Month: August 2009
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Spurious emails, amusing satire
Nichole Sprinkle on the truth about the relationship between ADHD and TV watching: As reported in the journal Pediatrics in April 2004, researchers at Children’s Hospital in Seattle found that the more television a child watches between the ages of 1 and 3, the greater his or her likelihood of developing attention problems by age…
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Key Characteristics of Bogusness
Lori Robertson on the signs of an inaccurate/misleading email: The author is anonymous. Practically all e-mails we see fall into this category, and anytime an author is unnamed, the public should be skeptical. If the story were true, why would the author not put his or her name on it? The author is supposedly a…
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Robert Ebert on AA
Roger Ebert writes a long memoir about being an AA member: In those days I was on a 10 p.m. newscast on one of the local stations. The anchor was an A.A. member. So was one of the reporters. After we got off work, we went to the 11 p.m. meeting at the Mustard Seed.…
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Elmer Kelton RIP
Bill Kaufman writes a lovely essay about Texas novelist Elmer Kelton (who recently died). ("The Time It Never Rained" is his most acclaimed). Kelton wrote, "the Western field is a literary ghetto. Critics don’t read a Western unless the book is contemptuous of its subject …matter. If you write out of love for your subject…
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Random Secrets
From Postsecrets.
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Public Relations, Monetizing and Niche Blogging
I thought I had read everything notable by Paul Graham, but here’s his piece about Public Relations. PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren’t dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won’t bug reporters just because…
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Nostalgic about Slashdot
I stopped reading slashdot a few years ago. It became really popular and it was overwhelming to read. Besides, there were all these corporation-oriented topics and tight control over news stories. I jumped ship and went to Digg (which lasted about 6 months before I grew bored with that as well). I wrote several book…
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God and Ham Sandiwiches
From a NYT discussion of God (which I didn’t read very closely). Premise 1. Nothing is better than world peace. Premise. 2. A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Conclusion. A ham sandwich is better than world peace.
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Joshua Bell and the Washington D.C. Metro
Apparently I missed this outstanding essay by Gene Weingarten about a little social experiment. The writer invited world famous violinist Joshua Bell to play a Stradivarius violin for almost an hour in a DC Metro. The results were astounding: Nobody paid attention; Bell received only $30 in tips, and almost nobody actually stopped to listen:…
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Roger Ebert and youth movies
Has anyone noticed that Roger Ebert’s blog is one of the most happenin’ place on the Net? It’s quickly becoming a must-read for me. Here are two articles not about health care (but still profound and interesting). Article #1 and Article #2. From comments on a Roger Ebert blog column about youth-oriented movies and the…
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Just ordered: Thinkpad T400 laptop!
Ok, for the last 6 months I’ve been hunting around for a new laptop. I need a sturdy powerful laptop which had some bells and whistles which would be useful especially for giving presentations. I ended up spending between $1250-1300. Some observations: I thought I was saving money by ordering my RAM and hard drive…
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Break 4 Love
A techno song that intoxicated me recently.Techno remix of the song Break 4 love starring Pet Shop Boys. Update: The link is fixed.
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Climate Change, Methane and Permafrost
An environmental concept: precautionary principle. In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. (principle 15).…
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Ebert on teen movie cliches
Roger Ebert about the cute teen movie 10 Things I hate about you. I’m trying to remember the last movie I saw that didn’t end with a high school prom. “Ravenous,” maybe. Even the next film I saw, “Never Been Kissed,” ends with a prom. The high school romance genre has become so popular that…
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August Linkdump
Various unrelated links of general coolness. Looking over this, I see that a lot of links come from Marginal Revolution (a social science and economics blog). A philosophic debate about progressivism vs. libertarianism. Arnold Kling tries to describe progressivism. Tyler Cowen tries to elaborate in a less pejorative way. Matt Yglesias tries to explain libertarianism…