Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Aug 29th, 2010
They had a special shelf out with selected books on it that have not been borrowed for 5 years (or something like that, I forget the time). None of those books appear to be interesting to me. So that leaves me wondering, would you prefer it if your library did more of this? And if [...]
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Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Aug 23rd, 2010
I spent way too much time reading economics, history, political theory, philosophy and all things related to learning more and teaching economics. But at the same time, I try to have at least one book or article going at all times that are far removed from it. Last month one of those books was Lenore [...]
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Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Aug 20th, 2010
The Life and Times of an American Playboy. Funny, before I learned he was doing that, I sent him this. And it’s good to see this in the description of the movie:
The Life and Times of an American Playboy is an independent short film, currently in production [...]
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Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Aug 15th, 2010
More from Rose George’s wonderful book. I promise this is the last post on human waste!
… the material itself is as rich as oil and probably more useful. It contains nitrogen and phosphates that can make plants grown … it can be both food and poison. It can contaminate and cultivate. Millions of people cook [...]
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Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Aug 14th, 2010
If you ever really need to go to the bathroom to do #2 and you have no place to go, try employing the Su-Jok therapy of Korean scientist Park Jae Woo. Should you have the urge to go, take some sort of a blunt object (like a pen) and trace a line with great pressure [...]
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I just finished watching Ken Burns’ recent documentary on America’s National Parks. The scenery was great, but Burns’ interpretation of the meaning of the National Parks was a bit confused. The entire series seemed to be a celebration of democracy – that the creation of the National Parks was an essentially American idea, to create [...]
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Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Jul 2nd, 2010
I just read Robert Wright’s the Moral Animal. My favorite story was this one:
It has been found that Chimpanzees have testes that weigh more relative to their body weights than do other primates such as gibbons. Interestingly, there is an evolutionary explanation for this. Female chimpanzees are actually quite promiscuous while female gibbons are monogamous.
Think [...]
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Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Jun 12th, 2010
Here is the first:
(The wants of the poor) would be prudent to relieve, but folly to cure.
Bernard Mandeville (1723)
Here is the second:
It is a very singular government in which every member of the administration wishes to get out of the country … as soon as he can, and to whose interest, the day after he [...]
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Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on May 17th, 2010
I’ve lived in a dense inner city, I’ve lived in the edge of a city, I’ve lived in suburbia and I’ve lived out in the middle of nowhere. With the possible exception of my childhood in Queens, I don’t really believe we (me) had any meaningful relationships with more than one or two of our [...]
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Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on May 8th, 2010
So this was a fun paper to read:
Short Criminals: Stature and Crime in Early America by Howard Bodenhorn, Carolyn Moehling, Gregory N. Price -
This paper considers the extent to which crime in early America was conditioned on height. With data on inmates incarcerated in Pennsylvania state penitentiaries between 1826 and 1876, we estimate the parameters [...]
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