Some short bits of interest from around the web:
- People are more likely to behave unethically if you tell them that they don’t have free will. This according to two recent experiments conducted by psychologists Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia.
- “Hawala is a money-transfer system based primarily in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, based on independent brokers who phone one another and say, ‘I’m holding so much money in such and such a currency, please transfer an equivalent sum in local funds to such and such a person.’ The settlements are based on the honor system, and by some accounts, the network has its origins in the Silk Road. The system functions even in places where the rule of law and other elements normally considered crucial to a a functional financial system have collapsed.”
- “The president moves about like Caesar Augustus, with a vast, graded court of civil and military aides, doctors, secretaries, valets, hairdressers, makeup artists, bodyguards, drivers, baggage handlers, cooks, food tasters, Praetorian guards, snipers, centurions, bulletproof limos, a portable hospital, and an armored rostrum. And that’s when he travels in the United States.” 250 secret service agents, 150 national security advisors, 15 sniffer dog teams, 200 representatives from other bureaucracies, 50 political aides, a personal chef and his team of four cooks all travel in three jets accompanied by two helicopters to be met by two identical motorcades of 20 armored vehicles including limousine, whenever the president of the U.S. wants to have his picture taken in some important district or other.
