Links Dump
drorzel | September 3, 2011
Smartypants: What it means to be the first African American President...getting your buttons pushed
"We have probably all grappled with the experience that has been labelled "getting our buttons pushed." What we tend to mean by that is that there are people who know our sore spots...those places where we tend to react (in anger) because we have been hurt there before. When people know our sore spots and want to get us off our game, they can manipulate us into the reaction they're after. And so, for most of us, we have to eventually learn to deal with those issues to heal the hurt that caused…
drorzel | September 2, 2011
How where you live affects the life you prefer. Or not. | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network
"How do people value a better life? The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently released the Better Life Index, an interactive graphic that lets you rank 11 different dimensions (income, environment, life satisfaction, etc.) to see how different countries perform, and then "share" your ranking. Since it launched a few months ago, the OECD has been collecting data about what different people who visit the website rank as the most important values to a better…
drorzel | September 1, 2011
How to read academic research (beginner's guide)
Some basic tips on finding useful information, and the rudimentary statistical knowledge you need to make sense of it. Most applicable in the social and life sciences, but worth knowing for anybody.
A Quick Look at How Our Kids Are Doing | Mother Jones
"I'm pretty sure I've posted this before in one form or another, and I'm not sure what prompted me to do it again, but every once in a while I feel the urge to present some raw data about how our kids are doing in school. The charts below are taken directly from the most recent NAEP report card…
drorzel | August 30, 2011
Sometimes I Take a Great Notion to Jump in the River and Drown | Alas, a Blog
"Now, it's true, the storm did not particularly batter New York City. And I think anyone with an ounce of compassion and decency would view that as an overwhelmingly good thing. A major hurricane battering the largest city in America would be a bad thing.
But declaring immediately as Irene passed that it had done no damage, that it had been of no consequence, seemed rather haughty. After all, Irene had not merely struck New York City. It affected states as far south as North Carolina, and as far north as the…
drorzel | August 25, 2011
A Higgs Setback: Did Stephen Hawking Just Win the Most Outrageous Bet in Physics History? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network
Overblown anti-Higgs hype, just for balance.
News: Breaking Bread - Inside Higher Ed
"For the project, students were asked about their views on the state of race relations on campus. Not surprisingly (as this is the case at many places), the views of white students about the state of race relations were generally much more positive than those of minority students. Then the sociologists looked at what factors were linked to whether students had a more…
drorzel | August 24, 2011
To my ultra-rich readers (in the unlikely event I have any) | slacktivist
"Those seem to be the options. You can either risk losing a big pile of money for the slim chance of a decent return or you can give up on the idea of a decent return just to avoid losing a big pile of money.
But what if I told you there was another option? What if I told you that right now you have a chance to make your money go farther and do more than it ever could have done just four years ago before the world's economy ground to a halt?
And what if I told you that this option was even safer than bonds -- that if…
drorzel | August 23, 2011
'Infinite Jest' Imbues Decemberists Video by Michael Schur - NYTimes.com
"It is a project that so fully combines Mr. Schur's favorite book -- the first he ever read that he felt was written the way he thought and spoke -- and favorite band, he says he would have been crushed if anyone else had gotten the assignment.
"If Scorsese had directed it," he said, "I would have been like, why does he get that gig?"
The video, which makes its online debut on Monday, depicts the playing of Eschaton, a game invented by Wallace that he describes about 325 pages into "Infinite Jest.""
drorzel | August 22, 2011
hwrnmnbsol: Michele Bachmann: EXPLAINED
"[I]t seems that a great many statements made by Michele Bachmann have the effect of generating bewilderment among a certain class of the population, a class that for brevity's sake I shall label 'people who know things'.
I have a new theory to help explain some of Michele Bachmann's statements in a context that will clear up the confusion. This theory is sure to be controversial to that segment of America that is suspicious of all things theoretical, such as the theory of human-generated global warming, or equally spurious and unprovable theorems…
drorzel | August 21, 2011
Law, economics, and politics § Unqualified Offerings
"This is a musing on large bureaucratic organizations. I have noticed that some people get frustrated because they do not understand that law, economics, and politics are distinct things and they are not equally persuasive as arguments."
drorzel | August 20, 2011
Things I can only teach you in research § Unqualified Offerings
"When I'm teaching a regular class, I know the answer. Or I don't know the answer, but I think I do. Or I know I don't know the answer for sure, but I'm "pretty sure" what the answer is and I'm winging it because it's just that sort of day. But I can't say the things that I said to one of my research students today. (Note that this is a condensed summary, there was a lot of discussion between us, and a lot of pauses to examine data.)"
Brian Phillips on Conan the Barbarian - Grantland
"As with Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and…
drorzel | August 19, 2011
Jason Gay: Recreational Sports: It's Not Mortal Combat - WSJ.com
"Everybody who plays a sport for fun has encountered a Serious Guy (or a Serious Girl). A Serious Guy turns 3-on-3 into a curse-filled nightmare. A Serious Guy makes backyard badminton feel like tax preparation, and elevates meaningless Wiffle ball into Game 7. A Serious Guy groans when you swing and miss. A Serious Guy can't believe you sliced that Titleist into the woods. A Serious Guy just smashed a volley into your face.
You don't even have to be playing with a Serious Guy to upset one. A Serious Guy will howl if you hit a…
drorzel | August 18, 2011
What is journalism worth?
"What is journalism worth? That's the question journalism managers and entrepreneurs have been trying to figure out ever since it became clear, years ago, that the Internet was disrupting local publishing monopolies. And so we've endured years of conference panels, email exchanges, and blog posts about paywalls and paid content strategies, as publishers try to figure out exactly how much people are now willing to pay for news content.
Lost in this is the realization that people have been telling us - for generations - how much they're willing to pay for news."…
drorzel | August 17, 2011
Is Rick Perry a 'sucker,' or was he just lying? | slacktivist
"Maybe he really believed that. Maybe the single example of "stifling regulations" that he chose for his stump speech was some wild rumor that, despite being a state governor, he never bothered to check into or to have an aide check into. Maybe he is as naive and gullible and prone to misplaced knee-jerk indignation as the Facebook fools denouncing stories from The Onion thinking they're true.
But for that to be true, Rick Perry would have to be really lazy and really gullible.
It seems far likelier that Rick Perry was just…
drorzel | August 16, 2011
Welcome to the Fall Semester | Wired Science | Wired.com
"Sharpen your pencils and charge your laptops. It is time for the next semester to start.
How about some tips to those that will be involved. Yes, I am talking to you. All of you."
The Only Time the Conservative Politicians Ignore Warren Buffett « Whatever
"The worries for the tender sensibilities of the rich has been a hallmark of conservative American politics since time immemorial, but the current gag-inducingly lickspittle levels of it are a bit much. Among other culpable parties, I lay some blame for this at the altar of Ayn…
drorzel | August 15, 2011
Bill Kirchen and Friends: Folsom Pinball Blues - YouTube
"Bill Kirchen and whole collection of talent at SoHo in Santa Barbara, CA doing a delicate combination of Folsom Prison Blues and Pinball Wizard."
Takraw: Thai Soccer - Thailand - YouTube
This would be so much cooler to have on tv than baseball or preseason NFL games, it isn't even funny.
Backreaction: Was there really a man on the moon? Are you sure?
"There is arguably information about the real world that is not (yet?) to be found in any published sources. Think of something trivial like good places in your neighborhood to find…
drorzel | August 14, 2011
THE "Don't Miss" Volume? | Tor.com
"In the 1995 Hugos thread, Womzilla asked what was THE don't-miss novel of Bujold's Vorkosigan series. There has been much interesting discussion in the thread of the idea of a series novel winning the Hugo and specifically of which Bujold to read first, but I think the whole question of "the one don't-miss volume" is interesting to examine. It's quite a different question from "Where do I start?" It's full of assumptions and worth unpacking."
I am the Very Model of a Singularitarian - Charlie's Diary
"If the Singularity is our new Maginot Line, what's the…
drorzel | August 13, 2011
"Black And Blue" | Homicide: Life On The Street | TV Club | TV | The A.V. Club
"Andre Braugher's Pembleton is fiery and mercurial and theatrical, and he works so fast that it's as if he thought that extracting false police confessions was a category recognized by the Guinness Book Of World Records. First, he pretends to be angry with the "suspect," played by Isaiah Washington, complaining that he isn't showing him the same respect he extends towards the white Bayliss. Then, having thrown Washington off balance, he guilt trips him, telling him that he's responsible for the dead man's murder…
drorzel | August 12, 2011
Your Picks: Top 100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Books : NPR
The usual mix of "pretty good" and "utterly preposterous" selections.
Exposing a Fake Video Trick | Wired Science | Wired.com
"You know I love videos that may or may not be fake. It gets me pumped up. Ok, here is a video. It is almost certainly fake.
Oh, how do I know? Well, first the guy is hitting a ball and bouncing it off of 4 nets? What would a small deviation in the initial velocity of the ball do for later collisions with nets? It would cause a huge problem. Actually, I am sure I will do this calculation at some point in the…
drorzel | August 11, 2011
I watched every Coen brothers movie. - By David Haglund - Slate Magazine
"My opinion changed later--not of each of those films (not entirely), but of the Coens' work as a whole. Before coming to that reversal, though, I think it's worth sitting for a moment with that earlier reaction. A lot of moviegoers, and a good number of critics, are, in some sense, skeptical of the Coens, dubious of their intentions. No one says that they are bad at what they do, or that their best work is behind them--given their obvious skill and their recent run of movies (almost universally acknowledged to be as…
drorzel | August 10, 2011
PhD thesis delight | Turning mirrors
"In the beginning vast public funding created heavenly lab-space on earth. Now the labs were formless and empty and the spirited physicists were contemplating over their future experiments. And they said let there be light and they built a grating stabilised external cavity diode laser. And they said let there be an optical table to separate the floor from the ceiling. And it was bought. And they browsed through catalogues from Thorlabs, MiniCircuits, and Farnell and populated the optical table and the racks above it and the entire floor-space below it.…