Dispelling Common Myths

Both the BBC and the Guardian covered the yearly dispelling of myths by the British Medical Journal. This years myths included

• You lose most of your heat through your head
• Hangover cures actually work
• Sugar in food casues hyperactvity in children

What's fascinating is how these myths came into being. The head and heat story comes from a flawed experiment carried out by the US Army in the Artic in the 50's.

If you're interested in why some of these ideas stick around, I'd recommend
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Only halfway through it so far, but very interesting.

How many ways can you read a book?

Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired has reissued one of his first books New Rules for the New Economy as a RSS feed.

While you won't always agree with what he says, this and other books such as Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines are always thought provoking.

He's always said that the print additions were merely a first step in publishing and would republish them in new formats as they emerge.

Kelly has already republished them as PDF's and sees RSS as the next step as it will allow people to comment on specific sections of the book.

This is certainly a very interesting concept as it allows both the author and reader to have an almost realtime interaction that only a couple of years ago would have been impossible

His post explaining this in more detail is New, New Rules for the New, New Economy