The word “avocado” comes from the Nahuatl word āhuacatl (“testicle”, a reference to the shape of the fruit). Historically avocados had a long-standing stigma as a sexual stimulant and were not purchased or consumed by any person wishing to preserve a chaste image.

As a fan of both etymology and of avocados, I found this interesting.

Speaking of words, I want to also link the word haberdasher to Brendan, to help him keep that number three rank in Google for the search term, right behind Wikipedia and Websters. Well done.

And since you are wondering now like I am…

haberdasher – 1311, from Anglo-Fr. hapertas “small wares,” of unknown origin. At first “a dealer in small articles of trade,” sense of “dealer in men’s wares” is 1887 in Amer.Eng., via intermediate sense of “seller of hats.”

As someone who did a tour of colleges, but finished at zero of them, I found this article pretty interesting.

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.”

You would conclude that your colleague was cruel, not to say insane. But that’s the system we have in place.

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It’s tax-rebate/economic-stimulus package time! Will you be getting some cash from Uncle Sam? If so, will you be using said cash to pump up the economy? Here is a little survey on the topic. Let me know what you think….

Coming home from work this past Thursday evening, I was listening to Marketplace on NPR as I so often do, and I had one of those moments….one of those moments where a story, or an idea, or a theory, or some piece of information, makes you really stop and think, and makes you really want to learn more. This time around it was behavioral economics, and since I heard the piece, I have had an insatiable appetite for more information on the topic.

The particular story that caught my attention was about the coming economic stimulus package, and more specifically how the way the money is presented to Americans will greatly affect how it is spent (or not spent). The segment featured behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who, among other things, had this to say:

For instance, I suspect that giving people a prepaid debit card will do more to rejuvenate the economy than mailing out checks, but direct deposits wouldn’t be nearly as effective. I also suspect that if we added a line on the debit card that reads “spend the government’s money” this would work even better.

The piece was short, but its points were incredibly fascinating to me. I have always been interested in economics, but I find myself getting bored when reading about traditional economic theories and looking at piles and piles of numbers and data for too long. Behavioral economics however, really takes a different and more interesting approach, using psychology and real world information to study how real people actually make their financial choices.

This is the sort of angle that captivates me and keeps me interested and thinking….not always the “whats”, but always the “whys” are what I find most thought provoking.

ANYWAYS, below are some links to some things I have been digesting, and reading, and watching, as well as some things that I intend to digest, read, and watch on the topic.

• Frontline “Secret History Of The Credit Card” -This episode of Frontline (available to watch in full on the site) was riveting. What I found most interesting of all, were the marketing tactics and how they do and don’t affect consumer behavior. The interviews with Andrew Kahr, who created things like the 0% APR and the 2% minimum payment are worth reading/watching in and of themselves.
• The Marketplace story referenced above, regarding the economic stimulus package can be listened to online for free, at marketplace.org.
• MIT has several courses online for free download, including Economics and Psychology, as well as Behavioral Economics and Finance.
• Did you know there was a behavioral economics research center here in Boston? I didn’t.