Nine Shift

Evidence Gen Y Huge Market for Airlines

The new Delta safety video is really funny. Spend 4 minutes watching it.

Two take-aways:
1.It is totally geared towards Gen Y, evidence that Gen Y is a huge market for airlines. Despite the myth that young people are not travelling, the train and airline folk know better.
2.Tracy King of the American Academy of Neurology says that captivating interest helps the brain learn. Even us frequent fliers closely watched this video on a recent flight, so the pedagogy is sound. "Bells and whistles" really help!  Take a look:

 

D.S.M.-5: From Disorder to Differences

Psychiatry's latest guide on mental disorders falls short, experts say.

Even the chairman of the task force making the revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (D.S.M.) of Mental Disorders found the new version wanting, according to a story in The New York Times by Pam Belluck and Benedict Carey.  Here's why.

In this century, no one is normal.  "Disorders" increasingly are being found to be "differences."  The factory model is no longer functional, not for the factory and not for mental health.

Research into the brain will eventually help us all understand more about mental differences.  But keep in mind that just one difference, now labelled a disorder, can be the foundation for a career for an individual using that difference as talent.  It's a new world. I know, I am a father of someone who sees his own difference as a gift, not a disorder.

Yachats in Oregon. Photo by NineShift staff photographer Doyle Darvis.

Evidence Suburbs in Decline

Here's a great chart showing the decline of suburbs.

Kat Cannella, NineShifter from Columbus, Georgia, sent us a link to a story on the decline of suburbs, with this nice compliment, "More evidence that the wonder futurist duo is on the money."   Thanks Kat!

Here's the story, with lots of charts and pictures.

Gen Y Travelling More, Not Less

Gen Y is travelling more than previous young generations, not less.

The media and public still believe Gen Y is travelling less. Gen Y is indeed driving less. But they are riding trains, pushing train ridership to ever higher record ridership levels.

So we wondered if Gen Y is flying more, or less, than previous young generations. The answer is MORE.
Julie Coates found data that Gen Y takes 3.9 leisure flights a year. That's even higher than 40-45 year olds, who take 3.5 leisure flights a year.  One study of airline flight attendants found their "ideal passenger" is a Gen Yer.  And Gen Y accounts for the biggest growth segment in plane passengers right now. 

Would Betty Friedan be fighting for boys today?

Would Betty Friedan be fighting for boys today?

On the 50th anniversary of the Feminine Mystique am reading Friedan, the last great feminist, again.

In one chapter she wrote, "The proportion of women attending college in comparison with men dropped from 47 per cent in 1920 to 35 per cent in 1958."   That's what's happened to boys in the last 30 years. Almost the exact same percentages too.  The mother of boys, am thinking Betty might just be fighting for both women and boys today.

More Evidence Gloria Steinem is Wrong

Betty Friedan was right. Gloria Steinem was wrong.

My brilliant co-author Julie Coates keeps finding more research literature that confirms the neurological origin of gender behavior.  Last week she cited research by Israeli scientists Reuwen and Anat Achiron that if you do a regular ultrasound examination when a woman is 26 weeks pregnant, you can distinguish a female brain from a male brain.

Julie working with participants at our Institutes training program in Fort Lauderdale this month.

Source: Reuwen Achiron, Shiomo Lipitz, and Anat Achiron. Sex-related differences in the development of the human fetal corpus callosum: in utero ultrasonographic study. Prenatal Diagnosis, 2001, 21:116-120. This in utero study confirmed the findings of a previous anatomical study in which investigators examined the brains of babies which had died before birth. See: M. de Lacoste, R. Holloway, and D. Woodward, "Sex differences in the fetal human corpus callosum," Human Neurobiology, 1986, 5 (2):93-6.

Intangible Economy Getting Recognition

Slowly the intangible economy is getting more notice.

Last year economist Robert Reich gave it minor notice. The New Geography of Jobs gives it more credence, though author Enrico Moretti misnames it the "Innovation" economy.  But here The Christian Scientist Monitor gets all 3 things right: 1) there's a growing intangible economy, 2) it's where the good jobs are, and 3) you need a college degree.

Data a little old, but it shows the trend: investments in intangibles are now exceeding investments in tangibles.