adamcz

In popular culture

Pepsi Free was the subject of a scene in the classic 1985 film Back to the Future. Upon entering a café in 1955, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) asks for a TaB (Coca-Cola’s first version of a sugar-free soft drink, which was not available until 1963) and is told that he cannot have a “tab,” meaning an account where goods are sold on the basis of credit and not paid for immediately, unless he orders something. He then asks for a Pepsi Free (also not available in the 1950s) and is told, “If you want a Pepsi, pal, you’re gonna pay for it!” (“Free” is here being mistaken for gratis.) Finally, he asks for “something without any sugar in it,” and is served black coffee.

Link (Thanks, Sillstaw)

Do people order more-expensive food when they know they’re going to be splitting the check equally (e.g. three friends all give their credit cards for the waiter to split the tab)?

Bill, 59, New York City

Dear Bill,

If anyone accuses you of being stingy for questioning whether to split the check, feel free to tell them you’re not the only one asking. Behavioral economists are interested in this problem, too — they even have a name for it: the unscrupulous diner’s dilemma. The research on this shows that most people secretly don’t want to divide the bill evenly. And for good reason.

In 2004, a study in The Economic Journal, a publication of the Royal Economic Society, looked at the behavior of Israeli students in different dining scenarios at a restaurant “with numerous delectable categories to encompass a wide range of tastes” (academic writing, eh?). The researchers told four groups of diners (always three men and three women) to split the bill equally among them. They told another four groups to pay for what they had ordered. Lastly, they told two lucky groups that they would get their meals for free.

The results were consistent with the economists’ hypotheses: Those who were getting a free meal spent the most (especially one cheeky person who, judging by this chart from the study, really went all out). Those who were splitting the bill spent less, and those who were paying individually spent the least — costs are in Israeli new shekels.

Which I guess is pretty interesting. But to me the more interesting question is why we all behave like greedy morons. Economists have a name for this concept, too: externalities. Any time you make a decision that affects someone else without considering how it might affect that person, whether positively or negatively, you create an externality — it’s basically a fancy way of saying “indirect effect.” There are positive externalities (e.g. when you decide to get a flu shot, other people benefit) and negative externalities (e.g. when you decide to fart, other people suffer).

The unscrupulous diner’s dilemma reveals how negative externalities — and even the mere threat of negative externalities — affect our behavior. Participants in the bill-splitting experiment expected the others to order more, so they tried to maximize what they could get out of the situation by ordering more themselves. This makes no sense because it increases the amount of money out of their own pocket — money they could save by ordering more frugally. And you see the irony of course, Bill: Believing others will act selfishly makes individuals act selfishly.

Even if you haven’t heard of a “negative externality” before, I bet you’re well aware they exist. I think most people know instinctively how other humans behave — 80 percent of the participants here said before the experiment started that they would prefer to pay individually. That’s partly because people know they might pay more if they split the check equally. But there are some nonfinancial costs that mean equally dividing the bill is a smart move: the mental arithmetic that would otherwise be required to figure out how much everyone owes (especially annoying with large parties). And the social cost of being the person to suggest that everyone pay for what they ordered (never popular, especially if the suggestion comes at the end of a meal when people have already ordered those extra side dishes). Culture determines those social costs, and it seems to have a powerful effect indeed.

But the experiment might not have reflected the effect of culture accurately. The study participants didn’t know one another — and they were told to place their orders without discussing or disclosing their choices with anyone at the table. I wonder if that may have magnified some of the outcomes here.

If the negative externalities of bill-splitting bother you, Bill, you have a couple of options. The researchers found that when people were told how to split the bill in a laboratory setting, they came closer to a “socially efficient” outcome. Basically, you can eliminate some of the social shame of not wanting to split the bill evenly by choosing a place like a fast-food restaurant where you can blame the institution for giving separate checks.

Alternatively, you can skip the country. According to Anand Damani, a consultant on behavior change, Germans tend to suggest paying individually, while in Israel, the U.S. and India it’s considered rude not to split the bill evenly. Us Brits tend to do “rounds,” where we simply take turns covering the whole check (a word of warning: the negative externalities go through the roof when someone doesn’t return your call to organize another meal).

Whatever you decide, I hope the numbers help,

Mona

Have a question you would like answered here? Send it to @MonaChalabi or dearmona@fivethirtyeight.com.

how do dogs live

by eating food

@thesimpsonstattoo

@stormintattoos "Up yours children" #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

5134  438

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

when does a bird die.

when it trys to fly to the moon.

megatrip:

TRADITIONAL GODZILLA VIOLENCE.

Not giving his seat up for anyone. Seen on the London Overground to Harrow

Link (thanks, Alex!)

Comic URL: http://www.lefthandedtoons.com/1815/

@thesimpsonstattoo

@prhymesuspect "I said hop in" #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

4167  313

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

Photo by vlastik

Photo by anji

Photo by Tim

Photo by Burnt

Photo by Trevor

During the initial development stages of the film, Pixar revisited their work from the original Toy Story and found that, although they could open the old computer files for the animated 3D models, error messages prevented them from editing the files. This necessitated recreating the models from scratch. (x)

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Every time a new set of statistics on abortion is released, a debate ensues about what the numbers mean and how they should be used. The latest example came in June, when The Associated Press released a survey showing that the U.S. abortion rate declined by about 12 percent from 2010 to 2014. The study sparked a lively conversation along familiar ideological lines about whether the drop resulted from growth in anti-abortion sentiments or increased use of contraception, and even cold, hard numbers couldn’t provide an answer that satisfied both sides.

So why aren’t the numbers enough? Statistics about abortion are murky, and the most helpful numbers tend to be the hardest to get. The AP survey focused on the abortion rate, which is the most widely used and cited stat, but not the only one we have. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks three abortion measures that are important in understanding nationwide trends: the number (sometimes expressed as a percentage), the rate and the ratio.

The number is self-explanatory: It’s the total number of abortions in a population. The rate — the statistic that’s most frequently discussed — is the number of abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. But this number has limitations: Because many reproductive-age women aren’t getting pregnant, the rate alone can’t tell you how likely a pregnant woman is to have an abortion. This is where the abortion ratio — the proportion of all pregnancies that end in abortion rather than a birth — comes in.

To arrive at the ratio, researchers divide the abortion rate by the pregnancy rate. This can be a challenge, because to calculate the pregnancy rate, researchers need the raw number of pregnancies, which no government agency collects directly. In fact, a certain percentage of pregnancies are virtually impossible to count, because they end in miscarriage, so to estimate the total number of pregnancies, researchers add the number of abortions and the number of live births, using birth-certificate data.⁴⁶ They then use the estimated number of pregnancies per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 — the pregnancy rate — and the abortion rate to calculate the abortion ratio.

The most up-to-date and transparent data on abortions we have is from 2011 and shows declines in every measure.

According to the CDC, it’s not necessary to take an in-depth look at all three measures to understand nationwide abortion trends.

“Rates are a good reflection of how common abortion is relative to population size, so that is why they are typically used to describe trends. There are more nuances to interpreting abortion ratios,” CDC spokeswoman Brittany Behm said in an email. “Since numbers, rates and ratios provide very different types of information, it is important to use different measures to answer different questions.”

But the ratio can contribute to a more detailed understanding of abortion trends. Unlike the rate, the ratio helps us understand whether an abortion resulted from an intended or an unintended pregnancy, which gets at why women are choosing to get an abortion or not. Neither the rate nor the ratio alone lends itself to one political ideology or another, but when the data changes, activists differ in their explanation of the causes and implications.

“The abortion ratio is a more sophisticated measure that tells you more about women’s choices,” said Elizabeth Ananat, an associate professor of public policy studies and economics at Duke University. “So if you’re worried about people’s spirituality and change of heart, you’ll be more interested in the ratio than the rate.”

Calculating the abortion rate is more straightforward because it involves less guesswork — part of the abortion ratio is the pregnancy rate, which comes from a variety of sources. But even collecting the data to arrive at the abortion rate is a challenge, said Rachel Jones, principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that supports legal abortion.

The CDC periodically aggregates the number of abortions using data from state health departments. The problem with this strategy, according to Jones, is that data collection is inconsistent from state to state; some states, such as California, gather very little information from providers, and others don’t verify the accuracy of the numbers. Because states have limited resources, the data quality varies widely, making it difficult to create a complete national picture.

Guttmacher performs an abortion “census” every three years or so, a formidable undertaking that involves mailing a survey to each abortion provider in the country. “If they don’t respond, we send the survey out a second time, a third time, and then we start proactively calling them,” she said.

When they’re finished inputting the survey data, Jones and her team vet their numbers against the CDC’s. Guttmacher uses the CDC data to supplement its census — sometimes health department data will fill in gaps from a particular clinic — and as a check on its work, to make sure the clinic surveys are accurate.

Guttmacher’s estimates of the abortion rate are widely cited by advocates on both sides of the issue. So are the CDC’s, though abortion researchers like Ananat prefer to use Guttmacher’s data because it’s more comprehensive.

The question, then, is how to interpret the data — whether to rely on the more straightforward abortion rate, or take the extra steps to calculate the ratio. The abortion ratio lends itself more easily to discussions of causality because it highlights what share of pregnancies end in abortion. If, for example, more women decided not to have abortions — thanks to changing attitudes or restricted access — we would see the abortion ratio fall dramatically as long as the pregnancy rate remained the same.

But, according to Ananat, the abortion ratio is useful only in conjunction with the pregnancy rate. By itself, it says little about attitudes toward abortion or pregnancy. “The abortion ratio used to be very low in this country, before abortion was legal,” she said. “Well, that doesn’t tell you anything about attitudes; it’s all about access.”

Together, the abortion ratio and the pregnancy rate can help illustrate two things: first, how many women are getting pregnant at all, and second, when they do get pregnant, whether they decide to have an abortion. If the abortion ratio falls, anti-abortion advocates often contend that women are changing their minds about the morality of the procedure. But that argument is supported only if the pregnancy rate remains stable, showing that births are replacing abortions.

On the other hand, if a falling abortion ratio is accompanied by a falling pregnancy rate, the likeliest explanation is that fewer women are getting pregnant in the first place. If the pregnancy rate is dropping overall, this likely signals a reduction in the number of unintended pregnancies (pregnancies that were either mistimed or unwanted). A decrease in unintended pregnancies, in turn, affects the number of abortions: Because the vast majority of abortions occur among unintended pregnancies — and unintended pregnancies account for just over half of all pregnancies — even a small reduction can have a disproportionate effect on the abortion rate. “How likely you are to have an abortion isn’t just driven by your attitudes toward abortion, it’s driven by how much you want to get pregnant,” Ananat said.

The abortion ratio’s strength is that it puts abortion rates in the context of broader fertility patterns and can shed more light on women’s decision-making. But the reasons behind these choices remain enigmatic, in part because it’s difficult to determine whether a pregnancy is intended. The only way to measure that is to survey women who have recently had an abortion or given birth. The women who have had an abortion are overwhelmingly likely to say the pregnancy was unintended (except for a small number who had one for medical reasons). But the answers from the women who have just given birth are more unreliable, simply because they are less likely to see their baby as “unintended” once it’s born.

All of this means that researchers have to be careful about how they present measures of abortion. “This data is imperfect, particularly because it’s so hard to measure pregnancies or the intendedness of pregnancies,” Ananat said. “And that’s frustrating, because the one thing everyone can agree on is that we want to find answers to these questions.”

ithelpstodream:

In Nepal they have a festival that honours dogs and thanks them for being our loyal furry friends.

@thesimpsonstattoo

@tom_tattooer "What has 4 legs and ticks?" #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

2214  123

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

what do spys eat instead of mcdonalds?

spydonalds

Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part II

Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part I

“we wish we could do drugs as cool as you. congratulations”

Michael J. Fox had a problem with calling the character of The Judge “Doc” as if he were the character from Back to the Future. (x)

The Frighteners (1996)

@thesimpsonstattoo

@migelly "I'm trying to eat lunch here" #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

2081  139

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

@thesimpsonstattoo

@thrillhauss "or the dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark they shoot bees at you" #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

2630  183

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

“Take it easy and avoid excitement.”

Modern Times (1936)

@thesimpsonstattoo

@lachlanpatrick rocked this epic tat on @ryanmkearns1 jailhouse style "I didn't say stop" #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

1896  41

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

@thesimpsonstattoo

@blinkthisbrooke "I told that idiot to slice my sandwich" #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

1964  166

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

Plot

65,000,000 years ago, a mountain-sized meteor, bristling with unknown energies, crashed into the Earth in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, with a major chunk of the object landing in Central Africa. The impact and resulting ecological catastrophe causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Link (thanks, Curtis Evans!) 

i don’t know why lucy wanted to be in ricky’s show anyway, it sucked. “hi i’m a bongo man, ba ba boo”

and then worse than that, lucy is all sad she can’t be in the show, and then fred is like “i was in vaudeville 800 years ago, can i be old in your show” and ricky says “yes, that is what my nightclub needs, you’re in”

WITCHER 3 FOR XBOX ONE GIVEAWAY

My 28 Plays Later podmate Paul has secured three copies of Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on Xbox One, and we’re giving them away! Please like the show on Facebook and tell us which mythical beast you’d like to barbecue in this post, and you’ll be entered into the drawing!