Speaking at the Hay Conference in Cartagena (a city I confess I only know through Romancing the Stone), London School of Economics professor Paul Dolan makes what should be a totally uncontroversial case that people “would be more content if they turned off their mobile phones and spent time concentrating on their friends and family rather then checking their emails or text messages.”

I did love this last detail, though:

He cited an American game called ‘Don’t be a d— at dinner’ where people placed their devices in the middle of the table and the first one to use it has to pay for everyone else’s meal.

Awesome. The people I know who do this just call it “putting your cellphone on the table.” This is like how the French called syphilis the Italian disease, and the Italians called it the French disease. But I guess it was inevitable that distraction and bad behavior would, for the Brits, be associated with Americans.