tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41166892008-07-18T19:53:00.186-04:00Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comBlogger6447125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-21917282223878501992008-07-18T19:53:00.000-04:002008-07-18T19:53:00.335-04:00

I didn't realize that the jewel game from Kipling's Kim had been dubbed Kim's Game and popularized in real life: Kim, a teenager being trained in secret as a spy, spends a month in Simla, India at the home of Mr. Lurgan, who ostensibly runs a jewel shop but in truth is engaged in espionage for the British against the Russians. Lurgan brings out a copper tray and tosses a handful of jewels onto it

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-66390621099767931332008-07-17T12:12:00.000-04:002008-07-17T12:12:02.009-04:00

Voters prefer a pound of cure to an ounce of prevention, Bryan Caplan notes, citing Andrew Healy's recent paper: Using comprehensive data on natural disasters, government spending, and election returns, I show that voters reward disaster relief spending but not disaster prevention spending. This aspect of voter behavior creates a large distortion in the incentives that governments face, since the

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-86409171612445768272008-07-17T11:44:00.000-04:002008-07-17T11:44:01.390-04:00

Irish write Kevin Myers speaks the unspeakable, and says that Africa is giving nothing to anyone — apart from AIDS: No. It will not do. Even as we see African states refusing to take action to restore something resembling civilisation in Zimbabwe, the begging bowl for Ethiopia is being passed around to us, yet again. It is nearly 25 years since Ethiopia's (and Bob Geldof's) famous Feed The World

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-48275943606505433452008-07-17T11:40:00.000-04:002008-07-17T11:40:01.281-04:00

Arnold Kling calls it The Depressive Realism Economy: There are psychologists who argue that healthy people tend to have an inflated view of their abilities and how they are regarded by peers. In contrast, these psychologists contend, there is a tendency for depressed people to accurately assess where they stand. This hypothesis is called “depressive realism.” It explains our current economic

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-19959190348856662842008-07-16T14:56:00.001-04:002008-07-16T14:56:28.680-04:00

Apparently Quinton "Rampage" Jackson went on a second-rate rampage outside the cage, in his "lifted" Ford F-250 truck, emblazoned with his photo: Rampage was on the 55 Freeway in the O.C., hit two cars and got off the freeway. The chase was on. Rampage then began driving on the center divider. But it gets worse. According to the police report, Jackson then drove on the sidewalk, "causing

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-72704554198324090252008-07-16T12:41:00.004-04:002008-07-16T12:52:46.336-04:00

Nintendo's Wii Sports sequel — Wii Sports Resort — goes tropical with three new games: Sword Play, Power Cruising, and Disc Dog. I have been waiting for a Wii sword-fighting game for a long time — and it looks like there's a reason: The newly announced Wii MotionPlus — a new accessory that plugs into the base of the Wiimote to provide better tracking of arm movement — will come packed with

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-65228681309259932402008-07-16T12:05:00.002-04:002008-07-16T12:07:54.015-04:00

Testing of electric truck for Los Angeles port sparks enthusiasm: Although electric truck tests are still underway, the port has already ordered 20 more of the vehicles at a cost of $208,000 each. [...] The electric truck, which takes about three hours to charge, has a range of about 30 miles while pulling a 60,000-pound cargo container, and about 60 miles empty. Although that distance may not

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-59816724685896080502008-07-16T11:25:00.003-04:002008-07-16T12:07:22.685-04:00

David Zetland debunks The Water Shortage Myth: As it stands, Los Angeles households pay $2.80 for the first 885 gallons they use per day. That's enough water to fill 18 bathtubs. The next 18 tubs cost $3.40, which is only 20% more. Most L.A. households don't even see this price increase, since the average household of three uses just 350 gallons — about seven bathtubs — each day. For that water,

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-60453049288021084072008-07-16T10:45:00.001-04:002008-07-16T10:45:56.349-04:00

Ulcer bacteria may protect from asthma: "Among teens and children ages 3 to 19 years, carriers of H. pylori were 25 percent less likely to have asthma." Children aged 3 to 13 were 59 percent less likely to have asthma if they also had H. pylori, they reported in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. The researchers used data on more than 7,000 U.S. children from the National Health and

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-47742211323692037142008-07-16T10:42:00.001-04:002008-07-16T10:42:59.104-04:00

Expectant moms who eat nuts boost child asthma risk: Pregnant women who eat nuts or nut products like peanut butter daily raise the risk their children will develop asthma by 50 percent, Dutch researchers said on Tuesday. The study also showed that moderate amounts did not seem to have an effect, meaning it is too soon to say whether pregnant women should give up nuts because they contain many

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-79091498823680673512008-07-16T10:21:00.001-04:002008-07-16T10:21:52.348-04:00

Kindle 2.0 Coming Around October 2008: An insider let slip that two new Amazon Kindle models will hit stores this holiday season, with the first coming as early as October. The first is an updated version with the same sized screen, a smaller form factor, and an improved interface. The source told us that Amazon has “skipped three or four generations,” comparing the old Kindle to the 1st gen

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-92118050964339749692008-07-16T10:19:00.001-04:002008-07-16T10:19:34.300-04:00

I've been wondering how long it would be until someone came out with a free-form version of Guitar Hero or Rock Band, where you could play your own music. Now it looks like Nintendo's leading the way, with its upcoming Wii Music: Nintendo this morning announced a new addition to the Wii family: Wii Music. Instead of your musical creativity being confined by the limitation of the number of

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-10526171085845072422008-07-15T13:43:00.000-04:002008-07-15T13:43:00.136-04:00

Michael Shermer examines The Doping Dilemma, specifically in cycling, and describes the immense advantage from using recombinant erythropoietin (r-EPO) to stimulate the production of red blood cells: One of the subtle benefits of r-EPO in a brutal three-week race like the Tour de France is not just boosting HCT levels but keeping them high. Jonathan Vaughters, a former teammate of Armstrong’s,

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-18663853449680683312008-07-15T13:37:00.001-04:002008-07-15T13:38:39.220-04:00

This is terrifying. Science Has Become the New Frontier for Title Nine: Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science. The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy have set up programs to

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-12744226433037817722008-07-15T13:32:00.000-04:002008-07-15T13:32:03.217-04:00

R. A. Radford, writing in Economica in 1945, explains the economics of a POW camp, including the cigarette currency, which arose spontaneously: Although cigarettes as currency exhibited certain peculiarities, they performed all the functions of a metallic currency as a unit of account, as a measure of value and as a store of value, and shared most of its characteristics. They were homogeneous,

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-21875524835970676472008-07-15T13:02:00.001-04:002008-07-15T13:11:47.119-04:00

Unsurprisingly a pro boxer's punch carries a heavy weight — just how heavy is pretty surprising though: Researchers at the University of Manchester in England were curious about just how much force a top boxer can generate with a punch. So they enlisted local boxer Ricky Hatton, an undefeated 28 year old light welterweight and welterweight world champ. And they had him hit a 30 kilogram

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-12347520208721228112008-07-15T09:19:00.001-04:002008-07-15T09:20:13.771-04:00

Hunger can make you happy — or at least motivated: When our bodies notice we need more calories, levels of a hormone called ghrelin increase. Ghrelin is known to spur hunger, but new research suggests this may be a side effect of its primary job as a stress-buster. Researchers manipulated ghrelin levels in mice through a variety of methods, including prolonged calorie restriction, ghrelin

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-2132501732987926932008-07-14T21:06:00.002-04:002008-07-14T21:24:07.494-04:00

Mencius Moldbug has been promoting the idea that a government is just a corporation, if a poorly run one, and that we really should declare our current state bankrupt, put it into receivorship, and transfer control to the 100,000 most trustworthy and responsible adults in the country: By what process will we select these individuals? Who shall recruit the recruiters? It is difficult and expensive

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-92067351220879265622008-07-14T12:54:00.003-04:002008-07-14T12:58:29.537-04:00

In Dark Knight Shift, JR Minkel of Scientific American interviews E. Paul Zehr on why Batman could exist — but not for long: How would Batman get enough rest? The difficulty for Batman is he's going to be trying to sleep during the day. He's going to be really tired, actually, unless he can shift himself over to just being up at night. If he were just a nocturnal guy, he would actually be a lot

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-89444971192071815792008-07-14T12:34:00.000-04:002008-07-14T12:34:00.057-04:00

Al Fin shares an amusing cartoon. I hope I don't ruin the joke by pointing out that the average age of paleolithic humans might have been quite low, but some early humans lived to be quite old.

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-77488148825475708592008-07-14T12:30:00.000-04:002008-07-14T12:30:00.384-04:00

Behold Boeing's Blimp-Copter: Boeing has teamed with a Canadian company to enter the blimp market with a combined airship-helicopter. Working with SkyHook International, Boeing says its JHL-40 could take some 80,000 pounds of cargo over 200 miles. "Boeing said the blimp would be environmentally friendly because it would eliminate the need to build roads or rail lines to remote locations, where

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-85583066359758020332008-07-13T20:46:00.001-04:002008-07-13T20:46:05.835-04:00

When it comes to reactionary restoration, Mencius Moldbug notes, the only alternative to a military coup is a political coup — or to be catchy a democoup: In a democoup, the government is overthrown by organizing a critical mass of political opposition to which it surrenders, ideally just as the result of overwhelming peer pressure. Certainly the most salient example is the fall of the Soviet

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-30502729720780363732008-07-13T12:13:00.000-04:002008-07-13T12:13:01.476-04:00

Dennis Mangan explains why magnesium is like vitamin D and how it cures depression: In a paper I recently came across, Rapid recovery from major depression using magnesium treatment (pdf), the author writes about several case studies in which magnesium supplements brought about a complete cure from depression, as well as better mental performance in some cases. It seems that magnesium deficiency

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-8864105962338472672008-07-13T12:10:00.000-04:002008-07-13T12:10:01.029-04:00

Cringely believes that SAP is acting squirrelly — which gives him an excuse to examine squirrel behavior in a bit too much depth: You are driving down a street in your car and up ahead there is a squirrel at the side of the road eating a nut. You aren't on an intercept course, there is no way you are going to hit that squirrel. So what does the squirrel do? At the very last possible moment,

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4116689.post-84526020366397166852008-07-12T22:29:00.001-04:002008-07-13T00:04:20.334-04:00

Elizabeth Kolbert calls the Danish island of Samsø the island in the wind because of its switch to renewable energy in 1997, after the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy decided it had potential: They formed energy coöperatives and organized seminars on wind power. They removed their furnaces and replaced them with heat pumps. By 2001, fossil-fuel use on Samsø had been cut in half. By 2003

Isegoriahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17023207677410289224noreply@blogger.com