Category Archives: humour

Another Article from the Land of D’oh – Jobs and Traffic Jams are Linked

A recent article over on the NYT blogs pointed out the stubborn link between jobs and traffic jams and noted that when the average national unemployment rate reached its lowest point (of 4.6% in 2006), the hours that commuters spent in traffic were 13% less than when the average national unemployment rate was close to its highest point (of 9.3% in 2009).

Why wouldn’t this make sense? The more people working, the more people trying to get to the same business centres at about the same time. The more cars trying to get through the same choke points in traffic flows, the slower traffic is going to go. As long as the personal vehicle is primary mode of transportation, obviously there’s going to be a big connection between employment rate and traffic jams. You don’t need a study to confirm this. Just some common sense (and, if you want to verify your common sense, a mathematical model).

Reader Education? What Was I Thinking?

I’m so naive! I thought that if I brought value to my readers each and every day, I could make a difference and build a profitable business at the same time. I thought as long as I avoided mastering the art of saying nothing and stayed off the Analyst 2.0 path, things would work out. How wrong was I?!

Forget education! The real key to financial success is stupidity and bad grammar! Cheezburger, the publisher behind LOLcats and FAIL Blog, just raised 30 Million. That’s right! 30 Million to publish pictures of cats who can’t spell and dumb failures. 

I guess SI should have jumped on the Purchasing 0.3 Bandwagon when it had the chance! Whomever succeeds the now defunct Purchasing is obviously poised for fame, glory, and riches. (And the battle is already raging …)

Making You Smarter

One of Sourcing Innovation’s primary goals is reader education. If you don’t learn something on a regular basis, SI is not doing its job. While some bloggers simply spread the latest gossip to come their way, the editor of Sourcing Innovation slaves over a lit keyboard day-in and day-out to make sure that fresh new insights are delivered to you on a regular basis. But has it all been for naught?

According to this recent article that asks if “this font will make you smarter” (Globe and Mail), jaunty childish font[s] will improve your memory retention, help your kids do better in school, and make your wife love you more. Seems that all the editor had to do was find some random drivel, wrap it in a Comic Sans font, and you’d be better for it.

As per the referenced article over on LiveScience.com, research conducted at Princeton University has discovered that funky fonts may help students learn. In a research project, which presented two different groups of volunteers with the same list of words (one set in a common font and the other in a funky font), the groups were distracted for 15 minutes after studying the lists for 90 seconds and then tested. The group with the funky font averaged 14 percentage points higher. Now, the research project has not yet been repeated and it was led by an undergraduate, but it was reviewed by a faculty mentor and then peer reviewed before publication in Cognition, so the study can’t be discredited with the wave of a hand. The reason for the better performance may not be understood, but the message is clear. If SI wants to make you smarter, less knowledge, more funky fonts.