meat gains ground In a sign of confidence from tradi tional food suppliers, Memphis Meats — which grows ‘clean meat’ from selfre producing animal cells, not cattle — receives funding from agribusiness giant Cargill. Yum?

Innovator: Drug dealers in Europe What were they thinking? It’s easy to feel swallowed up by the Donald Trump phenomenon: the constant tweets, the endless contro versy, the upheaval in the world order. But a fatherson team of Aus trian drug dealers gave their customers a way to swallow Trump in stead: carrotorange ecstasy pills with his face and buoyant hair stamped on the front and his name printed on the back. Sure, polls

Did it work? The dealers had a good run until German police pulled over their vehicle and discovered about 5,000 pills valued around $47,000. Taking the drug off the street is probably for the best. The BBC reports the Trump pills can induce “nausea, panic, paranoia and agitation.” — DAVID SCHARFENBERG

A 21stcentury company town As it flexes muscles in global retail biz, Amazon also sprawls in its hometown; Seattle Times says ecommerce giant occupies 19 percent of all prime office space in that city — more than the 40 next largest em ployers combined.

Goodbye, Lenin Amid wrangling in United States over Jim Crowera monuments to Confed eracy, Ukraine swiftly uproots monu ments to another fallen regime. The last of 1,320 statues of Lenin is gone, per Times of London. — DANTE RAMOS

ON SECOND THOUGHT In a case that pitted the desire for pri vacy against the completeness of the scientific record, the BMJ — formerly the British Medical Journal — has retracted a 2002 review of a documentary about three people with messianic obsessions after one of them complained that the article violated stringent European priva cy rules. The film, titled “Those Who Are Jesus,” profiled two men and a woman who claimed to be Jesus. Sometime af ter its release, one of the faux prophets apparently had a change of heart. Citing the “right to be forgotten” — a princi ple affirmed in 2014 by a European judi cial ruling that entitled people to have their personal data expunged from search engines and indices “once that data is no longer necessary” — the wouldbe Christ successfully lobbied the journal to take down the article. But don’t despair. To see the original review, just find a library with a print version of the journal. Hard copies: Quaint, but harder to expurgate after the fact. — ADAM MARCUS Retraction Watch

THE BOSTON GLOBE

{ 50 words } Safely behind the yellow line, my mother used to shield my ears from the clamor of train lurching into station. In the rattling car, we slid through sub urbs blurred across wide windows. We’d step into the steamy dusk of the Back Bay platform then ascend into clear afternoon city light. —JULIA CARABARSOS, North Easton Have a true story about Boston you can tell in exactly 50 words? Submit yours to 50words@globe.com.

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Uncommon Knowledge B y K e v i n L e w i s Testing creationism Researchers at MIT have found evidence con firming what many educators and science advo cates have feared. After Louisiana passed a law allowing publicschool teachers to contradict the scientific curriculum, scores on the science part of the ACT (an alternative to the SAT) declined relative to scores in neighboring Texas. There was no similar decline in math scores. At the same time, creationismrelated search terms on Google became more common, relative to evo lutionrelated terms, in Louisiana than in Texas. Notably, the decline in science test scores was concentrated in areas with a lesseducated pop ulation but better Internet service — a further indication that the Internet enabled, rather than inhibited, ideological segregation. Sen, A. & Tucker, C., “Information Shocks and Internet Silos: Evidence from Creationist Friendly Curriculum,” Massachusetts Institute of Technol ogy (July 2017).

market. The extratestosterone groups were sig nificantly more aggressive in bidding up prices and creating stock bubbles. Nadler, A. et al., “The Bull of Wall Street: Ex perimental Analysis of Testosterone and Asset Trading,” Management Science (forthcoming).

Leaning in, not on Researchers at Columbia Business School found that female bosses were generally more averse to delegating tasks than male bosses were. Women were more anxious about it and felt more guilt about potentially overburdening subordinates. Telling women that delegation is good mentorship for subordinates helped allevi ate women’s negative feelings about it. Akinola, M. et al., “To Delegate or Not to Dele gate: Gender Differences in Affective Associa tions and Behavioral Responses to Delegation,” Academy of Management Journal (forthcoming).

So bad it’s good

The essence of a bull market After the presidential election, the stock mar ket extended its recovery into what many now consider bubble territory. Maybe Wall Street traders are just taking a cue from Donald Trump’s alphamale positioning. In an experi ment, groups of men were randomly assigned to receive extra testosterone or a placebo and then trade against each other in a simulated stock

significantly after the opening of medical mari juana dispensaries. Local drugrelated mortality rates were also relatively lower. Smith, R., “The Effects of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries on Adverse Opioid Outcomes,” Uni versity of Georgia (August 2017).

Something for the pain According to a new analysis by a University of Georgia economist, admissions to local treat ment facilities for painkiller addiction dropped

In a series of experiments, marketing profes sors gave people background stories for various products (e.g., chocolate, a hiphop song, an ar tistic drawing, a restaurant dish, bubble soap) and found that a product with a feature that was introduced by accident — even if the feature made the product worse — was preferred over the same product where the same feature was introduced intentionally. Likewise, auctions of

original vintage photographs on eBay garnered a higher price if the photograph had an ostensibly accidental feature, like being blurry or doubleex posed. People assumed that the accidental prod uct was more improbable, and thus unique. The effect did not extend to creations by novices or utilitarian products. Reich, T. et al., “Made by Mistake: When Mis takes Increase Product Preference,” Journal of Consumer Research (forthcoming). Kevin Lewis is an Ideas columnist. He can be reached at kevin.lewis.ideas@gmail.com.

Ideas

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

FEBRUARY 11, 2018

Brainiac

BIG IDEAS IN LITTLE BITES

ON SECOND THOUGHT

BIG DATA

Academia has popularity contests, too. And sometimes they’re rigged. The Journal of Vibroen gineering in December retracted three papers af ter becoming suspicious that one of the authors had convinced other researchers to cite his work. A lot. According to the journal, Magd Abdel Wa hab, of Ghent University in Belgium, last year mis used his position as chair of an international meeting to garner dozens of citations of his own papers in articles that subsequently ap peared in a compendium of the presentations. If true, that would be a glaring case of citation ma nipulation, in which researchers try to boost their standing among their peers by inflating the im portance of their work. (Author’s note: If you link to this item, I’ll say something nice about you on Twitter.) Wahab objected, saying the spike in citations was an “innocent mistake.” And, in the absence of a smoking gun proving otherwise, the publisher agreed to republish the articles along with a letter expressing concern about the articles. — ADAM MARCUS

304 That’s how many military veterans suf fering from chronic posttraumatic stress disorder were included in a major clinical tri al of the effectiveness of the commonly pre scribed drug, prazosin. Thousands of people with PTSD have used the drug to try to ward off the nightmares. The drug works by blocking a certain receptor in the brain, at tempting to moderate the body’s natural re sponse to stimuli. But the results of the new trial — conducted in a dozen Veterans Af fairs facilities in several states over a period of six months — found that the drug was no more effective than a placebo. — ALEX KINGSBURY

IDEAMOJI

Fivestar scam Since last fall, an Acton retiree couple have been receiving mystery Amazon packages full of cheap goods they never ordered, the Globe reports. Experts suspect Mike and Kelly Gallivan are unintentional props in someone’s ploy to pump up user ratings. It’s an noying, but in a neweconomy sort of way: In the old days, scammers stole things, instead of ship ping them to you for free.

Groveling time After using an airy, innocuous quote from the Dalai Lama in an Instagram post, MercedesBenz feels the wrath of Beijing, which views the Tibetan leader as a separatist. Continued access to the Chinese market is worth a little selfabasement. Mercedes issues a state ment saying it’s “very aware of the harm” done to the Chinese people and apologizes for posting “extremely erroneous information.”

The sky’s not the limit

PATRICK CHRISTAIN/GETTY IMAGES

INNOVATION OF THE WEEK What is it? Armpit microbe transplant

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s aerospace proj ect, successfully launches powerful Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Ca naveral. It’s a triumph not just of engineering, but also of cobranding. Instead of a dummy payload, the spacecraft carried a roaster from Musk’s car company, Tesla. — DANTE RAMOS

Innovator: “Dr. Armpit” What were they thinking? Even the best anti perspirant is powerless against truly terrible body odor. But Chris Callewaert, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, San Diego, who calls himself “Dr. Armpit,” is determined to suppress the stank. Using DNA analysis, he’s figured out what makes the axillary microbiome — the universe of ti ny organisms that live in our armpits — either smelly or sweet. And now, he’s performing the first armpit transplants. Did it work? There’s no surgery involved, Popu lar Science reports. A person with stinky armpits simply uses antibacterial soap, alcohol, iodine, and other substances to obliterate his own microbiome. Then, scientists harvest sweetsmelling bacteria from a relative’s pits and make the transfer. In 16 of 18 cases, an eightperson panel has certified suc cess. Dr. Armpit hasn’t put Old Spice out of business yet. But not even Big Antiperspirant, it seems, is im mune to technological disruption.

— DAVID SCHARFENBERG

ABC TELEVISION

Lawrence Welk and his orchestra.

{ 50 words } Standing with friends on Marlborough Street on a winter night in 1966, waiting for our ride. Our destination — a party where people would be smoking marijua na. I turned and looked through someone’s streetlevel bay window. The people inside were watching Lawrence Welk. How I longed to be inside with them. — CHRISTINE PUCCIA, West Roxbury Have a true story about Boston you can tell in exactly 50 words? Submit yours to 50words@globe.com.

Uncommon Knowledge B y K e v i n L e w i s Losing the dues comes due According to a Boston University economist and his colleagues, the Democratic Party paid dearly for the passage of righttowork laws by Republicans. In states with such laws, workers cannot be required to pay union dues as a condi tion of employment. Comparing counties in righttowork states with neighboring counties in states without such laws, researchers found that passage of the laws led to fewer votes for Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. According to survey data, workingclass resi dents (but not professional workers) were less likely to report getoutthevote contact in states that passed righttowork laws. After the enact ment of these laws, union fundraising for state and local races (and Democratic funding in gen eral) fell sharply. As a result, “state legislators and US representatives are less likely to have a workingclass background,” while “state legisla tive policy also shifts to the right.” Feigenbaum, J. et al., “From the Bargaining Table to the Ballot Box: Political Effects of Right to Work Laws,” National Bureau of Economic Re search (January 2018).

Not safe enough Mathematical modeling showed how a hypo thetical HIV vaccine that is perfectly safe but on ly partially effective can make everyone worse

off, because an increase in risky social interac tions among a more complacent population can outweigh reduced transmission risk. “The Na tional Institutes of Health might want to go big — e.g. deliver a highly effective vaccine — or go home,” researchers concluded. Talamàs, E. & Vohra, R., “Go Big or Go Home: PartiallyEffective Vaccines Can Make Everyone Worse Off,” University of Pennsylvania (January 2018).

sports events were expected to dominate US broadcast news. In other words, “Is raeli authorities may strategically choose the timing of their attacks to minimize negative publicity in the United States.” This was not the case for Palestinian at tacks or for Israeli attacks that were not expected to cause a lot of civilian casual ties. Durante, R. & Zhuravskaya, E., “Attack When the World Is Not Watching? U.S. News and the IsraeliPalestinian Conflict,” Journal of Political Economy (forthcom ing).

It’s not the regulations, stupid! Recent statistics on job creation and business startups suggest a decline in economic dyna mism in the United States. A recent study by economists — including one with the Census Bureau and one who’s a prominent libertarian leaning blogger — found that the growth of fed eral regulations did not explain the decline. Low er dynamism was seen in both highly and lightly regulated sectors. Goldschlag, N. & Tabarrok, A., “Is Regulation to Blame for the Decline in American Entrepre neurship?” Economic Policy (January 2018).

All the news that’s fit to distract European economists found that Israeli mili tary actions in the West Bank and Gaza from 2000 to 2011 were significantly more likely to occur on the day before preplanned political or

A higher housing market

CYRUS MCCRIMMON FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

When Colorado allowed municipalities to legalize retail marijuana sales, some did, and some didn’t. Local retail legaliza tion was associated with a 6 percent in crease in home prices on average, espe cially in urban and moderately priced ar eas. Cheng, C. et al., “The Effect of Legaliz ing Retail Marijuana on Housing Values: Evidence from Colorado,” Economic In quiry (forthcoming).

This Starbuds Dispensary is located in the low income neighborhood of ElyriaSwansea in Denver. Kevin Lewis is an Ideas columnist. He can be reached at kevin.lewis.ideas@gmail.com. ElyriaSwansea has the highest concentration of marijuana licenses in Colorado.

Ideas

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

FEBRUARY 25, 2018

Brainiac

BIG IDEAS IN LITTLE BITES

ETHICAL DILEMMA IDEAMOJI

Manhattan in ancient Mexico

Elizabeth Swaney isn’t a worldclass freestyle ski er. Yet there she was, cruising dutifully down the half pipe in PyeongChang alongside Olympic greats. The Americanborn entrant competed for Hungary, land ing a spot on that country’s squad by exploiting the sport’s points system. She didn’t medal, but she did rack up a mountain of vitriol and mockery online. Comparisions came quick with Pita Taufatofua, the shirtless Tongan taekwondoer, who finished 114th out of 116 crosscountry skiers and Mexican Germán Madrazo, who finished dead last. Cheap trick or legit competition? Here are two views:

It’s only been a decade or so since ar cheologists discovered Angamuco, a longlost city built in central Mexico starting around 900 AD. Laserscanning technology LI DAR now reveals 40,000 building foundations there — about as many as in Manhattan.

Blood test for brain injury FDA gives speedy approval to test that picks up UCHL1 and GFAP pro teins, which are thought to be re leased after concussions. But some scientists question validity of these biomarkers, and fear a negative test result will discourage further treat ment even when warranted.

Carol Hay, philosophy professor at UMass Lowell: “It’s worth noticing how differently the court of public opinion treats these athletes: Madrazo and Taufatofua are held up as heartwarming examples of scrappy en durance in the face of overwhelming odds, while Swaney is tarred as manipulative and pathetic. Plenty of past Olympic Games have had incompetent media darlings (Eddie the Eagle in 1998, the Jamaican bob sled team in 1988) but there hasn’t been a single woman permitted to occupy this role. Given how poorly we view ambitious women in general, this probably shouldn’t surprise us. Participants who at tempt to compete despite being manifestly unquali fied are essentially making a public relations gamble. But as Swaney demonstrates, Machiavellianism in women just doesn’t sell.”

Sorry, E.T., we’re busy To search for extraterrestrial intelli gence, scientists need cuttingedge computer chips. But amid surge in cryptocurrency prices, bitcoin miners snap up graphicsprocessing units, creating shortage for alien hunters. — DANTE RAMOS

Frank Shorr, director of the Sports Institute at Boston University: “As a fan of the Olympics growing up, I thought the only thing better than watching both the Summer and Winter Games was months later seeing Bud Greenspan’s extraordinary documentaries about them. Greenspan weaved the tales of the struggle. The struggle to get there, the struggle to compete. Those stories were rarely about the gold medalists. Look, we all want to be winners, but that just isn’t possible. The Games have standards, and that ought to be good enough. If we are truly going to ‘bring the world together,’ we need these athletes, these stories, if for nothing else but to remind us that sometimes trying is more important than winning. Greenspan would be proud.” In an informal poll on Twitter by @GlobeIdeas, most people blamed the Olympic rules that allowed Swaney to compete. “Not her fault. Fix the rules,” said 75 percent of respondents. Only 25 percent chose “Has she no shame?” — ALEX KINGSBURY FAZRY ISMAIL/EPAEFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

CSIRO

ON SECOND THOUGHT In a refreshing example of acting quickly, the journal PeerJ issued a warning about a paper just six days after the original article appeared. The reason: readers spotted something fishy with the materials used in the study — about the produc tion of methane used to supply rice paddies with oxygen — and the authors of the article readily agreed. Five days later, PeerJ retracted the paper, which the authors plan to resubmit using new materials. Eleven days is very speedy for a retraction, but not a record. That title likely goes to the Euro pean Heart Journal, which in 2014 yanked an ar ticle after only 48 hours. The paper had alleged that the sloppy work of a Dutch researcher had led to some 800,000 deaths. On the other ex treme is the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Ge neeskunde (the Dutch Journal of Medicine), which in 2003 retracted a curious case study about a young man who died after coughing up a quart of what evidently was urine. Except that the case was a fake — something it took the jour nal 80 years to recognize officially. — ADAM MARCUS Retraction Watch

{ 50 words } Walking through Christopher Columbus Park to catch the ferry home, I came upon a hop scotch painted on the ground. Without any hesitation I jumped on it. Feeling a sense of pride, I could hear a woman yell over, “good for you!” “Thanks,” I responded. “You have to keep on moving.” — MARILYN STARSIAK, Hingham Have a true story about Boston you can tell in exactly 50 words? Submit yours to 50words@globe.com.

STATUE PHOTO: DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF; PARK PHOTO: INGFBRUNO/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Uncommon Knowledge B y K e v i n L e w i s Fait accompli The very fact of something taking effect makes people more likely to accept it, new re search indicates. Right after a ban on selling plas tic water bottles took effect in San Francisco, res idents reported more positive attitudes towards the ban than when they were asked right before it took effect. When interviewed right after a ban on smoking in certain areas took effect in Ontar io, smokers reported having smoked less in those areas in the past — as compared with smokers who were asked right before the ban took effect. Likewise, Americans reported more support for President Trump right after his inauguration than immediately before. Laurin, K., “Inaugurating Rationalization: Three Field Studies Find Increased Rationalization When Anticipated Realities Become Current,” Psycho logical Science (forthcoming).

Neighborhood attractions Analyzing data on residential property sales and exploiting the timing of the unexpected lift ing of a moratorium on new strip clubs in Seattle, economists found “no statistical evidence that the presence of strip clubs was associated with any abnormal property price declines,” while “the evidence suggests some excess price apprecia tion for properties located 1,000 to 2,000 feet

from clubs.” Brooks, T. et al., “Strip Clubs, ‘Secondary Ef fects,’ and Residential Property Prices,” Real Es tate Economics (forthcoming).

didates have only a modest effect on citizens’ voting decisions,” such that voters are really just considering party affiliation, not ideology. As a re sult, ideological moderation is worth only 1 or 2 percentage points for congressional candidates. Tausanovitch, C. & Warshaw, C., “Does the Ideological Proximity between Candidates and Voters Affect Voting in U.S. House Elections?” Po litical Behavior (forthcoming).

Seeing is believing In a series of experiments, researchers at the University of Chicago showed people a brief vid eo clip of someone performing a difficult action (e.g., yanking a tablecloth from under tableware, throwing darts, doing the moonwalk a la Michael Jackson, juggling bowling pins). After watching the video clip over and over many times, people become significantly more confident in their abil ity to perform the action than if they’d watched the video once or received nonvisual instruction. They were also more confident than their own actual performance might justify. In other words, bingewatching led to overconfidence. Kardas, M. & O’Brien, E., “Easier Seen than Done: Merely Watching Others Perform Can Fos ter an Illusion of Skill Acquisition,” Psychological Science (forthcoming).

Quick, read this In several experiments, participants had to choose between identical tasks with different payouts. Each task was also said to “expire” after either a short or long period of time — though, in both cases, the expiration deadline was always longer than the time participants were told they’d have to complete the task. In other words, the expiration deadline was specious. Neverthe less, a significant fraction of participants chose the task with the lower payout when it had a tight deadline, suggesting how easy it is to create an illusion of urgency. This was particularly true for participants who thought of themselves as busy. Zhu, M. et al., “The Mere Urgency Effect,” Journal of Consumer Research (forthcoming).

Unrepresentative By comparing the ideological positions of vot ers and candidates for the US House of Repre sentatives, political scientists found that “the ide ological positions of individual congressional can

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Kevin Lewis is an Ideas columnist. He can be reached at kevin.lewis.ideas@globe.com.

Ideas

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

AUGUST 20, 2017

Brainiac

BIG IDEAS IN LITTLE BITES

BIG DATA

INNOVATION OF THE WEEK

NYT

What is it? A floating “mucus house” Innovators: Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute What were they thinking? Every year, the world dumps 8 billion metric tons of plastic into the ocean and much of it breaks up into micro scopic particles that can wreak havoc with ma rine life. Tweezers won’t remove the troublesome debris. But a team of California researchers, Wired magazine reports, may have found a clever way to deal with them — employing a jellyfish like creature called a larvacean that makes a threefoot long “mucus house” to catch wee bits of food. Did it work? Using a small submarine, the re searchers dropped some flourescent plastic mi crobeads into the water and were astonished to see a larvacean catch and eat the stuff. They snatched the animal, put it into a holding tank, and watched to see what became of the plastic beads. What happened next was, perhaps, pre dictable. “They pooped them out,” said bioengi neer Kakani Katija. Larvaceans won’t eliminate the plastic altogether, then, but they could move it to the ocean floor by way of their droppings. That’d be progress. And it could, in time, yield the world’s greatest Slip ‘N Slide. —DAVID SCHARFENBERG

28.5 gigaparsecs

That’s the diameter of the observable universe. It is a place so vast that it only follows that other life exists somewhere. Yet all we’ve heard from space has been cosmic silence. And it may mean that we are, indeed, alone. A new research pa per published in the International Journal of Astrobiology argues that our uni verse may be quiet because species like ours might go extinct soon after reach ing their technological peak. Talk about a boom and bust cycle. —ALEX KINGSBURY AP

{ 50 words } EUPHEMISM Recently leaked emails from the Natural Re sources Conservation Service, which is part of the USDA, revealed a demand from the Trump administration to replace references to “climate change” with “weather extremes.” But “weather extremes” may be less euphe mistic than “climate change,” which itself origi nated as a euphemism for “global warming.” Over time, “climate change” became charged with the force of climate science and lost its eu phemistic flavor. This is a classic example of what Stephen Pinker calls the “euphemism treadmill.” New words are coined to take the place of objec tionable words, and then become objectionable themselves. The treadmill will likely keep on churning out new euphemisms as long as organizations like the USDA find themselves in something like their present pickle: being a weatherdependent agen cy asked to deny weathercentric research. Given the other possibilities — such as come dian James Corden’s satirical suggestion “endless summer” — “weather extremes” doesn’t actually seem so bad. —MARK PETERS

Logan Airport 1972. Screaming Eagle on my Class A uniform shoulder. New silver wings on my chest. Nixon pulls troops out of Vietnam. Taxi driver refuses to take me home to Roxbury. Walking to T in spitshined jump boots. I won’t have to go to Vietnam. The war is here. —WALLACE GRANT TILFORD, Roxbury Have a true story about Boston you can tell in exactly 50 words? Submit yours to 50words@globe.com.

Uncommon Knowledge B y K e v i n L e w i s sen. If the ad was for the same CNN famine cover age, but participants could press a button to skip it after watching only eight seconds, famine issues became less important. In other words, the act of ignoring something for the moment has lasting ef fects. Paluck, E. et al., “Ignoring Alarming News Brings Indifference: Learning about the World and the Self,” Cognition (October 2017).

Robin Hood begets merry men

Too busy to care In experiments, researchers had participants wait in a room while a TV was either off or playing CNN coverage of a famine in Niger. If the TV was on but participants were offered distractions, they subsequently assigned less importance to famine related political issues, compared with partici pants who were not distracted — or even had the TV off. A similar effect was found in an online ex periment where participants were presented with an ad before getting to view a video they had cho

Analysis of survey data collected from 33 countries over 24 years revealed that increases in income inequality in a country were associated with lower life satisfaction. Indeed, 5 percent more inequality was comparable to the effect of a more than 10 percent reduction in GDP per capi ta. Redistribution that decreased inequality was associated with exactly the opposite, and was positive for both “taxpayers and welfarereceivers, for liberals and conservatives, and for the poor and the rich.” Cheung, F., “Income Redistribution Predicts Greater Life Satisfaction across Individual, Nation al, and Cultural Characteristics,” Journal of Person ality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).

ence conducting intelligence interviews and in terrogations.” Participants who were inter viewed in a spacious room with windows dis closed more details about the plot, compared with participants who were interviewed in a ste reotypical police interview room (small, twoway mirror, no windows). Dawson, E. et al., “A Room with a View: Set ting Influences Information Disclosure in Investi gative Interviews,” Law and Human Behavior (August 2017).

Goodwill pictures In an experiment at Penn State, flyers urging “Don’t Pack up Your Sentimental Clutter. . . Just Keep a Photo of It, Then Donate” were put up in the bathrooms of several sorority dorms before the winter holiday break. In several other sorority dorms, there were flyers that urged people

Good cop, bad cop Researchers recruited “community members from a large Northeastern city” to roleplay as couriers in a mock environmental terrorism con spiracy. They were then interviewed by a “real counterintelligence agent with 10 years of experi

merely to donate sentimental possessions. More items were donated in the keepaphoto dorms. Winterich, K. et al., “Keeping the Memory but Not the Possession: Memory Preservation Miti gates Identity Loss from Product Disposition,” Journal of Marketing (forthcoming).

Juris imprudence Political scientists at Harvard and the Universi ty of Chicago found that the federal courts have repeatedly cited a fallacious argument to avoid having to consider statistical evidence. From 1960 onward, various Supreme Court and lower court decisions have stipulated some version of the phrase “it is never easy to prove a negative.” As recently as 2011, Chief Justice John Roberts cited the phrase as a way to ignore credible statis tical evidence that would’ve undermined his argu ment striking down an Arizona campaignfinance law. The fallacy here is that, while it may be hard to prove that a thing does not exist, this is not the same as statistically estimating the magnitude — positive or negative — of a causeeffect relation ship, which is what the courts were actually con sidering. Enos, R. et al., “The Negative Effect Fallacy: A Case Study of Incorrect Statistical Reasoning by Federal Courts,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (September 2017). Kevin Lewis is an Ideas columnist. He can be reached at kevin.lewis.ideas@gmail.com.

Ideas

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

SEP TEMBER 10, 2017

Brainiac

BIG IDEAS IN LITTLE BITES ON SECOND THOUGHT

INNOVATION OF THE WEEK

GETTY

Earlier this year, the Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal published a paper by a group of Iranian researchers, including Mahmoud Ah madinejad of the Iran University of Science and Technology. Yes, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president notorious for his anti Semitism and Holocaust denial. After a reader pointed out the coauthor’s past political identity to the journal, the editors retracted the article. “Mr. Ahmadinejad’s affiliation with the govern ment of Iran was not identified when the article was submitted,” Jeffrey Paniati, the executive di rector of the engineering group, told Tablet maga zine. In withdrawing the paper — about the use of smartphone GPS systems to evaluate road safety — the journal is bucking typical practice. Ahmadinejad left office in 2013, long before the retracted article was submitted and published. Retracting a paper not on its substance, but be cause one author has an objectionable past, is un usual to say the least. — ADAM MARCUS Retraction Watch

SAMANTHA STAMAS/GLOBE STAFF ILLUSTRATION/AP

What is it? Vodka distilled from dis carded Twinkies Innovator: Misadventure & Co. What were they thinking? Each week, the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank got rid of more than 1,000 pounds of baked goods, contributing to the country’s enormous food waste problem. Enter Misadventure & Co.,

BIG DATA

which now picks up the leftover bread, Twinkies, and Ho Hos. The startup dis tiller spins them into a sweet porridge, adds yeast, and creates vodka, which is sold in a tall, dark, and handsome bottle. Did it work? It’s not clear yet if con sumers will take to the Twinkie tonic in big numbers. “When we first came up with this idea, no one thought it was a good one,” Misadventure coowner Sam

Chereskin acknowledged in a recent in terview with NBC 7 San Diego. Indeed, truly ecofriendly foodanddrink innova tion can require us to check our queasi ness at the door. But this iteration may be easier to swallow than most: vodka, after all, is odorless and flavorless, even when it’s derived from a bright yellow cake with a creamfilled center. — DAVID SCHARFENBERG

IDEAMOJI

Achoo! Let’s eat

GLOBE STAFF ILLUSTRATION

157 miles per hour That’s the wind speed at which a hurricane reaches Category 5, the most dangerous classifi cation on the SaffirSimpson scale that the Na tional Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses to describe tropical cyclones. Yet as Hurri cane Irma churned toward Florida this past week, its wind speeds reached 185 miles per hour — prompting false reports that it was about to be come a “Category 6” storm. In the past, scientists have resisted efforts to expand the SaffirSimpson scale. A Category 5 storm, according to the government’s descrip tion, already causes “catastrophic damage.” Be yond that, what else is there to know? As global climate change ushers in more intense hurri canes, Americans may just find out. — DANTE RAMOS

Scientists learn that, when packs of wild dogs in Botswana are deciding whether to hunt, each declares its in tentions by sneezing. That sounds gross to hu mans, who instead dither endlessly about where to order takeout.

Cressida, meet Desdemona AP

Uranus has the solar system’s best named moons, but several are on a collision course. Per new research, Cressida will hit Desde mona 1 million years from now; moons Cupid and Belinda will also collide.

Social media has its limits Public service message: Don’t shop for facelifts on Instagram. According to a recent Northwestern study, clicking on #plasticsurgery, #boobjob, #liposuction, and similar hashtags turns up postings disproportionately by non boardcertified surgeons. —D.R.

{ 50 words } We were Cambridge neighbors for 20 years. We rarely spoke, but she’d send Christmas letters, extolling her family’s accomplishments. We moved to Water town. Today we were pedaling side by side at my new gym. After class, she told me three trees between our yards had just fallen. Then she left. —ELLEN KOLTON, Watertown Have a true story about Boston you can tell in exactly 50 words? Submit yours to 50words@globe.com.

Uncommon Knowledge B y K e v i n L e w i s Seeing race As the authors of a new study note, “both the United States and Brazil have a history of Native American displacement, European settlement, and African slavery.” Yet people in the two coun tries see race very differently. In experiments, Americans — but not Brazilians — used infor mation about parents’ race to categorize chil dren whose race was ambiguous in photos. Americans were also more likely to categorize a child with mixedrace parents as black than white. In categorizing adult faces by race, Brazil ians relied more on skin tone than Americans, who were more likely to rely on facial features. Chen, J. et al., “To Be or Not to Be (Black or Multiracial or White): Cultural Variation in Racial Boundaries,” Social Psychological and Personali ty Science (forthcoming).

Teach them well Over the last century, states have raised their school dropout ages and toughened their com pulsoryattendance laws. Parents who were sub ject to an additional year of schooling due to compulsoryschooling laws in effect when they were teenagers subsequently had children who engaged in significantly less delinquent behavior. This appears to be the result of those children having fewer siblings, facing higher educational expectations, watching less television, and feel ing a greater sense of control. Chalfin, A. & Deza, M., “The Intergenerational

Effects of Education on Delinquency,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (forthcom ing).

The difference an hour makes An Iowa State political scientist compared voter turnout in counties along the boundary be tween the Eastern and Central time zones in Kentucky, where polls open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Turnout among older voters was several percentage points higher in Eastern Time Zone counties, which open and close an hour earlier relative to the sun. Turnout among younger vot ers was several percentage points higher in Cen tral Time Zone counties. Urbatsch, R., “Youthful Hours: Shifting Poll Opening Times Manipulates Voter Demograph ics,” Research & Politics (July 2017).

Walls matter The fortified border that the Romans built through what is now Germany didn’t just keep the barbarians out. According to a German re searcher, it also kept prosperity in. Economic de velopment has been significantly higher on the Roman side of the border up through today, even considering geographical characteristics and preRoman settlement patterns. Much of this can be explained by the lasting economic value of the Roman road network. Wahl, F., “Does European Development Have Roman Roots? Evidence from the German

Limes,” Journal of Economic Growth (September 2017).

Committed to being wrong Researchers wanted to test how willing peo ple are to change their minds based on new in formation. Subjects were shown a bowl of peas on a table and asked to write down an estimate of the number of peas in the bowl. Then they were given a hint — an average estimate made by other participants — and allowed to revise their own numbers. Members of a control group, meanwhile, were shown the peas, given the hint, and then asked for a final estimate. (All participants were paid based upon how accu rate their guesses were.) Com pared with the control group, participants who’d written down an initial estimate provided final estimates that were less accurate. There was no such effect when participants were asked to raise their hand when they had an esti mate but not to write it down — suggesting that it was the act of re cording an estimate, not simply thinking about one, that committed par

ticipants to it. Falk, A. & Zimmermann, F., “Information Pro cessing and Commitment,” Economic Journal (forthcoming). Kevin Lewis is an Ideas columnist. He can be reached at kevin.lewis.ideas@globe.com.

Ideas

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

MARCH 4, 2018

Brainiac

BIG IDEAS IN LITTLE BITES

EUPHEMISM

INNOVATION OF THE WEEK

col∙lec∙tive (n.) If you’re hungry in Minneapolis, forget food trucks and restaurants. Get thee to a collective. That’s the selfapplied name for Graze Provisions & Libations, a proposed food hall. According to a recent City Pages article, “col lective” is what the Derived Development Group calls a building housing “several, local chefdriven concepts incorporated into the interior and a bev erage dynamic equal to the uniqueness of the chefs themselves. The entire space will be vibrant and tell a story within and outside of its four walls. Casual, dining, alive — all words that de scribe the venue itself.” Writer Emily Cassel translated: “So. Food hall.” Derived owning partner Chris Hunter told Co Star, “We call Graze a food and beverage collec tive because the intent is to bring together an ex citing and innovative group of local purveyors that collectively create a unique community of likeminded people.” “Food hall,” it seems, is just too mundane. “Collective” makes one think of communes or co ops (which Graze won’t be) even if the food ends up being pricey (which it probably will). With the foodieflattering, fauxinclusive allure of “collec tive,” you can charge more for those local purvey ors and chefdriven concepts. — MARK PETERS

HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE

What is it? Plasmodial slime mold think tank

IDEAMOJI

Sonar, but for humans Some blind people can navigate around obstacles by clicking their tongues and picking up echoes that, per new Brit ish study, are as much as 95 percent softer the initial click.

Don’t even think of com plaining

Innovator Jonathon Keats What were they thinking? Keats, a San Franciscobased experimental philosopher and conceptual artist, has made pornography for plants, geneti cally engineered God in a laboratory, and copyrighted his own mind. Now, in an exhibit at Hampshire Col lege, he is asking plasmodial slime

molds — renowned for their ability to network and navigate complex systems — to sound off on confounding issues of our day from immigration to marijua na legalization. Did it work? An effort to study im migration policy divided petri dishes in half, placing slime mold populations on either side. In one dish, the populations were di vided by an impenetrable wall. In an other, there were no obstructions. The

slime molds in the barrierfree petri dish thrived in the open border zone, suggesting a lax immigration policy may be best. Keats has written letters to Secre tary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and the United Nations. No word, yet, on any policy changes. In a deadpan, Keats tells the Globe that he hopes the slime molds will be in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize. — DAVID SCHARFENBERG

As Xi Jinping moves to hold China’s presidency indefinitely, social site Weibo bans dozens of terms that might conceivably be used to criticize his power play: “ascend the throne,” “my emperor,” “disagree.”

Just print out another copy In interview with Variety, singer Bar bra Streisand reveals that two of her current dogs are clones of Samantha, her dog that died at 14 last year. Animal cloning — impossible in the not sodistant past — is now a $50,000apet luxury good, New York Times reports. —DR

BIG DATA

{ 50 words }

That’s the proportion of Americans be lieved to carry a variant of the APOE gene, one of the strongest risk factors for de mentia. Some 47 percent of people who carry the gene develop the brainwasting disease. But don’t despair. Seriously. Don’t despair. The research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that carriers were 50 percent less likely to develop de mentia if they held positive beliefs about aging, compared with those who held negative views. — ALEX KINGSBURY

Scollay Square, circa 1918. My barely teenage grandfather fina gles his way into a burlesque show. On a school day. Ap plauding, he hears a familiar voice behind him. He freezes. He slowly turns. His father, clapping, definitely not at work. Did their eyes meet fleetingly, or did he only imagine it? — STEPHANIE TORLONE, North Stonington, Conn.

THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, LESLIE JONES COLLECTION

Have a true story about Boston you can tell in exactly 50 words? Submit yours to 50words@globe.com.

FOTOLIA IMAGES

Uncommon Knowledge B y K e v i n L e w i s Some politicians are more equal than others Both before and during the Great Recession, peo ple were more likely to vote for a US senator with an economically liberal voting record, and less likely to vote for an economically conservative senator, when their zip code had higher levels of household income inequality. There was an ef fect for both Democrats and Republicans and for both high and lowincome voters, but only among voters who actually had some knowledge of the senator’s voting record. Newman, B. & Hayes, T., “Durable Democracy? Economic Inequality and Democratic Account ability in the New Gilded Age,” Political Behavior (forthcoming).

Stereotypes and stats In an anonymous online experiment, researchers at Harvard and Stanford asked participants to choose which of two individuals would be more likely to answer hard questions on math or sports, given the individuals’ performance on easy questions on those topics. When the indi viduals were said to be of different gender, male participants tended to bet on the male even if he had done no better than the female on the easy questions. But discrimination was even worse when birth month, not gender, was the differenti ating characteristic, where birth month had been

portrayed as predicting ability to answer math or sports questions to the same degree as gender. Birthmonth discrimination affected both male and female participants — suggesting that dis crimination was simply the result of statistical expectations. Coffman, K. et al., “When Gender Discrimination Is Not About Gender,” Harvard University (De cember 2017).

logos that had been paired with female hindquar ters or, to a lesser extent, dominant male faces. There was no such response to subordinate male faces, at least among female viewers. Acikalin, Y. et al., “Rhesus Macaques Form Prefer ences for Brand Logos through Sex and Social Status Based Advertising,” PLoS ONE (February 2018).

Doing unto others

From welfare to work The Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, has bipar tisan support, and research suggests that the credit has helped poor families over the long run. “Using variation in federal and state EITC benefits over time by family size, results indicate that. . . after a policyinduced $1,000 increase in EITC exposure between ages 13 and 18. . . individu als are subsequently 1.3 percent more likely to complete high school by age 20 and 4.2 percent more likely to complete a college degree by age 26,” leading “to a 1percent increase in the likeli hood of being employed between ages 22 and 27, and a $560 (or 2.2 percent) increase in av erage annual earnings.” This is partly explained by mothers being more likely to work, without causing much of a reduction in parenting time. Michelmore, K. & Bastian, J., “The LongTerm Im pact of the Earned Income Tax Credit on Chil dren’s Education and Employment Outcomes,” Journal of Labor Economics (forthcoming).

AP PHOTO/JOHN RAOUX

People are sheep, or monkeys In a study from researchers at Stanford, the Uni versity of Colorado, Duke, and the University of Pennsylvania, monkeys were placed in front of touch screens and repeatedly shown brand logos paired with images of female hindquarters, dom inant male faces, subordinate male faces, or cor responding scrambled (control) images. Subse quently, when given the opportunity to choose between logos, the monkeys tended to choose

Researchers arranged for randomly selected offi cers of the Seattle Police Department to take part in special meetings with their supervisors. The supervisors asked openended, reflective questions about a routine action by the officer and then asked for feedback on their own perfor mance during the meeting. In other words, the supervisors modeled the kind of respectful inter action that officers are expected to have with cit izens. In the weeks after these meetings, officers were as active in the community as officers in the control group were, but “were less likely to resolve incidents with an arrest and less likely to be involved in useofforce incidents.” Owens, E. et al., “Can You Build a Better Cop? Ex perimental Evidence on Supervision, Training, and Policing in the Community,” Criminology & Public Policy (February 2018). Kevin Lewis is an Ideas columnist. He can be reached at kevin.lewis.ideas@gmail.com.

Ideas

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

SEP TEMBER 17, 2017

Brainiac

BIG IDEAS IN LITTLE BITES BIG DATA

INNOVATION OF THE WEEK

143 tons That’s the weight of an enormous “fatberg” of oil, diapers, and baby wipes clogging a London sewer and attracting considerable attention in the British press. Utility workers are trying to break it up with highpowered hoses, but the Museum of London says it may want to acquire a chunk for its collection. The museum director tells the As sociated Press the object “would raise questions about how we live today and also inspire our visi tors to consider solutions to the problems of growing metropolises.” — DAVID SCHARFENBERG

S.J. STAMAS/GLOBE STAFF ILLUSTRATION/AP

What is it? A robot hive Innovators: Scientists at the Free University of Brussels and other Europe an institutions

IDEAMOJI

Health care politics shift In endorsing singlepayer health care, rising Democratic stars interpret GOP Congress’s failure to repeal Obamacare as left ward movement of the socalled “Overton win dow” — the range of policies considered accept able for mainstream debate.

The power of paperwork The onetwo punch of hurricanes in Texas and Florida creates an unex pected barrier to recovery: a shortage of insur ance adjusters. Delays in processing claims could yield more mold and slower reconstruction.

Copyright for monkeys Can animals own intellectual proper ty? Lawyers representing Naruto, a crested macaque that took a nowfamous selfie and other photos in 2011, reach a settlement dedicating onequarter of the revenues from his images to the preservation of his species. — DANTE RAMOS

What were they thinking? Robots have always been autonomous types with full of control of their own “nervous systems” — the networks of computer

processors, cameras, and other gizmos that make them go. But a group of Euro pean scientists set out to create a set of round robots with wheels that could latch onto each other and merge their nervous systems, forming a single, en tirely new robot.

ture Communications, ushering in a new era of robot morphology. Helmed by a single member of the group, dubbed the “brain unit,” the bot hive can create a va riety of shapes and selfheal by removing and replacing malfunctioning parts. Just like the Terminator. This should work out well.

Did it work? Last week, the scien tists reported success in the journal Na

— D.S.

EUPHEMISM

ex∙pe∙ri∙enc∙er (n.) The offbeat TBS come dy “People of Earth” fea tures a journalist who’s in vestigating a support group for people who claim they’ve been abducted by aliens. One quirk of the show is pulled from reality: Alien abductees like to re fer to themselves by an other term — “experienc ers.” The term was preferred by the late John Mack, a Harvard professor and S.J. STAMAS/GLOBE STAFF parapsychology researcher, since it focuses on the person’s perceptions, not the deeds of alleged aliens. “Experiencer” appears in many UFOrelated contexts, such as the “Experi ence Questionnaire” from the Mutual UFO Network. (Sample question: “Can you feel a foreign object in your body that you suspect is an alien implant?”) The phrase “experiencer” also gives adbuction believers a sense of agency. While they’re usually portrayed as a fringe group, they’re eager, as most people are, to be seen as something more than pas sive victims. — MARK PETERS

{ 50 words } I’m halfway through the crosswalk on a sunny day. One car drives through, right in front of me. Then a second. Am I invisible? A third car. Then a police cruiser! What? Not even the police stop? Oh. Flashing blue lights. Scofflaw three pulled over. Faith restored, I finish crossing. — WENDI COMEY, Westborough Have a true story about Boston you can tell in exactly 50 words? Email yours to 50words@globe.com.

Uncommon Knowledge B y K e v i n L e w i s Horn, K. & Merante, M., “Is Home Sharing Driving Up Rents? Evidence from Airbnb in Bos ton,” Journal of Housing Economics (December 2017).

Points of discrimination

The rent is up in the air There’s been a longstanding debate in Mas sachusetts and elsewhere about whether Airbnb — the website that allows residential property owners to rent out rooms or homes like a hotel — negatively affects the realestate market. In a study that was just accepted for publication in the Journal of Housing Economics, economists from UMass Boston found that Airbnb does in deed take longterm rental units off the market and increases asking rents in Boston neighbor hoods, even controlling for characteristics of the rental unit and the neighborhood.

The immigration bill (“RAISE Act”) that was recently endorsed by President Trump would curtail even legal immigration and begin award ing green cards based on a skillsbased points system. But for many people, the ostensibly eco nomic motivation for favoring highskill immigra tion is really just a cover for ethnic discrimina tion. Survey experiments found that Americans — particularly those who were prejudiced — more strongly favored highskill immigration when considering Mexicans, compared with Ca nadians or Swedes. Newman, B. & Malhotra, N., “Economic Rea soning with a Racial Hue: Is the Immigration Consensus Purely Race Neutral?” Stanford Uni versity (August 2017).

Stop laughing A study by an international team of research ers (“partially supported by the Minerva Initia tive at the US Department of Defense”) sug gests that we should respect other people’s dig nity and importance, if only out of selfinterest. According to surveys of imprisoned insurgents in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, those who felt more humiliated and laughed at were less toler

ant of ambiguity and uncertainty. That, in turn, was associated with more extremism. An exper iment here yielded similar results: Americans who were randomly assigned to write about be ing laughed at subsequently reported more polit ically extreme views. Webber, D. et al., “The Road to Extremism: Field and Experimental Evidence That Signifi cance LossInduced Need for Closure Fosters Radicalization,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming).

Boy talk Researchers videotaped preschoolers and their primary caregivers in their homes every four months for several years and found that boys’ and girls’ use of unique size and shape words (such as “little” and “square”) did not dif fer early on, but parents did use such words more with boys early on. This appeared to ex plain the fact that boys eventually used such words more than girls. Pruden, S. & Levine, S., “Parents’ Spatial Lan guage Mediates a Sex Difference in Preschoolers’ Spatial Language Use,” Psychological Science (forthcoming).

or try for twopoint conversions, even controlling for other factors. Likewise, in an experiment at the University of Arizona with students who were invested in the school’s rivalry with Arizona State, participants took more risks in a card game against someone wearing an ASU hat than against a player in a University of Colorado hat. To, C. et al., “Going for It on Fourth Down: Ri valry Increases RiskTaking, Physiological Arous al, and Promotion Focus,” Academy of Manage ment Journal (forthcoming). Kevin Lewis is an Ideas columnist. He can be reached at kevin.lewis.ideas@globe.com.

Taking a chance on a rival Researchers analyzed playbyplay data from NFL regularseason games. When the teams were wellknown rivals, they were more likely to go for it on fourth down at a given field position

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

@LARGE | MICHAEL ANDOR BRODEUR

egular readers of this column know that I have one of those super vocal, extremely annoy ing onagain/offagain relationships with Twitter. We fight, we break up, we make up, something stupid happens, we repeat. I save some of my best zings for Facebook; Twitter shrugs and refuses to verify me. It’s a dance. Sort of a Sid and Nan cy thing if Nancy was actively seeing like 328 million other people. “As cold and cruel as it’s gotten, as due as we are to move on, Twitter is still a fundamental site of [my] online coming of age,” I wrote earlier this year in my diary/column. At that point, we were really on the rocks (in part because they killed Vine, and in part because of journalist Lindy West’s own breakup note, where she recount ed months of relentless abuse from trolls, and little help from Twitter). And yet, nearly a year and however many hundreds of Trump tweets later, somehow we’re still together. Some times I wonder what it will take for me to finally sign off; it’s as though I’d have to wake up and see a completely different platform. And I think it just happened. That groaning sound that emerged simultaneously from several cubicles around you this past week was news spreading of the latest Big Twitter Change. After years of rolling the idea around in the birdbrain, Twitter final ly decided to go ahead and toss out the 140character count upon which the microblogging platform made its name, doubling the character count (first to a “small group,” then across the platform) to 280. So less of a tweet, more of a gobble. Many users were quick to critique the expansion (and edit CEO Jack Dorsey’s seemingly interminable longform debut back down to read able size) and interpret the news as yet another indication of the troubled platform’s screwy priorities. For years now, users have been calling on Twit ter to take bolder steps toward ad dressing trolling, harassment, and abuse on its platform. In response, they’ve given trolls more room for de tail. Or as one microplay gathers it: Mom: Wow, our baby is carrying a knife, that seems unsafe. Dad: What should we do? Mom: Double the size of the knife. The reasons for this, according to a

OCTOBER 1, 2017

lexicon of new words and acronyms, a entirely new stage for comedy. The on ly reason there exists the notion of a “perfect tweet” is because the balance beam of Twitter is no apparatus for the amateur. I know that bumping up to 280 doesn’t prevent anyone bothered by the change from continuing to post at 140. And I understand that the limits of Twitter have only encouraged new devices to defy them, like threading/ tweetstorming. As the New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik put it in a standardlength tweet: “The 280character limit is a terrible idea. The whole beauty of Twitter is that it forces you to express your ideas con cisely (1/47).”

Woe the fat tweet

Twitter can sometimes feel like the least healthy place on the Internet, but it had a rule. . . . And like any restriction, working against it made the whole body stronger.

SAMANTHA STAMAS/GLOBE STAFF

post from Twitter product manager Aliza Rosen and senior software engi neer Ikuhiro Ihara, are purely practi cal and have more to do with easing and equalizing the Twitter user experi ence around the globe. Tweets in Japa nese, for example, seldom ever reach 140 characters, since each character can contain more meanings than can a single letter in English (in which 9 percent of tweets hit the limit). “Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people Tweeting in English, but it is not for those Tweet ing in Japanese. Also, in all markets,

when people don’t have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and ac tually have some to spare, we see more people Tweeting — which is awe some!” See, here’s the thing. That frustra tion was good. I liked that it kept peo ple from tweeting. And I liked that a good many of Twitter’s regular users — and certainly any of those from whom I regularly sought tweets — were the kind of people who rise to the challenge of saying more by saying less. You might not think it by skim ming Twitter, but most every post that makes it on there is the end product of

some moderatetoheavy editorial tin kering. Twitter may be something of a cesspool most days; but consider what that one rudimentary filter manages to keep out. And certainly, the constraints of the 140character field played a big part in attracting so many writers to Twitter. Journalists appreciated the opportunity to engage in quick blasts with readers (as well as write their own racier headlines). The hordes of young poets who flocked to Twitter treat the platform more like a form. The tight quarters of tweets inspired a whole canon of tiny plays, a sprawling

But to me it’s less about count than character. I know Twitter can some times feel like the least healthy place on the Internet, but it had a rule. Just one. And like any restriction, working against it made the whole body stron ger. Now my timeline will be thick with overwrought thoughts and bloat ed tweets, gliding by like tubers on a lazy river. For many, Twitter is em blematic of a culture crippled by a short attention span, unable to focus on anything longer than a line or di gest anything bigger than a beakful. It’s really quite the opposite. At its infrequent best, and assuming you’re not the president, 140character Twit ter forced us to embrace the complexi ty of putting things simply. Or as Pas cal would have tweeted back in 1657, “I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at michael.brodeur@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MBrodeur.

Birbiglia brings ‘New One’ to town uBIRBIGLIA Continued from Page N1

story of an improv comedy troupe, run by Birbiglia’s character, Miles. The group gets torn apart by envy when one member, played by KeeganMi chael Key, scores a plum gig with a “Saturday Night Live”style series. “Actually, I feel really lucky to do that many shows,” Birbiglia says, ac knowledging that Miles was, however thinly veiled, a fictional creation. “I’d be thrilled to do two or three.” His real career in comedy has been on a steady upward climb since the success of “Sleepwalk With Me,” a true tolife shaggy dog story about his own anxiety and sleep disorder. The con cept evolved from a oneman, off Broadway show into a bestselling book, and then the feature film. A regular contributor on “This American Life,” Birbiglia has also land ed roles on “Girls” and “Orange Is the New Black” and in movies including “The Fault in Our Stars.” But he’s best known for his particular mode of live performance — a thematic approach, often centered on an embarrassing au tobiographical anecdote, that blurs the line between standup and theatrical monologue. The otherness of what it is exactly that he does suddenly reminds Birbig lia of the time, while still an unknown, he hounded Jim Gaffigan into agree ing to go to lunch with him. Bear with him a minute. It was the late 1990s. Birbiglia, re cently graduated from Georgetown University, had just moved to New York to try his hand at comedy. He was hoping Gaffigan, a fellow Georgetown alum, could offer him some advice. All right, Gaffigan said. Number one, don’t move to New York until you’re good. (Too late!) And number two, change your last name. It was a tough call, Birbiglia recalls: “Do I change my name to something people can actually pronounce, or do I double down?” Could he count on one day becoming “so good that it forced people to say this name? And once they say it, they’ll never forget it, be cause it’s such a mouthful?” “I feel like my shows are like that,”

JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF

‘I had this revelation this year about how the pieces of art and performance I love most are the ones that have the best design, have the most heart, and I know nothing about them in advance.’ MIKE BIRBIGLIA

he continues. (Try to keep up, people.) “They don’t fit into a genre that is easy to describe, but once you see the show, you’ll come back to the next one.” Which brings us to his latest, which is called, literally, “The New One.” Bir biglia says that’s kind of a joke in itself. “I’m going out of my way to not tell people what it’s about,” he explains. “I had this revelation this year about how the pieces of art and performance I love most are the ones that have the best design, have the most heart, and I know nothing about them in advance.” As examples, he cites “The Big Sick” and “Get Out,” two movies he implored

MIKE BIRBIGLIA Performing “The New One,” Oct 48, at the Wilbur Theatre. Tickets $35, www.thewilbur.com

friends to go into cold, without reading any advance notice. “That’s what I’m trying to do for my audience right now, is give them the most heightened experience of this story I’m going to tell.” Touring a new show offers him an ongoing opportunity to finetune it, he says, often endlessly.

JON PACK

“I find that I’m completely obsessed with never letting go of a show,” Birbig lia says. For the set that became his most recent Netflix special, “Thank God for Jokes,” he played 112 cities across the country, he says, “which is more cities than there are. Some of them are just an Applebee’s with a dream.” Reaching the point where he’ll re cord a show for posterity, he says, is like the moment when the teacher says “pencils down.” “I always need extra time on my SAT,” he says, laughing. As bigname comedians, from Dave Chappelle to Jerry Seinfeld, return to standup after extended hiatus, Birbig lia says it’s hard for him to imagine a scenario in which he might take a break from the stage at all. “Anything is possible,” he says, “but I didn’t start doing standup to get to something else. So there’s not much people can offer me that could get me away from doing it. “Y’know, I’m not dying to be in ‘The Ridiculous 6.’ Nor does that play to my

Mike Birbiglia directed and starred in “Sleepwalk With Me” (top) and “Don’t Think Twice” (above).

skill set.” He is, however, working on two new film scripts. One is well under way; the other is based on an idea that just recently occurred to him. “I’m outlining it right now,” he says. “They’re going to have to duke it out with each other.” Whether movies or live shows, he’ll keep doing his shaggy thing “as long as people let me do it,” he says. “I feel lucky that people do. “It’s like I have an unspoken con tract with my fans. I’ll do my best if you show up. I’m doing my best, and they’re showing up. It’s a good situa tion.” James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.

B o s t o n S u n d a y G l o b e

N16

NOVEMBER 19, 2017

GLOBE PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SAMANTHA STAMAS

@LARGE | MICHAEL ANDOR BRODEUR

The death of The Sexiest Man Alive

ou may not have heard the big news (over the racket of smashing Keurigs), but earlier this week, country singer and “The Voice” judge Blake Shelton was named People Magazine’s 2017 Sexi est Man Alive. It was a November sur prise that sent many a Twitterer into a spiral of deep uncertainty. Sure, as a living man, Shelton nails two of the honor’s three criteria, which science assures us ain’t bad. But what of that first qualifier? That is: Is Blake Shelton sexy? People couldn’t seem to — oh wait, yes they could, never mind. “Blake Shelton looks like the single dad in a Hallmark movie called ‘Sexy for Christmas,’” tweeted comic Brandi Brown. “Blake Shelton is sexy if you like a guy who’s always about to lean in and tell you about hearty, healthy, American dog food,” tweeted viral “Jeopardy!”snapper Louis Vir tel. “Way to hold It down for all the 7s out there. We appreciate you,” tweeted NBA player Evan Turner, who — hm! — fancies himself a 7. Cumberbatchers, Elbaphiles, Mo moasexuals, all emerged united across various subsects of Twitter to voice their discontent, anger, and confusion over this year’s chosen one. They

pointed to Shelton’s historically horri ble and ample track record of racist, sexist, and homophobic output on Twitter (for which he’s since issued one of those nonapologies “to any body who may have been offended”). They pointed to what he said upon winning: “I can’t wait to shove this up Adam [Levine]’s [expletive].” (Levine won in 2013.) And they pointed to his Objectively Very Bad Tattoo (a pattern of deer tracks mistaken so often for a gathering of ladybugs that Shelton was compelled to flank them with barbed wire to make them “more manly”). All aggressively nonsexy things. To paraphrase Shelton, who is he when we’re not looking? Sprinkle in that he once reported getting “a real kick” out of watching his pet turkey (named Turkey) eat tur key and that he soaks his hair in a mixture of ketchup and eggs for an hour once a week, and hmmm. I feel myself swiping left, y’all. Still, this is all pretty subjective stuff. One man’s highly problematic tweeter, after all, is another woman’s total stud muffin. Consider that a cou ple years ago, Shelton towed an Okla homa man to safety from waistdeep floodwaters. Is that sexy? Yes. That is possibly sexy. Shelton is also rich, fa

mous, taken (by Gwen Stefani), and disarmingly goofy — also things that, in a controlled environment, could be effectively synthesized into a com pound approximating sexiness. And the ketchupegg thing really does seem to work wonders on those flaxen locks of his. And he does have those steely, stolenfromMartinaMcBride’s headblue eyes . . . A look back at Sexiest Man’s 29 dude lineage tells a tale of, well, white guys winning things (Shelton is the 27th white winner) but also the other wise unstable nature of “sexy.” After a watertesting first three years (Mel Gibson ’85, Mark Har mon ’86, Harry Hamlin ’87), the Sexi est committee spent its first decade toying with what made a man a sex symbol: JFK Jr. was the youngest win ner at 27 (and the first departure from Hollywood) in 1988; Sean Connery (yeek!) was the oldest the very next year at 59. “Hollywood’s hunk with a heart” Patrick Swayze (’91) was fol lowed by “big lug Adonis” Nick Nolte (’92). And somehow Richard Gere snuck in twice — once as part of the Sexiest Couple (with Cindy Crawford) and once on his own in 1999. Other twotimers (so to speak) include no duh choices like Brad Pitt (’95 and ’00), George Clooney (’97 and

’06), and Johnny Depp (’03 and ’09). More recently, the issue retooled it self into something more like a stan dardissue studfinder. Ryan Reynolds (’10), Channing Tatum (’12), Chris Hemsworth (’14), David Beckham (’15), and Dwayne Johnson (a.k.a. The Rock, ’16) all steered the redefinition of “Sexiest Man” from championing ineffable qualities to drooling over vis ible abs. In this context, Shelton’s win might represent some good news for the average dude (who still fancies himself a 7) — the start of a paradigm shift in the tectonics of sexy toward more even ground. But no. Here’s the thing: This whole stink over Blake Shelton isn’t really a question of whether he’s sexy, let alone sexy enough to be “Sexiest.” In fact, let’s forget Blake for a second. As a lifelong gay who likes to think he brings a sommelier’s sensitivity to critical distinctions like these, I feel like I’ve been pinching my nose through the entirety of 2017, essen tially operating without the faculties necessary for identifying and evaluat ing what may or may not qualify as “sexy.” What even is a sexy man right now? Is that still a thing you can be? Do blue eyes and fantastic hair make it fine for a man to “wish the [expletive] in the next room would ei

ther shut up or learn some English so I would atleast [sic] know what he's planning to bomb”? Does awshucks oldboy charm permit a man to pub licly refer to his ex as a “fat ugly bitch”? Or post reference to a “sick fantasy” involving a then16yearold actress? Deleting thousands of tweets for fear that someone might read them: Sexy or no? Help me: What exactly must be overlooked in order to focus on the sexy part? What with all these Harveys and Kevins and Georges and Bills and Louises and (et tu?) Als and Donalds showing off their true colors as though true colors were all they had on under a loose trenchcoat, the very idea of a Sexiest Man contest right now just feels like an unwelcome in truder — a dude from “Magic Mike” humping his way across the floor of an emergency room. From what I gather, there really doesn’t seem to be any urgent inquiry from the general public toward which powerful men seem most primed and ready for sex — and even less of an obligation to re ward them for it. Michael Andor Brodeur can be reached at mbrodeur@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter: @MBrodeur.

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