The Adventures of Shylock Holmes

...which I can report to you with a fair degree of confidence. 1. Indo Mie  brand Mi Goreng are the best instant noodles in the whole worl...

Take an average day in a first world city. You go for a walk down to a coffee shop, or to the mall, or wherever your travels take you. In ...

I have been told by not one, but two regular readers that they don't really like my posts about music. Well, stiff $#!7. Here's th...

-Why NASA needs to place an explicit value on the life of astronauts . -Why academic publishing is a scam . I agree, and I don't use t...

I was listening to a talk by this Greek girl today. I was speaking to The Greek afterwards, and asked him the following: "Hey, does t...

The Greek sent me this story from the UK Daily Mail about a girl who had to be transported to hospital after collapsing at a McDonalds . It ...

First off, I am working on fixing what I describe as the Steve Jobs problem  - that you generally agree with a lot of what someone says (or ...

The excellent 'Your ex-lover is dead', by 'Stars' Lyrics here . It's a wonderful song about two ex-lovers meeting e...

Comedy gold!

on how (and why!) to negotiate a higher salary , from Kalzumeus. This may be the most monetarily valuable thing you read this year. Read t...

There is a long literature on how the password requirements for most websites are ridiculous - they make life hard for users without actuall...

Via Mama Holmes, comes this very interesting lecture on how the over-consumption of fructose (and sucrose, which breaks down into fructose a...

One of my minor quests in life is to find ways around small inconveniences in life arising from  people asking (and answering) the wrong que...

The probability of a letter from a company containing important information is significantly less when the front is marked 'Important In...

Pity low-level financial journalists. The big names get to write important opinion pieces on the financial crisis and the banking system. ...

Suppose it is 1983, and you are a doctor who has developed a drug that can produce an erection when injected into the penis. You need to pro...

If there's one thing that raises conservative ire, it's activist judges striking down [conservative] democratically elected laws bas...

Apparently a fungus infects carpenter ants, feeding on them and turning them into zombies that walk around erratically . The fungus makes th...

...whether you like it or not. Tickets to the Coachella music festival went on sale today at 10am. Last year, I figured I had a while to d...

Check out but a mere handful of Eugene Fama's quality quotes in his mini autobiography of his life in finance : My grandparents emigrat...

One of the things I always enjoy in small towns (in Costa Rica, as elsewhere) is the presence of small town cemeteries. Cities for some reas...

This photo was taken in a random bathroom in a diner. To paraphrase Mark Steyn - if the assumptions that this sign makes about the averag...

One of the things I missed while I was away was the chance to comment in a timely fashion on this interesting piece by Ken at Popehat on t...

At long last, back to the keyboard! A few random thoughts from Costa Rica: - I've never been in a place where the speed limits on hi...

Are there any restaurant policies more obnoxious than the 'No Substitutions' written on a menu? It seems that every wannabe hipster ...

I remember GS used to complain to me about Yank toilets, and how when you flushed them, often they would have such a violent flushing mechan...

There are few things more irritating than popular journalists who try to take on an academic orthodoxy by pretending to be soooo much smart...

To all my loyal readers, wishing you a most merry Christmas and a happy new year. Thank you for joining me this past year, you all make the ...

TSA Agent steals passenger's cupcake , claiming the icing was 'too gel-like'. In contravention of TSA policy, of course. A minor...

Fancy that, another 200-odd people drowned off the cost of Indonesia while trying to reach Australia. *Yawn*. What's on TV? And finall...

The problem with knowing something is that it makes it very hard to accurately put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know it....

Apologies for the lack of updates - I've been hanging in Miami for a few days. And this got me thinking about the false consensus effec...