This is an interesting article from Esquire in which the author haggles on everything from hot dogs, gallons of gas, candy, etc.

Wow, Yahoo averages 50 employees per VP. The number at google is far, far higher, though I’m not sure what it is.

Wow, this picture is awesome and terrifying.

Earlier this week, I had a chance to attend a talk by psychologist Philip Zimbardo (who was born 50 years and a day before me, as I just learned). I enjoyed his talk a lot, and it’s online, and I won’t bother summarizing, just watch it if you’re interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUyDznt5V4I

If you’re interested in the Stanford Prison Experiment, watch Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment, available here (50 mins long).

The video description from Google:

What makes good people do bad things? How can moral people be seduced to act immorally? Where is the line separating good from evil, and who is in danger of crossing it? Renow-ned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo has the answers, and in The Lucifer Effect he explains how—and the myriad reasons why—we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” Drawing on examples from history as well as his own trailblazing research, Zimbardo details how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women.

Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, is perhaps best known as the creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment. For the first time, he tells the full story of this landmark study, in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners.

This event took place October 4, 2007 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA