Afternoon roundup

• Where's the gold? The Royal Canadian Mint is missing some. And, seigniorage only earned the Canadians about $75 million last year. I kinda like the "one brick at a time" scenario, implausible though it may be.


• Geoffrey Miller thinks we spend too much money on things that signal our status rather than on things that bring us happiness. So John Tierney surveys his readers: what have you spent most money on, and what brings you most happiness? Surprise: strong correspondence between the two. And what shows up as #2 on the "underrated" list (ie low spending, high happiness)? Alcohol. What shows up as #4 on the "overrated" list (ie high spending, low happiness)? Taxes.


• The Impunity Game. Take the ultimatum game, remove the penalty to the proposer for rejection, and check results. Offers still are rejected. But is this really evidence against negative reciprocity? I'm more inclined to think Pleistocene rules of thumb still fire regardless of whether there's an apparent disconnect between offer rejection and punishment of offerer: the costs of changing the heuristic outweigh the potential gains.