Coordinating in the Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal Compliance

This paper is not really worth reading – it is many pages, but the point (this is quite intuitive) can be summed like so:

When several people with competing interests, share common interests on certain points of interaction, the interaction to achieve those common interests can be made more efficient (less negotiating, more uniform and widespread standards) by the imposition of a law. It is important to note, that this paper talks purely about the standard setting aspect of the law, and not other, stronger mechanisms for compliance.

Coordinating in the Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal Compliance[pdf]

Paper Carnival I

Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake[pdf]

Researchers identified a strong desire in many of the participants in the study to finish their portion, no matter how much they were actually eating. Additionally, the researchers found that most people use visual cues to estimate the amount they ate rather than their relative feelings of “fullness”.

Protecting Family and Race: The Progressive Case for Regulating Women’s Work[pdf]

An brief history of the socio-economic alignment the turn of the 20th century progressives had with eugenics and some of the reasons they supported such policies. Startlingly different from turn of the 21st century progressives in their conclusions, although identical in their core beliefs and methods.

An Efficient Heuristic Approach for Security Against Multiple Adversaries[pdf]

This is the research paper that sparked the use of randomized security at LAX. Very well done, and quite interesting. This paper has many conclusions that are useful in a variety of fields – anywhere where security is important. The key rule in sort of security is that security by obscurity doesn’t work very well. By assuming that opponents have perfect information about your own procedures, you dramatically decrease the damage done by information leaks.

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide[pdf]

An interesting paper about global warming. Specifically, the authors accept the hypothesis that the earth is warming that that humans are a partial cause of that warming. They also accept that carbon dioxide is the warming agent, although they contend that solar output correlates much more closely to observed atmospheric temperature than hydrocarbon emissions do. They conclude, however, that warming will have beneficial, not deleterious effects on the earth, and should be encouraged, not discouraged. As this seems to counter to the prevailing sentiments, take it with a grain of salt. The arguments, especially the graph on page 1 displaying past global temperatures, appear to be quite convincing, though.