Meryn Stol

The most important thing is to understand this cycle of consumption: You're cued to eat, your attention is focused, you're aroused, and then you eat. When you're cued again, you start the cycle again. If you know you're being stimulated, you can get rid of the cues: Move the bread basket; don't drive past your favorite burger place. Second, you can avoid the consumption—just don't put it in your mouth! Third, prevent yourself from feeling deprived. Eat in a structured, planned way. Don't get hungry, because when you're hungry, the reward value of the food is higher. - Meryn Stol

Kessler, 57, sees parallels between the tobacco and food industries. Both are manipulating consumer behavior to sell products that can harm health, he said. Whether government ought to exercise tougher controls over the food industry is going to be the next great debate, especially since much of the advertising is aimed at children, Kessler said. - Meryn Stol

Many people still think the reason that they keep on gaining weight is their metabolism. There may be some contribution of metabolism to body weight but it's relatively small. What's really driving consumption is what's going on in your brain. [...] We used to think our bodies would regulate our weight, that there was a set point. That's why if we went on a diet we would gain it back, because we had a predetermined weight. But if that were the case we wouldn't all be getting bigger and bigger. There may be what's called a settling point. But a lot of that settling point is driven by how your brain reacts to these cues and how sensitive you are to responding to your environment. The availability of food affects your settling point. There's no predetermined genetic set point. - Meryn Stol

In the end, it has to come from what do we want? What do we view as desirable? What do we view as socially acceptable? A lot of this is social norms. If I can walk down the street and be eating sugar, fat, and salt at any time of the day, on every corner, and that's viewed as what we find rewarding rather than disgusting, then we're going to continue with this epidemic. - Meryn Stol

Beautiful! Leighton has always been one of my favorite artists. I also like Waterhouse's "The Lady of Shalott" and I have Edmond Blair Leighton's GodSpeed and The Accolade. The PreRaphaelites are amazing! - Melanie Reed

In Pentland's research with groups he found that you could often predict the choice a group will make by paying attention to the initial reactions. "The group's behavior is frequently almost like voting: the alternative with the largest number of positive initial comments is usually the winner," Pentland says. Surprisingly, group discussion made little difference. It's the first reaction to social signaling that seems to prevail. Group decisions, it turns out, use these signals, and not logic, to select a course of action. - Meryn Stol

Unconscious signaling behaviors are enormously important in determining the functioning of an organization. In organizations, most of the communication that’s complicated, that’s really important, still happens face-to-face. Some of it happens over the telephone, but it’s person-to-person; it’s not by email, it’s not by memo. And yet all of that face-to-face stuff never makes it into the digital record. There may be a memo summarizing a meeting later, or an agenda, but what actually happened never shows up. And all the interactions in the hall or around the water cooler are not even in the org chart. And yet that’s where everything happens. - Meryn Stol

On the Web, the best way to solve a problem is to engage an extensive network; the person who provides information, advice, or answers is often someone you know only vaguely — a weak link. In the face-to-face world, though, Waber says, groups are more productive when the team members know each other well, sharing extremely strong links. That's because face-to-face teamwork requires intimacy, he says, and "when you're among friends you can really capitalize on preexisting protocols" — nods, grunts, in-jokes — for talking and listening. - Meryn Stol

The concept of honest signals is explained by Pentland as those elements of communication and display that are processed by us unconsciously - or are effectively uncontrollable, or are difficult to fake - so that they can provide an intrinsically valid stream of data with which people guide conversations, meetings and decisions. He isolates four examples of honest signalling for closer study: influence, measured as the extent to which someone modifies the pattern of speaking of another person to match their own; mimicry, or the way we copy the behaviours of another through the course of a conversation through smiles, comments and nods; activity - how interested and excited you are is apparently reflected measurably in your level of activity; and consistency - Pentland suggests that consistent levels of emphasis and timing in speech indicate mental focus in the speaker, with any inconsistency leaving us open to influence from others. - Meryn Stol

"If the predominant threat in the last century was that ever-larger audiences could be misinformed deliberately, then the threat we are facing now is the possibility of 'failed truths' - news and facts that don't have enough of an audience to become known or be championed." - Meryn Stol via Bookmarklet

Many of Dr. Pentland’s research studies with smartphones and badges with embedded sensors are discussed in his new book, “Honest Signals,” recently published by MIT Press. The badges use tools including infrared sensors to tell when people are facing one another, accelerometers to record gestures, and microphones and audio signal-processing to capture the tone of voice. With the array of sensors, the badges can detect what Dr. Pentland calls “honest signals, unconscious face-to-face signaling behavior” that suggest, for example, when people are active, energetic followers of what other people are saying, and when they are not. He argues that these underlying signals are often as important in communication as words and logic. - Meryn Stol

'Way, way back around the Christmas holidays, I was flattered to be one of only three reviewers for Andrew McAfee’s book on Enterprise 2.0 by Harvard Business Press. They asked me to review the manuscript, and I accepted (for a small stipend). They gave me a couple weeks to review it, and I submitted my comments in mid-January. At the back of mind, however, and something I probably should have included in the review and regret now that I didn’t was a lingering doubt. “This book will be obsolete before it’s published for the community of folks who track this sector.”' - Meryn Stol via Bookmarklet

Intel Capital has led a Series B funding round in Sense Networks, a NY-based developer of nifty machine-learning technology that allows for digital indexing and ranking of real world locations based on movement data. According to Venturebeat, which broke the news before the weekend, the amount invested was about $6 million in a ‘hotly contested deal’ that left Sequoia pulling the short straw. - Meryn Stol

MIT Media Lab Professor (Sandy) Alex Pentland talks about his latest book Honest Signals, Innovation, creativity and reality mining. - Meryn Stol

With the use of a digital device call a sociometer Pentland and his colleagues have been able to monitor the vital and important signals that take place in conversations. These signals have robust predictive power in determining many of our decisions and the impact on relationships. - Meryn Stol

How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer, writes Sandy Pentland in Honest Signals, is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network. Biologically based "honest signaling," evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, offers an unmatched window into our intentions, goals, and values. If we understand this ancient channel of communication, Pentland claims, we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates. - Meryn Stol

Planned and structured eating and understanding your personal food triggers are essential. In addition, educating yourself about food can help alter your perceptions about what types of food are desirable. Just as many of us now find cigarettes repulsive, Dr. Kessler argues that we can also undergo similar “perceptual shifts” about large portion sizes and processed foods. For instance, he notes that when people who once loved to eat steak become vegetarians, they typically begin to view animal protein as disgusting. - Meryn Stol

The perceptual shift that Dr. Kessler writes about with the example of smoking is also applied to food. We can learn, he argues, to see fat, sugar, salt, overly processed food and excessively large portions as repulsive or disgusting. When we do, it will facilitate our self-regulation about eating. - Meryn Stol

I'd like to say to opposite. I don't think it's necessary, since the (via [link to original]) is already added to the reshare. This isn't email. - Jason Huebel

It certainly makes it easier for search.. via is more common than fwd and the special case character ( makes it difficult to exclude ..see http://ff.im/4qeYw or for a more detailed newbie search disaster example read http://friendfeed.com/friendf..... Does ANYONE know how to escape special characters? Search seems extremely powerful but I keep stumbling to find what I am looking for.. - Chris Myles

Seldom-counted side benefits can be far more valuable than the direct savings. For instance, a typical office pays about 160 times as much for people as for energy, so a 0.6 percent gain in labor productivity would have the same bottom-line effect as eliminating the energy bill. But we routinely see not a 0.6 but a 6 to 16 percent gain in labor productivity in efficient buildings with better thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort. When people can see what they’re doing, hear themselves think, breathe cleaner air, and feel more comfortable, they do more and better work. We also see 40 percent higher retail sales in well day-lit1 stores, 20-odd percent faster learning in well day-lit schools, and better clinical outcomes in green and efficient hospitals. These often overlooked side benefits are frequently worth tens or hundreds of times more than the actual reduction in energy costs. - Meryn Stol

"TweetPsych uses two linguistic analysis algorithms (RID and LIWC) to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets. The service analyzes your last 1000 tweets and works best on users who have posted more than 1000 updates. It also works best on accounts that are operated by a single user and use Twitter in a conversational manner, rather than simply a content distribution platform." - Meryn Stol via Bookmarklet

re: "shopping choices are still made at the individual level" - those decisions are influenced by collective decision-making, including brand awareness and word of mouth - Mike Chelen

"People in large enterprises often do not know what their fellow employees are doing. These interactions need to be made more transparent to make better use of the potential within the organization. Intrix is designed to use semantic technology to further enhance this transparency but adding semantic processing to human content sharing activities." - Meryn Stol via Bookmarklet

"Davorin gave an example of the added power that semantic technology bring to enterprise 2.0. An experienced sales manager could use Intrix to manage the sales process, covering such items as sales leads, prospect and client information, and schedules. Intrix will learn how the experienced manager organizes and tracks the information. This knowledge can be passed on to new sales people as a best practice." - Meryn Stol