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August 31, 2005
Katrina
The disaster porn is appalling; here's a cartoon. http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?image=15&topicid=5Posted by irons at 11:45 AM
August 29, 2005
Gmail's missing piece of functionality
Now you can customize the From address used to send mail from Gmail. That's huge. [via] http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=20616Posted by irons at 03:00 PM
August 23, 2005
Malcolm Gladwell on American health care
Everything's fine, we're in great shape http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050829fa_factPosted by irons at 06:37 PM
Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution
NYT op-ed. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/opinion/23tue3.html?ex=1282449600&en=55ae46551ab20405&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssPosted by irons at 04:58 PM
Babies have big problems with symbolic representations of things
"... she taught two groups of six-and-seven-year-old kids to do subtraction problems that involve borrowing, a rather sophisticated concept. One group of kids was taught using pencil and paper; the other was taught using blocks. Both groups learned the concept, but the kids with blocks took three times longer." There's also an amusing story about three-year-olds trying to fit into a miniature car. http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2005/08/one_of_my_favor.html#001297Posted by irons at 11:48 AM
August 22, 2005
Pat Robertson is going to hell if anyone is
Pat Robertson suggests it would be a whole lot cheaper to simply have Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez surreptitiously assassinated than to launch a whole nother war (I didn't realize that Venezuela was in the top three, but I'm clearly not in the loop). Kevin Drum asks, "Was there a part I missed where Jesus taught the parable about killing people who make trouble for you?" A commenter replies, "Not Jesus, specifically. It was Paul, in his Epistle to the Crips." http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_08/006962.phpPosted by irons at 06:28 PM
Max Sawicky is unhappy with Steve Levitt
"If oil runs out, sure there will be substitutes. How fast will these come online, if they do? How much will they cost? What will be the costs of adjustment? Will that be fun? Who knows? Markets solve problems. Solutions do not exclude freezing in the dark, a new kind of equilbrium." http://maxspeak.org/mt/archives/001540.htmlPosted by irons at 11:52 AM
More (small sample size) Felix Hernandez fun
They're getting bolder with the direct Gooden comparisons, but who wouldn't? http://ussmariner.com/?p=2911Posted by irons at 11:28 AM
August 21, 2005
IE 7 will suck less, claims Microsoft's IE weblog
[also via] http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/07/29/445242.aspxPosted by irons at 09:10 PM
Hiding your iPod, and going way beyond the ghetto headphones
Fraser Speirs has pictures. [via] http://www.livejournal.com/users/fraserspeirs/918184.htmlPosted by irons at 09:06 PM
Mike Cameron recovering from his horrible collision
Both cheekbones and his nose broke, and vision problems are among the recovery hurdles. "'Trevor Hoffman came by with his jersey on, like what we do when we visit kids in children's hospitals,' [Cameron] said." http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-mets-cameron&prov=ap&type=lgnsPosted by irons at 08:37 PM
August 20, 2005
Roger Ebert administers a film-school lesson and a moral smackdown
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050818/COMMENTARY/508190304Posted by irons at 10:02 PM
Baseball player-transaction glossary
I'd wondered why some players who came up the previous August or September were still called rookies the following year. There's lots of good detail about the arbitrated politics of moving players up and down from the minor leagues, something the Mariners have done a whole lot of since 2004 -- with Scott Spezio's release today, the entire 2004 infield has since been designated for assignment. http://kmbumb.people.wm.edu/roster/glossary.htmlPosted by irons at 09:58 PM
10 Questions You Should Ask Your History Teacher
"Q: REVOLUTIONARY WAR. Why do textbooks represent the Revolutionary War as having been won through a series of 'small victories' when, every time you look at an actual battle the colonists fought against the British, as likely as not they got their asses handed to them? Do you think a nation as magnificently complex as the United States could come about through a random, undirected sequence of military engagements?" http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=21Posted by irons at 09:39 PM
August 17, 2005
So John, have you ever thought about getting on the Supreme Court? I'm just askin'.
"Hamdan's lawyer was completely in the dark about these interviews until Roberts revealed them to the Senate. (Full disclosure: Professor Luban is a faculty colleague of Hamdan's principal lawyer.) Did administration officials or Roberts ask whether it was proper to conduct interviews for a possible Supreme Court nomination while the judge was adjudicating the government's much-disputed claims of expansive presidential powers?" http://www.slate.com/id/2124603/Posted by irons at 10:39 PM
August 16, 2005
Design by Unintelligent Hand
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mcsnee/433748.htmlPosted by irons at 05:17 PM
Om Malik makes peering costs sound unreasonably fearsome
Hello, Lazyweb. I don't understand how, if Om Malik is correct that "[w]hen AboveNet bridges that gap between Google and Comcast, Google has to pay as much as $60 per megabit in IP transit fees", I'm paying $5/GB for on-demand bandwidth overusage. There are 8,000 megabits in a gigabyte, so at that rate, 1 GB would cost $480,000. http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1093558-1,00.htmlPosted by irons at 05:08 PM
Sweatshops in multiplayer videogames
"The macros for World of WarCraft, for example, control a high-level hunter and cleric. The hunter kills while the cleric automatically heals. Once they are fully loaded with gold and items, the "farmer" who's monitoring their progress manually controls them out of the dungeon to go sell their goods. These automated agents are then returned to the dungeons to do their thing again. Sack's typical 12-hour sessions can earn his employers as much as $60,000 per month while he walks away with a measly $150." http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815Posted by irons at 04:51 PM
Bush's Crawford reading list
“I could almost buy the salt and flu books, but why did they have to get greedy and claim he was reading Russian history? Does anyone believe that? Even Dick Cheney is shaking his head and muttering “Bullshit” somewhere.”
http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2005_08.php#006386
Posted by irons at 12:27 PM
Felix Hernandez is an awfully good pitcher
"The average hitter Felix has faced so far has a season line of .269/.327/.406. Against Felix, they are hitting .153/.191/.153. He has cut the opponents hitters' OPS by 53 percent over what they are against the rest of the league. For comparison, Roger Clemens' average opponent has a season line of .256/.325/.405, and are hitting .188/.245/.255. Clemens has cut opponents' OPS lines by 32 percent. Even adjusting for opponents, Felix has been dominant on a level that no other pitcher in baseball, even Roger Clemens, has matched." http://ussmariner.com/?p=2883Posted by irons at 10:38 AM
August 12, 2005
It turns out that there's no such thing as panic
"... the critical first responders in almost any crisis are ordinary citizens whom fate has brought together. As Kathleen Tierney, head of the University of Colorado's Natural Hazards Center, has noted, 'The vast majority of live rescues are carried out by community residents who are at the scene of disasters, not by official response agencies or outside search and rescue teams.'" [via] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/opinion/07fischhoff.html?ex=1281067200&en=c85227f8e47cc3ed&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssPosted by irons at 08:57 AM
Roger Ebert settles last year's Schneider/Goldstein contretemps
"But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. [...] As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks."
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050811/REVIEWS/50725001/1023
Posted by irons at 08:54 AM
August 11, 2005
Mike Cameron got hurt today
Cameron's the best defensive baseball player I've ever seen (and Beltran's a jerk for thinking the size of his contract makes him a better center fielder). I really hope he's okay. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/sports/baseball/12mets.html?ex=1281499200&en=367714933a480be7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rssPosted by irons at 11:45 PM
August 10, 2005
BBEdit 8.2.3's most important change
"For Objective-C and Objective-C++, if a double-quoted string is immediately preceded by a '@', the '@' is also string-colored." The occasional failure to allow return to dismiss informational sheets is a close second. http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/arch_bbedit823.shtmlPosted by irons at 02:04 PM
August 04, 2005
Dan Bricklin's software license discussions in podcast form
OMG, a podcast I want to listen to. http://softwaregarden.com/podcast/Posted by irons at 05:30 PM
August 02, 2005
David Horsey's alternate universe
The one where Blair isn't a poodle. Compelling art, though. http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?image=9&topicid=15Posted by irons at 10:35 PM
Timothy Noah on Rick Santorum's Accuweather suck-up
"An orthodox belief in big government's inefficiency cannot coexist with an orthodox belief in private industry's inability to compete with big government." Sweet. http://slate.msn.com/id/2123557/Posted by irons at 04:29 PM
Why mercury was used as a vaccine preservative (and why it wasn't half as stupid as it sounds)
"Conspiracy theorist that I am, I wonder if the agitation over minor mercury sources obscures the real cause of mercury contamination of our seafood and water: coal-fired power, ore processing, and garbage incineration. U.S. power plants dump almost 50 tons of mercury a year into the air, and other industrial sources contribute another 100 tons annually. The Environmental Protection Agency recently gave the power plants a free pass until 2018, at which time they must reduce the 50 tons they currently emit to 15. Are the trivial and demonstratively non-harmful uses of mercury by dentists -- or, in the past, to protect vaccines from contaminants -- distracting us from the serious environment-poisoning?" http://slate.msn.com/id/2121808/Posted by irons at 08:39 AM
Arthur Allen takes Bobby Kennedy to the woodshed over the purported vaccine/autism link
http://slate.msn.com/id/2123647/Posted by irons at 08:34 AM