American in Spain

88% of people don’t understand this post… (but you probably will)

If you frequent Facebook much, you may have noticed a recent surge – or scourge – of silly little intelligence tests. Most of them start out with a claim that “Most people are unable to do this”, and then provide a pretty simple single-digits arithmetic problem or a word find or ask you to count geometric shapes. These things are so successful, especially with the prefacing text, because they reassure the common believe that everyone has, that they are smarter than most of these other Homo sapiens bozos.
(more…)

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m rather fascinated with the psychology behind decision-making. Both Dan Ariely and Jonah Lehrer are leading experts in the field, at least experts in writing best-selling popular psychology books about it. Ariely has recently moved into the study of lying cheating, and Lehrer moved into the practice of lying and cheating, getting caught for plagiarizing, if you can call it that, his own previous work and falsifying quotes from Bob Dylan to help support his conclusions.
(more…)

This week, I am traveling to Brussels to meet some very good friends of mine, with whom I communicate on a daily basis, but whom I have never actually met in person. This is a very, very strange phenomenon which has only been possible since the rise of the internet. Maybe before the internet, you could have a pen pal that you get to know intimately before meeting, but that’s not the same as feeling part of a social group dynamic like I do.
(more…)

It has been over a decade since I went through a drive-through of any kind, but I have heard rumors of a strange phenomenon developing in the United States in which customers will randomly decide to pay for the order of the customer behind them. The colloquial verbal phrase for such random acts of kindness which cannot be easily returned is paying it forward.
(more…)

I will never forget the feeling of terror and exhilaration I experienced when I first moved abroad as a twenty-year-old IAESTE exchange student to Copenhagen, Denmark. I was so far from everything I knew, and was thrust into a society that had its own way of doing things. There were weekly meetings of other exchange students in which I could converse with other young people from Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Turkey, Norway, Thailand, Japan, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Scotland and Greece. It was incredibly mind opening.
(more…)

Most of the wine I buy is not the dirt cheap young cosechero, the wine from grapes from last year’s harvest which is usually about 1.50€/bottle. Nor do I buy reserva from the best regions and vineyards, made from better grapes and kept in oak barrels for at least a year which sells for at least 10€/bottle. I normally buy crianza, the middle quality, from good regions (mostly Rioja) and good vineyards, wine which has spent at least six months in oak barrels and usually retails between 4€ and 5€. For the better Rioja vineyards, the grapes are so good that the cosechero, which has spent little to no time in barrels is almost as good as a crianza, at just under the price.
(more…)

Theories about information flow are particularly fun when they arrive to your brain through the very mechanisms they are explaining. Recently several of my Facebook friends, a couple people I follow on Twitter, and two of my favorite podcasts started reporting on a new concept from Eli Pariser called The Filter Bubble. The general idea goes like this: as search engines and social media sites use smarter and smarter algorithms to better serve what they determine our needs to be, the less and less we are exposed to opposing viewpoints.
(more…)

As I’ve approached and entered my thirties, I’ve become increasingly interested in politics. Not that I would ever, ever participate beyond the ballot box or a donation, but as a spectator, I’m fascinated. Another of my interests in recent years is the psychology of decision making, belief, and logical fallacies. Of particular curiosity is the growing ideological gulf between the political left and right in the United States brought on by increased access to information.
(more…)