Friday a week ago, Dan Ariely visited our offices. Dan is a professor of behavioral economics at the MIT Sloan School of Business and also has a research appointment at the MIT Media Lab. But currently, Dan is a visiting professor at Duke.

His first book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, will be released by Harper Collins in February 2008. Dan gave a talk on "Behavioral Economics 101" to various people from our communications and strategy groups. While he acknowledged that the discipline of economics itself is deadly boring, it gets really interesting when you look at it through the lens of human psychology. Dan has studied not only how people make financial and health decisions, but also online dating, gambling, procrastination, cheating and more.

I'm pictured here with Dan in our company cafetria grabbing coffee before his talk. I was showing him the new ASUS Eee PC, which his dad was raving about. Dan explained to me that the reason my 17" Powerbook feels huge after I've been using the Eee PC for a while is due to perceptual adaptation.

- mike lee - washington, dc