The Colourful History of Pawnee, Indiana

It's rare for civic authorities to have a sense of humour, but check out the classic welcome signs they've had over the years. Comedy gold!

Update: Athenios points out that Pawnee, Indiana is actually the fictional town from the series 'Parks and Recreation', making me feel like a right duffer, as the Brits might say.

Miscellaneous Joy

-The awesome story of the development of Apple's Graphing Calculator.

-A solid gold strategy for losing weight. The song in question is here.

-Cory Booker continues to impress me. I'd take him over a lot of Republicans any day.

It's ten times better if you know the song...

XKCD on why every major sucks. My favourite line:

'By dubbing Econ 'dismal science' adherents exaggerate
The "dismal"'s fine, it's "science" where they patently prevaricate"

Ha!

Things I've been doing instead of writing blog posts

Reading up on the writings of Mencius Moldbug.I'm about halfway through the 'How Richard Dawkins Got Pwned' essays, where he claims that modern Universalist philosophy (what Dawkins calls 'Einsteinian Religion) can best be described as 'nontheistic Christianity', and part of the same progression of ideas from the Puritans. Interesting stuff.

The good news is, his writing is excellent!

The bad news is that it's time for dinner and bed, so go read his stuff. I haven't found writing on this theme that's this interesting since Eliezer Yudkowsky finished his daily sequences of posts on rationality, found in the archives of Overcoming Bias.

Miscellaneous Nuggets of Interest

-In favor of my revised definition of why LA seems spread out, comes this: the 50 densest cities in America: . Clocking in at number 1:

The nation's most densely populated urbanized area is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif., with nearly 7,000 people per square mile.

 (Thanks to VarianB for the pointer)

-Taki's Magazine has a number of interesting articles at the moment covering a range of heterodox conservative opinion, including the disturbingly high suicide rate among transsexuals, the way people don't know how to interact with wounded soldiers, and the media circus surrounding the tragic death of Trayvon Martin.

-On the last point, former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant reiterates the depressing truth of the 'dog bites man' stories that don't get reported:

Bryant, who explores the topic of black-on-black crime in his new film “Runaway Slave,” said people like Jackson and Sharpton are being misleading to suggest there is an epidemic of “white men killing black young men.”

“The epidemic is truly black on black crime,” Bryant said. “The greatest danger to the lives of young black men are young black men.”

Sad but true.

-Britain continues to circle the drain: a drunk student who made a racist comment on twitter about a footballer will spend 56 days in prison for the offense. That's the British police - unwilling or unable to stop riots, but willing and able to punish drunks who call people nasty names.

I was going to call this post the traditional 'Miscellaneous Joy', but frankly there's not much joy in there. Interest, perhaps, but not joy.

Miscellaneous Joy, Ribald Conservatism Edition

-Steve Sailer catches the New York Times with their preconceptions being hilariously disproved. A shooter had being going around in France, targeting victims including Jews and Muslim soldiers. Naturally, without a shred of evidence, the New York Times wrote up the story as an example of Europe's "far-right" in action. But then it turned out that the shooter was actually an example of what Mark Steyn described as 'some guy named Mohammed', who claims to belong to al Qaeda. It's all well and good for New York Times writers to claim to not pre-judge matters based on stereotypes, but they might try to be a little more consistent in their application of the principle. I expect the retraction and apology to be coming any day now.

-One of the best one-sentence pitches for considering Mitt Romney as both a fiscal and a social conservative, (referencing a particular NEA grant) coming from Ann Coulter:

"Do you think a man who slashed government spending in North Korea [Massachusetts], put the corrupt and financially bleeding Olympics on solid financial footing and rescued dozens of companies from bankruptcy would consider a photo of a bullwhip stuck in a man's buttocks a wise investment of the taxpayers' money?"

It doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, but it's a pretty great slogan.

-Via Hacker News, an interesting piece by a female programmer talking about the subtle sexism she faces at work. I found it actually quite thought provoking, because it points out how a lot of male behaviours might not be considered that bad individually, but can have a cumulative effect that's quite corrosive.

Of course, then you scroll down to the comments, and it in part features her expressing some reservation (with a smiley face, admittedly) about a commenter referring to 'girls'. Later she suggests 'gals' as an alternative "if you want to sound less stuffy". Yeeeah. There's nothing wrong with this, and she does imply she's partly kidding. But let's just say that if you've given serious consideration to whether the term 'girls' is overly sexist and what alternatives there might be, I'm probably placing you somewhere higher up on the 'likely to take offense at mildly inappropriate comments' spectrum. That doesn't change what she wrote, but it might add some context about the things she's talking about.

-Pick your appropriate headline, between 'About Bloody Time' and 'I'll Believe It When It Actually Happens'.

Thought of the Day

"In death, Alexander of Macedon's end differed no whit from his stable-boy's. Either both were received into the same generative principle of the universe, or both alike were dispersed into atoms.
...
Do you make a grievance of weighing so man pounds only, instead of three hundred? Then why fret about living so many years only, instead of more? Since you are content with the measure of substance allowed you, be so also content with the measure of time."

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Classic!

You have to be both a chemist and skeptic of government policy (which I know applies to at least GS, and possibly others) to enjoy this one , but it's comedy gold - how to synthesise pseudoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine, from the Journal of Apocryphal Chemistry, Feb. 2012:

Pseudoephedrine, active ingredient of Sudafed®, has long been the most popular nasal decongestant in the United States due to its effectiveness and relatively mild side effects [1].  In recent years it has become increasingly difficult to obtain psuedoephedine in many states because of its use as a precursor for the illegal drug N-methylamphetamine (also known under various names including crystal meth, meth, ice, etc.)[1,2].  While in the past many stores were able to sell pseudoephedrine, new laws in the United States have restricted sales to pharmacies, with the medicine kept behind the counter.  The pharmacies require signatures and examination of government issued ID in order to purchase pseudoephedrine.  Because the hours of availability of such pharmacies are often limited, it would be of great interest to have a simple synthesis of pseudoephedrine from reagents which can be more readily procured.

A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N-methylamphetamine can be procured at almost any time on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesis of useful amounts of the desired material.  Moreover, according to government maintained statistics, Nmethylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of Nmethylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased [2].  We present here a convenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine.  

 Ha!

(via jwz)

Miscellaneous Joy

-Headline of the Day, from Maetenloch at Ace of Spades:

"Island Scandis So Inbred They Need a Website to Avoid Incest"

Ha!

-Statements that it's hard to disagree with:

"To put it politely, Nigeria is a failed nation. To put it bluntly, Nigeria is f***ed."

-Economist Valentines Day Jokes (via the CM)


-In America, the furthest you can get from a McDonalds is 145 miles by car. Thank God for that - USA! USA! USA!

It would be funny if I thought it were intended as a joke

Never let it be said that Britons don't appreciate irony.

Miscellaneous Joy

-MIT at its best: students were sent their early admission letters in steel tubes, and told to 'hack' the tubes somehow. One girl decided that the best thing to do is to send it into space. Nice!

-A hilarious review of the book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad', which slays it mercilessly. Oooh, the burn...

-Steve Sailer documents a particularly self-parodying David Brooks column. This reminded me of his other great quip about Brooks, which is so good I'm going to quote it again:

The public doesn't want new ideas, they just want to be told that their old ideas are new ideas that have been discovered by brain scans.

-The toughest guy to hold a PhD? (via Kottke)

-Gabriel Malor on the State Department in Iraq:

The State Department is cutting and running from its Iraq mega-embassy. It seems the salad bar ran out and there's no Splenda for coffee. Really. Those are their actual, ISYN, complaints. Oh, and they're limited to only six wings each on chicken wing night. Poor babies.

Yes, really.

Separated At Birth

Cee-Lo Green from the Superbowl Half Time Show:



'Future Dudes', from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.



The other Cee-Lo description on Reddit was 'a Gay Sith Lord', which I can't find much fault with either.

Facts...

...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 world, and totally delicious at an absolute level (in case you thought the first clause corresponded to something like 'the fastest lawnmower' or 'the most fiscally responsible member of the Greens Party'). If you're eating any other type of Ramen (or Maggi Noodles, for the Aussies), you've got rocks in your head. Find an Asian Supermarket and buy them.

2. Mi Goreng noodles that claim to expire on August 28th, 2008 can be eaten well into 2010 without too much deterioration in taste, and no adverse health consequences.

3. An outstanding commitment to scientific inquiry led to to establish empirically that  Mi Goreng noodles that claim to expire on August 28th 2008 can still be eaten in a pinch around about, ooh, say, January 30th 2012. They do however lose a certain je ne sais quoi, in part driven by the fact that flavouring powder has turned into bricks that have to be discarded. You may not actually want to get through them.

4. George Orwell was really on to something when he observed:

It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

Rock bottom - it makes a comfortable place to rest one's body!

Orwell had the excuse that he was talking about extremes of poverty, as opposed to just, say, being an immense slob. Ah well, close enough.

Miscellaneous Joy, Hidden Costs Edition

-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 the word 'scam' lightly.

-Why antitrust action against Bill Gates in the 90s probably killed thousands of people. (via Marginal Revolution)

Girl Eats McNuggets! British Plebs Outraged!

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 turns out the girl (apparently) hasn't eaten anything except Chicken McNuggets and chips since age 2. She's now 17.

First off, this story has a decent chance of being a hoax, but let's get past that. The British tabloids understand keenly that nothing sells quite as well as feeding people's sense of righteous indignation, and this story has that in spades. So unhealthy! Where are the parents? We need to do something about this! etc. etc. etc.

But let's take the story as true for the time being, because everyone prefers their morality tales to be true.

There's two things that are remarkable about this story, and neither of them is the fact that there are parents in first world countries who will let their children eat nothing but Chicken McNuggets every day for 15 years.

Make sure you click on the story first to see if you can guess what I'm going to choose.

The first remarkable thing is this - why on earth would you agree to be interviewed and photographed for this story? Isn't it obvious that they're going to make you out to be some sort of repulsive monster, and an indication of everything that's wrong with society? I mean, even if you aren't actually sure of what you did that's so bad, here's a red hot tip. When you're Johnny Nobody and the tabloids want to interview you about anything other than saving a small child or scaring off a burglar, you should refuse. Really. You can thank me later.

There's either two possibilities here, none of them flattering. The first is that the girl was so desperate for her 15 minutes of fame that she didn't care that the paper would make her look like a weirdo. The second is that she was gullible enough to believe their silver-tongued promises that they'd write a really nice article about her, and honestly McDonalds was really to blame, and she'd be the innocent victim, etc. Uh huh.  Oh look, they've written about how I'm a hoarder of the thousands of toys I've collected, which for some reason I'm reluctant to throw away. Here's a photo of me looking creepy in front of an enormous collection of McDonalds junk kids toys.

Either way, it's not a good sign. Add this to the fact that you thought eating nothing but Chicken McNuggets for 15 years was a good idea and that's two pretty big strikes against your character.

The second remarkable thing is that given her diet over the past 15 years, how thin the girl is.  It's possible that she's an exercise freak on the side, but I'm going to go ahead and bet against that possibility, based if nothing else on her hilarious disregard for her health.I think everyone expected her to be some whale, but she's not. And when you look at the nutrition breakdown that the Daily Mail provides, you start to see why - three meals of six chicken McNuggets and small fries only clocks in at 1530 calories per day, relative to the recommended intake of 2000. They try to make a big scare out of it - 'Twice the recommended fat! Twice the recommended salt! A third of the recommended vitamin C!' - but it doesn't seem to work. Hilariously, it seems like a base of mostly chicken McNuggets and fries isn't actually that bad - her problem was not getting enough other things like calcium, iron and vitamins other than C.

Interestingly enough, this fits in with the point made by Robert Lustig that I talked about a few days ago. He goes through the McDonalds menu to find the 7 items that don't contain any fructose. Guess what three of them are? Chicken McNuggets, Fries, and Diet Coke. If you eat nothing but that, you end up sick. But apparently you don't end up especially fat.

If that isn't an advertisement for a low-sugar diet, I don't know what is.

Damn Good Advice

on how (and why!) to negotiate a higher salary, from Kalzumeus.

This may be the most monetarily valuable thing you read this year. Read the whole thing.

Costa Rica

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 highways change so frequently. The base will be 80 km/h, but at the first sign of any human activity, it will first change to 60 km/h, then to 40 km/h (!!!). Even when there's scarcely any sign of human activity, and the road is completely straight. Apparently this is all in accordance with the 'All Speed Limits Must Be In Multiples of Twenty Act of 2004'.

- Related to the above, I got pulled over by a traffic cop at one point, notwithstanding that I was going the same speed as everyone else. Sure enough, it was going to cost me a fine of US$600 to be paid at the bank if he wrote up the ticket formally, but if I paid the ticket in cash right now it would only cost me $100. After such a sum changed hands, he was quite friendly. Moral of the story - if you look like you're shake-down-able, carry cash.

- Apparently in Costa Rica, they abolished the military altogether in 1948! Bizarre. The whole country thus seems to be a strong violation of Ralph Waldo Emerson's observation that "nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended."

- A guidebook description like 'awesome volcano where you sometimes see lava flows, located right next to scenic cloud forest' has a tendency in reality to resemble 'base of a hill-like structure covered in impenetrable clouds which they won't let you approach'.

- I spent New Years Eve in a beach town called Montezuma. Apparently Costa Rica has a very relaxed approach to liquor licensing, viz in practice anyone can drink anything anywhere. The bar I was at had a lot of teenagers who looked about 15, and two girls walking around who were clearly no more than 12. It's kind of jarring to see them in a bar drinking, but sure enough the world didn't fall apart. The bouncers were only concerned if you were starting a fight or throwing up somewhere, and had zero interest in who was entering or leaving, whether you were taking your drink out to the beach. In other words, exactly the kinds of voluntary transactions that people engage in when free of government interference! The lady who ran my hotel was saying that on the Nicoya peninsula, there aren't any traffic cops, so most people don't have proper licenses, and she once saw an eight-year-old driving a pickup truck.

- The combination of warm water and good surf beaches is hard to beat. If Hawaii weren't so far away, I imagine it would be a massively populated area. I imagine in time it probably will be anyway.

Miscellaneous Joy

-San Francisco tries to ban Happy Meals at McDonalds. McDonalds lawyers easily circumvent ban. Meddling bureaucrats' tears ensue.

-Some interesting thoughts on self-defence:

If you find yourself in a situation where a predator is trying to control you, the time for listening to instructions and attempting to remain calm has passed. It will get no easier to resist and escape after these first moments. The presence of weapons, the size or number of your attackers—these details are irrelevant. However bad the situation looks, it will only get worse. To hesitate is to put yourself at the mercy of a sociopath. You have no alternative but to explode into action, whatever the risk. Recognizing when this line has been crossed, and committing to escape at any cost, is more important than mastering physical techniques.

More here, especially starting at 8 minutes 30 seconds.

-Anti-piracy group gets hit by copyright infringement claim and falling grand piano made entirely of irony.

-Business decisions that are clearly not made with cheapskate economists in mind: payment system Dwolla announces that all transactions under $10 will be free. I'm assuming they've thought of the possibility that I'll pay for my $500 TV with 100 free payments of $5 each in order to save two bucks or whatever. They're probably right that most people won't bother, but it would be humourous if they did.

-Via Reddit, The Good Old Days:

Odd Graffiti in the Bathroom at the Hipster Dive Bar

'Ulysses is Odysseus'

In order:

1. Yes.

2. Wot?

Miscellaneous Joy

-An interesting theory about McDonald's McRib - that it only gets reintroduced when pork belly prices drop. (via Kottke)

-A wicked sight-reading of the Super Mario Brothers theme, by someone who apparently has never played the game.

-Click and drag around to control the view from a helicopter ride. Rad!

-Coyote lays the smack down on the bogus use of statistics by global warming hysteric James Hansen. Deliberately misleading or just plain stupid? You decide!