Interesting Articles: Q3 2010

Psychology:
* Smart spending buys happiness (American Public Media's Marketplace). A short segment interviewing a psychology professor who reviewed the literature on the connection between money and happiness. Listen, then read the criticisms in the story's comments; some are rather astute about the implicit assumptions in the professor's work and psychology literature in general. I also found it worthwhile to read her academic paper: If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right (PDF) (Journal of Consumer Psychology). Though long, it's actually only a survey paper reviewing the psychological studies and giving a list of principles (with the scientific evidence to support them) about how to make your money go farther in making you happy.
* What’s Really Human? The trouble with student guinea pigs (Newsweek). How studying U.S. undergraduates leads to misleading conclusions about universal cognitive processes. (Expands on the criticisms in the comments in the happiness radio segment.)

Cartography & History:
* Making Maps, the Google Way (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). An interesting tale about how cartography and in particular the techniques of map-making have changed over time. Although the segment could've been better made, I found it thought provoking enough that I checked out a book on the history of cartography.

Physics:
* The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements (Stanford Report). A striking result that indicates our understanding of physics may be incorrect. It's not a result in a part of physics that we know we don't fully understand; it's something that we thought we understood and new evidence suggests we may not.