Author: Роман Петров — 786
Not Doing
The morality of productivity teaches respect for the task list and getting every line ticked off. So anything written down quickly acquires the status of an obligation, even after it…
Crime Is Not a Household Skill
Popular culture knows how to turn crime into an intellectual puzzle: the viewer is invited to judge not the harm but the ingenuity of the cover-up. Operational advice about violence…
Buying for an Audience
Before a purchase it is useful to imagine that nobody will ever see it. Does the wish survive? The test works especially well on status objects. A car, a watch,…
Will With Causes
Every decision has a backstory. Choice is shaped by upbringing, temperament, hormones, fatigue, experience, available information, social pressure and how long it has been since the person ate. Consciousness does…
VG-10 and Its Relatives from Takefu
Takefu Special Steel is a steelmaker from the city of Takefu, Fukui Prefecture. That is where VG-10 was developed — specifically for Japanese kitchen knives, not for bearings, dies or…
Small Doses
Many large crises consist of small actions that went undone for a long time. Order is easier to maintain daily than to restore after a month. Scheduled maintenance is cheaper…
Rest Without Delivery
The cult of busyness finds rest suspicious unless it produces development, experiences or a new photograph. Yet working without a break is impossible: even if the body stays at the…
Aogami and Shirogami: Hitachi’s White and Blue Paper
Hitachi Steel Ltd. — or more precisely its knife division Yasuki Hagane, also known as YSS, Yasuki Specialty Steel — has supplied Japanese forges with steel in ingots for decades.…
A Crowd Has Physics
Not every crowd is dangerous. Concerts, festivals and demonstrations can be organized properly. In 2000 Dirk Helbing, Illés Farkas and Tamás Vicsek published a model of how people move during…
The Price of Worry
Damage and the experience of damage are two different expenses. You can lose a small sum and then spend the evening proving to the culprit how far he has fallen.…
Justice as a project
The sense of injustice appears early. Children notice an unequal share-out of sweets long before they study law. That feeling does not prove there is a universal formula for justice.…
Do Not Break the Immersion
Concentration has an entry cost. Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith and Ulrich Klocke observed office work and experimentally interrupted participants with messages. After an interruption people often returned to the task…
Damascus: What Gets Sold Under That Word
Damascus steel is not in fact a type of steel. It is a method of manufacture and, in the overwhelming majority of cases on a kitchen shop shelf, a method…
Neighbours as infrastructure
Getting to know the neighbours is useful before a leak appears between you. You don’t have to become close friends. Names, a way to reach each other and a few…
Food without religion
Food culture builds hierarchies too: a real ingredient needs no sauce, correct taste needs no additions, and the wrong sort of person ruins everything with mayonnaise. Cooking, however, has been…
Faith and accounting
Public argument about religion usually offers two caricatures: pure spirituality above earthly interests, or an outright business under a sacred sign. Faith belongs to private life, and organised religion inevitably…
The Leash Is Held by Two
Control looks like a way of keeping someone close. Checks, bans, constant contact and demands for an account really can reduce uncertainty for a while. Along with it, the voluntariness…
A Decision on Credit
Some problems grow on their own. Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch let students set their own deadlines for coursework. Full freedom — one shared deadline at the end of the…
Alloying Elements: Who Does What
The list of alloying elements is the dullest part of any conversation about steel and at the same time the only part that shows why grades behave differently. Before the…
Not guilty — but defend yourself
Public conversation about safety slides easily either into blaming the victim or into denying any personal precaution. These questions need to be kept apart: responsibility lies with the criminal, and…