January 2009
49 posts
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There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy.
— PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA, JANUARY 9 , 2009
From Seth Roberts’s Interview with Gary Taubes:
Taubes: One of the prime players in this salt/blood pressure controversy was obviously one of the worst scientists I’d ever met — one of the five worst…you can’t say,...
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“You don’t have to be mad to be a parent, but it helps. In fact, according...”
– Motherhood — it’s probably just another word for being bonkers | Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja - Times Online
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Things I found while cleaning
Junior Kinhaven paycheck from 2007, one of the several years I had to get it cancelled and reissued
a lone right contact, bringing the ratio of non-current-prescription right contacts to non-current-prescription left contacts up to 1/4.
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“Iceland’s quasi-anarchistic system broke down only in the last thirty...”
– The Decline and Fall of Private Law in Iceland
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Cookie Thief
A friend of mine and I often throw around the term “cookie thief,” because we think it’s a funny thing to call someone. I had no idea until today that there is not only a poem of the same name, but there are TWO short films based on it!
poem: http://www.motivatingquotes.com/cookie.htm
film #1: http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/cookie_thief/
film #2:...
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“Blair Witch Project, The (1999): Tense. Intense. In tents.”
– The Four Word Film Review
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Chipotle Employee Just Gave Guy In Front Of You... →
It’s sad how much I relate to this.
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Two quotations about jobs
In time…six months; five years, perhaps…a change could easily begin to take place. He would become less and less satisfied with a kind of dumb, day-to-day shopwork. His creative intelligence stifled by too much theory and too many grades in college would now become reawakened by the boredom of the shop.
-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by...
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“The formation of hypotheses is the most mysterious of all the categories of...”
– Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Prisig
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“Targeted tax aid for poorer Americans would be far more egalitarian than most...”
– The Case for Small-Government Egalitarianism - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com
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“You can’t read this book without transforming your view of American...”
– Dutch Manhattan and the Fall of Rome
“The punch line is that, at least within the normal range of parenting styles,...”
– Good News and Bad News on Parenting - ChronicleReview.com
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“I was reading in the paper today about this dwarf that got pickpocketed. How...”
– Ryan0617 comments on Collection of totally offensive jokes, not for the faint hearted
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Is Obama a type P?, Arnold Kling | EconLog |... →
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Minus 100 for Yale being the only school Blair applied to! Her college advisor would NEVER have allowed that.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/01/gossip_girls_world_is_the_only.html
That is exactly what I thought when I heard Blair say that! I complained about this issue to my mother though, and she suggested that maybe this was an early admission thing and that Blair could still apply...
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“When something like “Don’t eat cholesterol” that I consider to...”
– Patri’s Peripatetic Peregrinations - science vs. science
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“Create yourself a high level druid, and start casting stuff from the 4th book....”
– Ascii Dreams: Whisper for testers
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“Yet in spite of their poor typing skills, the typists had IQs only two points...”
– Typing Errors: The standard typewriter keyboard is Exhibit A in the hottest new case against markets. But the evidence has been cooked. - Reason Magazine
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Saikat: some bengali movie with subtitles i watched when i was home translated samosa as “triangle nutrient”
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“I know fasting as a source of healing is not exactly the fashion and is not...”
– Patri’s Peripatetic Peregrinations - Medicine
“No one - including Hogan - is yet claiming that GEO600 has found evidence that...”
– Our world may be a giant hologram - space - 15 January 2009 - New Scientist
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“If xkcd could draw, create compelling characters and tell a story.”
– Ascii Dreams: Dresden Codak
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The Origin of Autoantonyms
Bob Fradkin explains how one of the major classes of auto-antonym comes about:
Dust is part of a series of noun-verb conversions related to coverings of things. If the noun gives a covering that is natural to the thing, then the verb means remove the covering. If the covering is imposed, the verb means put the covering on.
So you get shell an egg, peel a banana, but paint the...
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I passed my driving test!
We made a wrong turn on the way there, so I didn’t get to practice parallel parking as much as I would have liked, but I drove on the highway for a little bit, which was exciting.
The test itself went very well. Ed, my driving instructor warned me not to go too slowly and to aim for 20mph, but when I did so, the inspector told me to slow down. This was excellent, as it gave me a...
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“
what about when the sun dies?
Geeks seem to have this funny blindspot when...”
– eru, Hacker News | Why I thought we’d all be living in space by now
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“We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.”
– Wernher von Braun, Familiar and Unfamiliar Quotations
“I find [Mencius Moldbug] interesting b/c I feel that there are grains of truth...”
– Patri’s Peripatetic Peregrinations - A gentle introduction to Unqualified Reservations
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Poll: What Would SF Look Like If Copyright Only... →
Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See... →
Including:
Central/Eastern village of Yona, on the Pacific Island Territory of Guam: It’s unknown why this location is censored.
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9-year-old Jiu-Jitsu student immobilizes attacking... →
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“Playing the video game “Tetris” after a major shock could reduce the...”
– Playing the video game ‘Tetris’ could reduce trauma, claim Oxford University - Telegraph
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Krugman, in his latest editorial, Fighting Off Depression:
The failure of monetary policy in the current crisis shows that Keynes had it right the first time.
Why would it mean that??? Robin Hanson was talking about medicine, but I think his recent comment on Overcoming Bias is apt:
The alternative to medicine is only quackery if we must do something. The core bias is the do-something...
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Who Killed Asmodean?
Turns out we’re going to find out after all! Brandon Sanderson, who is finishing the Wheel of Time series:
I am still deeply interested in ascertaining the solution to the quandary regarding the character of Asmodean, most specifically the mystery surrounding the circumstances of his demise. ;) (http://mistborn.livejournal.com/112122.html)
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“The task [the S.E.C.] has performed most diligently during this crisis has been...”
– Op-Ed Contributors - The End of the Financial World as We Know It - NYTimes.com
“The fixable problem isn’t the greed of the few but the misaligned interests of...”
– Op-Ed Contributors - The End of the Financial World as We Know It - NYTimes.com
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Good news for Mike Gravel, regarding campaign... →
“…a growing number of people believe the world of service animals has...”
– Creature Comforts - Assistance Animals Now Come in All Shapes and Sizes - NYTimes.com
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“In Google Reader, input:
up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right,b,a.”
– Versus CluClu Land: Protip 