November 2009
Saturday, 28 November 2009
That trick? That trick never works.
If this is successful, I’ve finally fixed the “updating the publication date on one updates the publication date on all” mess in the CMS.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Taxing the Speculators
NYTimes.com: “This would be a bad thing if financial hyperactivity were productive. But after the debacle of the past two years, there’s broad agreement — I’m tempted to say, agreement on the part of almost everyone not on the financial industry’s payroll — with Mr. Turner’s assertion that a lot of what Wall Street and the City do is ‘socially useless.’ And a transactions tax could generate substantial revenue, helping alleviate fears about government deficits. What’s not to like?”
Paging Thorsten Veblen
Now amazon.com has a Black Friday Sale. Apparently this is a qualitatively different form of saving money while sitting on your couch than the form of saving money while sitting on your couch that amazon.com usually offers.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
3 Clergymen Tell How Differences of Faith Led to Friendship
NYTimes.com: “Talking about the untruths of each tradition is very courageous. It gets it out of the platitude category and into dialogue.”
Monday, 23 November 2009
How Venture Capital Lost Its Way
BusinessWeek: “We believe today’s VC financing model—including the ‘2 and 20’ charged by fund managers (a 2% annual management fee and 20% of all profits made from the IPOs or sales of companies in their portfolios)—no longer works.” – I’m not confident this article accurately represents the past, so I can’t gauge what it says about the future.
Israel & Palestine: Can They Start Over?
The New York Review of Books: “A more radical, far-reaching approach is conceivable. It is to try to resolve the conflict by dealing not only with the issues that materialized in 1967 but also those that led to the events of 1948: the question of Palestinian acceptance of a Jewish state and Israeli recognition of the Palestinians’ historical experience. Such an approach would bring to the fore historical grievances. To critics, this would probably be one of its worst features.”
Dark galaxy crashing into the Milky Way
New Scientist: “Many more such dark galaxies may be out there, says Leo Blitz of the University of California, Berkeley. Simulations of galaxy formation suggest a galaxy the size of the Milky Way should feature about 1000 dwarf galaxies, but only a few dozen have been found so far.”
Friday, 20 November 2009
Who’s Afraid Of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed?
ATTACKERMAN: “instead of the banality of evil, we’ll see the lunacy and vanity and self-absorption of it”
Monday, 16 November 2009
Pinker on “What the Dog Saw.”
gladwell.com: “But since football has been on my mind these days, I do want to make one small observation about his comments.”
Book Review - ‘What the Dog Saw - And Other Adventures,’ by Malcolm Gladwell
Steven Pinker: “I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer’s education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong.”
Does health-care reform do enough on cost control?
Ezra Klein: “To kill this bill for not doing enough on cost control would be like criticizing the Yankees for not winning the Super Bowl.”
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
High Fructose Corn Syrup: A Recipe For Hypertension, Study Finds
Science Daily: “Additional studies are needed to see if low fructose diets can normalize blood pressure and prevent the development of hypertension.”
Monday, 9 November 2009
Nov. 9, 1989: The Berlin Wall Falls
How I brought down the Berlin Wall
CNN.com: “She raised her eyes to mine and didn’t say a word. But she gave me the most knowing, mischievous, devilish smile I have ever had the privilege of receiving. So there we were. Me and the hardware lady. Silent conspirators in one of the greatest acts of political vandalism in our time: the destruction of the Berlin Wall.”
Sunday, 8 November 2009
All We Can Eat
Jane Black: “record obesity rates might have more to do with the availability of junk food than the difficulty finding fresh, healthful options”
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Dark matter wrecking ball may have hit Milky Way
USATODAY.com: “The point is that the sun is immersed in the Gould Belt”
Monday, 2 November 2009
Doug Holtz-Eakin, Republican adviser, faces personal health insurance woes
washingtonpost.com: “Irony of ironies, it gets worse. Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky ‘preexisting conditions’ that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage.”
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Cereal claims to boost immunity
USA Today: “Yes, these nutrients are involved in immunity, but I can’t think of a nutrient that isn’t involved in the immune system.”