Dive into the archives.
- Duncan Donuts’ Linguistic Step Too Far
It had happened before, but this morning I decided to discuss it with management: how my request for a “medium” coffee is met with the counter-person’s translation into “large”. It turns out that the 3 model cups on display are NOT small, medium, and large; but rather: medium, large, and extra-large. What happened to small? [...]
- On Finding a Language in the Confusion of Tongues: US Healthcare
A rather remarkable debate in my undergraduate industrial-organizational psych class forms the groundwork for these thoughts. We begin with trying to think through the implications of David Brooks’ critique of Obama’s healthcare intiative in the NY Times a week ago. Not surprisingly, the effect of thought across a group of 27 individuals was to generate [...]
