I’m reading Stefan Klein’s excellent “The Secret Pulse of Time“. Recommended - Klein’s style is charming, if rather German, and his grasp of the science is strong. He covers the biology, psychology and physics of time and yes, it really is all relative. One observation that struck home was that we do not remember time as a continuum but as a series of events; that is why a fortnight recuperating in bed seems like an eternity (because we have no events to observe) but almost vanishes from the memory (because there are no events to remember). That is also why a wonderful day’s sightseeing can fly by, yet when looking back over an evening drink, that morning’s coffee can seem impossibly distant. Much to enjoy.

As I enter the porter’s lodge at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, I fleetingly reflect that I may be about to receive an intimidating tutorial from the college principal, Andrew Dilnot. It is not that the economist has a stern reputation, but today’s circumstances are unusual. He recently stepped down from presenting More or Less, a BBC Radio 4 series about numbers in the news. I have been recruited as the new presenter, and am ready to be patronised – or worse.

I needn’t have worried: as he strides into the lodge in a pale brown linen suit and blue tie, Dilnot’s smile is genuine enough, and as we walk together through north Oxford’s leafy residential streets, he is more eager to identify shared acquaintances in the world of economics than to lecture me on the art of radio presenting…

Read the whole piece here or in the FT on Saturday. My previous lunches have been with Gary Becker, Steven Levitt and Thomas Schelling.

Daniel Kahneman is perhaps the world’s greatest psychologist, and the only one to hold a Nobel prize in economics. I saw him speak a few months ago in London at the IPPR and was deeply impressed. Now Pablo links to a video and transcript of the man in action.

Pscyhology Today reports:

Subconsciously, women dress more provocatively and men find them prettier when it’s prime time for conception. And a report from the University of New Mexico demonstrates that the cyclic signs have economic consequences.
Psychologist Geoffrey Miller and colleagues tapped the talent at local gentlemen’s clubs and counted tips made on lap dances. Dancers made about $70 an hour during their peak period of fertility, versus about $35 while menstruating and $50 in between.

HT: Bluematter