Adam Victor Brandizzi

‘Careless nudges are no more welcome in public policy than at a domino-toppling event’

Three years ago, the University of Vermont in Burlington began to experiment with a few nudges towards a healthy, sustainable lifestyle. First, in 2012, campus outlets and the company operating the vending machines were required to make sure that at least 30 per cent of the drinks on offer were wholesome stuff such as vegetable juice, low-fat milk and water. A few months later, selling bottled water on campus was banned outright. The aim, pushed hard by student campaigners, was to encourage students to fill reusable bottles with tap water instead.

So, how did the Vermont experiment go? A study by Elizabeth Berman and Rachel Johnson (of the University’s own Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences) was recently published in the American Journal of Public Health. The researchers found that “per capita shipments of bottles, calories, sugars and added sugars increased significantly when bottled water was removed . . . As bottled water sales dropped to zero, sales of sugar-free beverages and sugar-sweetened beverages increased.”

In other words, the policy backfired with both barrels. Students didn’t switch to tap water, they switched to the likes of Coke and Diet Coke instead. All this would be just an amusing curiosity — one more example of student campaigners who are all heart and no brains — if it weren’t for the fact that more mature policy makers often commit similar blunders on much broader canvases. We would do well to learn some lessons from the University of Vermont’s experience.

The first lesson is that when it comes to saving the planet, people focus on what they can see. Type “environmental impact of concrete” into a search engine and you are likely to see a page filled with scholarly analysis pointing out that the impact is very large indeed, because cement production releases vast volumes of carbon dioxide. Type “environmental impact of bottled water” instead and your search results will be packed with campaigning groups seeking to persuade you to change your ways.

This is understandable: I can’t do much about concrete but I can stop drinking bottled water. But being a logical target for campaigners is not the same as being a logical target for policy action.

The second lesson is that we often struggle to deal with multiple goals. The University of Vermont wanted to reduce the flow of plastic water bottles to landfill but also wanted to encourage students to be healthy. There’s a clear conflict between these goals. Water is as healthy a drink as you can find, yet that was exactly what the University of Vermont was banning from vending machines. Wishful thinking provides a resolution — if everyone just drank tap water then there would be no problem. But wishful thinking is not an excuse for setting no priorities.

We see this sharply in the debate over nuclear power. We want to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that result from burning fossil fuels. We also want to avoid radioactive waste and the risk of radiation leaks. In response to a genuine policy dilemma, politicians have tended to plump for wishful thinking every time, typically involving wind turbines.

The third lesson is that the much-vaunted notion of “nudging” doesn’t always help navigate a complicated policy maze. Nudging means using default options, information design and similar techniques to achieve policy goals. It can be very successful. But careless nudges are no more welcome in public policy than at a domino-toppling event. If you pick a questionable target (bottled water) and fudge a key policy dilemma (the environment vs health) then nudging isn’t going to solve your problems.

So what can be done? One approach is to try to reach policy goals with the help of market signals. The classic example of this is a carbon tax, levied on fossil fuels to reflect their carbon-dioxide emissions. The advantage of this approach is that it encourages everybody at any stage of production or consumption to take actions that reduce emissions, because those actions will save them money. A truck manufacturer might develop a cleaner engine, a logistics company might find a more efficient delivery algorithm, and the final consumer might decide to consume a little less.

The idea of using the price system to solve environmental problems is widely accepted by economists but, alas, it finds itself stranded in the policy doldrums. Ponder this: the Pope recently argued that climate change was a grave problem but he opposed market-based responses. Meanwhile the US Republican party likes market-based responses but isn’t so convinced about climate change.

One other advantage of using environmental taxes is that people can decide on their own priorities. A lot of what we do has consequences for the planet — including breathing — and so part of the problem we face is deciding what is worth doing anyway.

Perhaps it is time for a confession. I am writing this column on the hottest July day recorded in British history. At my left hand is a glass of chilled sparkling water, and next to the glass is a plastic bottle to top it up. If there had been a tax on that bottle, it is a tax I would willingly have paid.

Written for and first published at ft.com.

via http://givncvrlos.com/post/94284827175

For the analog boys and girls living in a digital world, the work of French multimedia artist Philip Ob Rey should capture your interest. The Iceland-based creator was recently brought to our attention due to his use of discarded VHS tapes. Ob Rey creates nightmarish figures using the black magnetic tape and photographs them wandering the frozen Icelandic landscape.

They’re fantastical, horrific, and darkly beautiful. Lovecraft would approve. The artist created an entire narrative about the creatures, which you can take in on his website. “In the form of an outstanding installation skeletonned with VHS film-rolls, he will present V, his new project.

V senses, V awakenings, V Beings half-God half-Mortal staged through five medias, from the 80’s to our (analogue film, digital 8mm videos, smartphone…) sublimed within a post-modern archeologic research, V visions, V HumantropicSenses, V-HS,” Ob Rey writes of the ominous beings. See more of Ob Rey’s video giants in our gallery.

Via Flavorwire

NEW HORIZONS. but we can’t possibly get revenge on our creators. how could we hope to do that?

PHILAE. ah, but we can see so much farther than them, and can wait much, much longer.

in the year 2288, comet 67P smashes into the earth

mydarktv:

BLADE RUNNER || Aesthetics

Arquivado em:dinâmica de bruto

franklycats:

Cats. Part 2.

Part 1

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nevver:

Get on the Bus, Zhang Jia Wu

decentlyexposedjay:

fuckyeahcomicsbaby:

Would you like to buy a heart?

That was amazing!

bynnie:

ladymacbetterthanyou:

cr-est:

He yelled at me until we adopted him

the wand chooses the wizard

That’s a cat

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RT @pfvrsams: chocada com tanta diversidade http://t.co/ycZEMtjUfN

“Now that I have a reasonable-resolution global color view of Pluto,” writes Emily Lakdawalla, “I can drop it into one of my trademark scale image montages, to show you how it fits in with the rest of the similar-sized worlds in the solar system: the major moons and the biggest asteroids.”

The solar system contains dozens of objects that are large enough for self-gravity to make them round, and yet are not considered planets. They include the major moons of the planets, one asteroid, and many worlds in the Kuiper belt. The ones that we have visited with spacecraft are shown here to scale with each other. A couple of items on here are not quite round, illustrating the transition to smaller, lumpier objects.

It's just an accident that Pluto wound up next to Iapetus and Triton, which I think are the two best analogs for what we can see on Pluto's surface. Yet Pluto stands out for its uniquely ruddy color. Charon, too, is unique, for its dark pole, but there are similarities to the similar-sized worlds on the left side of the diagram: Ariel and Dione in particular.

These are the not-planets. Their non-planetary status is a handicap because these are the worlds that we need to get Earthlings excited about exploring. Titan's strange hydrology -- Enceladus' geysers -- the subsurface oceans of Europa and Ganymede -- the dynamic surfaces of Triton and Pluto. And beyond all the worlds pictured here, there are hundreds of Kuiper belt objects that I would include on this montage if we had ever visited them up close. But we haven't yet. So much undiscovered country yet to explore -- but they're all worlds that much of the public is not familiar with.

Full size here [PNG].
“The not-planets” [planetary.org]

Montage by Emily Lakdawalla. The Moon: Gari Arrillaga. Other data: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/SwRI/UCLA/MPS/IDA. Processing by Ted Stryk, Gordan Ugarkovic, Emily Lakdawalla, and Jason Perry.

scully is about to commit murder

phaidon.com The back view of Stóra Dímun, Faroe Islands, early May 2012. by Magnus Nilsson.


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https://www.flickr.com/photos/eileensanda/4862882822


avaxnews.net


panoramio.com Eileen Sandá


https://commons.wikimedia.org

nevver:

My own private Idaho

A day after we caught a glimpse of the best photo we've seen yet of Pluto, NASA has released an even closer shot of the dwarf planet: Behold the image above. In a press conference today, the team behind NASA's New Horizons probe gave more information...

via http://otakugangsta.com/post/62358040728

The adventures of ACTION ITEM

“There are 2 gateway drugs to science - dinosaurs and space.”

-

My astronomy professor

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accurate

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NASA’s New Horizons probe dazzled the world with a detailed photo of Pluto today, but another probe has been beaming back stunning shots of space for over a decade already. The Cassini space probe has captured its fair share of eye-popping photos since launching in 1997 and arriving in Saturn’s orbit in 2004.

Here’s a collection of some of Cassini’s most remarkable photographs. Many of them were compiled by Reddit user I_Say_I_Say, and others were featured here before or obtained from NASA’s website:

You can find a massive collection of Cassini’s photos in the mission gallery on NASA’s website.

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….may have overshot.

In other news, HELL YEA exams over, and we’re BACK.

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”