The Freakonomics boys draw attention to an offer from a bank:

Would you rather donate $100 to a charity you believe in, or spend $50 in your favorite shop?

I suppose if people know how to buy happiness (give your money away) they'll choose the charity. But who is actually paying for this...

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They pruned a palm next door. What were they thinking? Plonkers.

Or maybe it was Daniel Cressey hisself? No idea whether Nature's story adds anything to what we already know, and I don't care.

It's easy to laugh at Berkeley. So Right-on. So Convinced. So Radical. So Parochial. And yet, as I see it, they do seem to heading in the right direction. At least three links today persuade me of that.

First, Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services for the Berkeley Unified School District. I l...

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Six years ago now, I collected seeds from a nice enough red canna growing at my last apartment but one. I sowed some the following year, and they sprouted, which was satisfactory enough. Then I moved, and took just three plants -- an orange, a lemon and a Brugmannsia -- with me. The cannas, young...

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