May 2009
52 posts
1 tag
Life extension
There’s a new movie coming out about futurist Ray Kurzweil called “Transcendent Man.” Check out the trailer. Kurzweil is famous for taking a huge regimen of drugs as a way of extending his life. He hopes to hit a sort of escape velocity — where medicines can extend his life by more than a year with each passing year — and so achieve immortality.
It’s clear now...
April 2009
39 posts
1 tag
Why give victims a say in executions?
The Walrus has a chilling article on public executions in Saudi Arabia. It’s horrifying that we still have executions… in public…. with swords… for crimes like armed robbery and drug use. Even if you grant Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of the Koran that such executions must be done, this line caught my eye:
But at any time until the sword strikes, a...
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More on studying
I think that Wansley’s post is basically right that it’s important to test your recall ability when studying. I’d add that instead of reading a portion of the textbook or your notes, you should convert relevant information into questions (e.g. “Who is liable under X condition within a negligence regime?”) for studying.
Cal Newport calls this the quiz and recall...
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The health benefits of atheism
The boston globe has an article about research into the lives of the secular. It seems reasonable to question why this is a topic worthy of academia, but I think Phil Zuckerman has a reasonable response:
[Research about secular lives] should be done because people are still calling it unnatural, odd
That is, assuming that sociology is useful generally, surely this is a culture worthy...
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What's the science on studying
The key step according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed:
Put the book aside and hide your notes. Then recall everything you can. Write it down, or, if you’re uninhibited, say it out loud.
I’ve found that saying things out loud (quietly) helps me remember them more. It has the unfortunate side effect of making you look like a weirdo. Still I’m sold on recalling...
This'll shake things up →
Arlen Specter switched to the Democratic party today, meaning (pending Franken’s win) the Democrats will be able to override filibusters in the Senate.
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Dartmouth's Bad Samaritan policy
Dartmouth has a Good Samaritan alcohol policy in dire need of repair. Under the policy, if a student calls Dartmouth’s internal security service to pick up a dangerously intoxicated friend to be taken to the school’s medical center, both the caller and the drunk student will be immune from college punishment. The policy is a well-intentioned attempt to value student safety above...
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One approach to carbon
From Peter Huber an interesting article about policy approaches to reducing atmospheric carbon. The gist of it is:
The non-developed world won’t reduce its carbon production
Jobs will go where energy is cheaper so there’s little to be gained from our changes
Nuclear power is a good option but there are big political obstacles to doing that
We ought focus on reforestation and...
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Planned Parenthood: punk'd
The LA Times has a story on a 20 year old UCLA student with a mission against Planned Parenthood. The pro-lifer posed as an underaged girl impregnated by older boyfriends to try to catch Planned Parenthood staff turning a blind eye to statutory rape:
Rose’s goal is to undermine legal abortion by showing that Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the country, abets...
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A silver lining industry: Barter
Remember Joe’s post about the recession. Turns out Russia’s barter economy is thriving.
Need tractors? Got cable, nickel or condensed milk? Russia can make things happen for you.
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E-books and the erosion of a signal
With the growing popularity of Amazon’s Kindle, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what a post-book world will look like. Books allow us to signal our interests by what we’re reading or have read in the past: your choice of book, be it Lolita, Gossip Girls or Fight Club, hints at deeper interests and personality quirks. The Kindle, however, doesn’t provide nearly as...
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Attitudes towards synthetic biology
SSRN has an interesting paper from some cool people about attitudes towards synthetic biology — think genetic engineering broadly.
Turns out people’s attitudes towards the risks presented by synthetic biology are an inversion of their attitudes towards environmental risks. That is, people who are skeptical of global warming are frightened by the prospect of synthetic biology and...
The importance of side projects
Side projects - writing a blog, looking into starting a company, coming up with an op-ed even - can be incredibly fruitful, on both personal and organizational levels.
Ben Casnocha, a college aged entrepreneur, has a piece in the American providing a historical account of companies like 3M or Google that have made side projects and ideas an important part of their business.
Everyone knows...
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Who is Bernarr Macfadden
Another interesting guy along the lines of radical honesty! Wikipedia to the rescue!
Born Bernard Adolphus McFadden in Mill Spring, Missouri, Bernarr Macfadden changed his first and last names to give them a greater appearance of strength. He thought “Bernarr” sounded like the roar of a lion, and that “Macfadden” was a more masculine spelling of his name.
...
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Writing about quantum weirdness
The Economist had an article about quantum weirdness that is just completely incomprehensible to me. I can sort of hang with relativity, though I think there’s some weird stuff going on; at least the analogies you make there make sense.
My understanding from friends who study physics is that it’s really tough to make analogies when it comes to quantum weirdness — it’s...
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Texas - "Baby don't go"
As a Texas native, I couldn’t pass this one up.
Texas Governor Rick Perry hinted at secession in response to what he sees as excessive federal spending under the Obama administration. What’s terrifying is that more than 50% of Texas republicans think Texas would be better off if it once again only flew the Lone Star flag.
Annie Lowery and Nancy Gibbs each wrote up scenarios of what...
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The silver lining of living in a recession economy
The Financial Times has an article entitled What we will miss about the prophets of doom which lists 10 half-serious advantages of the recession. While I think it’s just a tad optimistic to be nostalgic about the recession already, it is interesting to think about the positive aspects of a failing economy. My thoughts:
Bad economic times lower the opportunity costs of pursuing...
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Wishing Politics Were Crazier
Inspired by Muntadhar al-Zaidi, Indian reporters seem to be throwing shoes just all the damn time now:
With India in the midst of a monthlong national election, the growing number of shoe protestations has prompted officials to tighten security, ask party workers and supporters to come barefoot or, in Gujarat state, build an iron safety net to stop airborne shoes in mid-flight.
Looking at...
Help write David Pogue's twitter book →
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Jim Webb on Prison Reform
Jim Webb wrote an article in Parade as a part of his quest to reform prisons. A piece by Chris Hayes has a nice quote summarizing Webb’s argument:
“We have 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the people in prison,” he said. “Either we’re the most evil people on earth, or we’re doing something wrong.”
The same on drug...
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The Myth of Human Progress
One explanation for belief in human progress might be a sense of comfort about our impending death. Or at least so argues a recent article. The piece dispenses too quickly, I think, with the notion that progress has occurred:
Scientific and technological advances aside, the historical evidence for this proposition is, at best, mixed. While cultural norms change, the 2,500-year-old dramas of...
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More on Torture
It looks like the higher-ups responsible for America’s use of torture under the Bush administration may actually face legal repercussions.
While I share Obama’s expressed feeling that the torture investigations should avoid partisanship, I think an Attorney General (or maybe truth commission) inquiry would be an important step toward pulling the executive branch back under the rule...
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Cosmetic Neurology
The New Yorker has a great article on students and others taking cognitive enhancers like Adderall to increase their productivity and concentration. I think cognitive enhancers have the potential to significantly improve our quality of life, but I also have a few worries:
Competitive pressure in schools and the workplace will coerce people who would rather not take the drugs (because of...
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The Red Cross Torture Report
The New York Review of Books has a long article by Mark Danner on the Red Cross Torture Report. The report is unambiguous that what happened under Bush at Guantanamo and elsewhere was torture, and that it was extremely serious. Andrew Sullivan notes:
…it comes not from Jane Mayer or Mark Danner or Dana Priest or this blog, but from the most credible and respected human rights watchdog in...
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People I'm Reading: Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom wrote a cool piece in the times about the value of nature. That along with two bloggingheads.tv conversations should give you an intro to what he’s all about.
One of the most interesting things he wrote was about the popular view of science for edge. He argues that people are most likely to persist in having unscientific views when they conflict with our intuitive theories of the...
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Political lesson learned
John Nolan, a junior at Dartmouth, tried to win a debate over his opponent through associating her with the current administration (and then trashing it Obama-style). Unfortunately, he then emailed the current president explaining he only criticized her for a political gain. Of course, word got around, and he ended up on the front page of The Dartmouth.
If you‘re going to be slimy, don’t try to...
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We're so much more disgusting and sympathetic than...
PostSecret is one of my biggest internet guilty pleasures.
Yeah yeah, a lot of them are probably fake, and some others just go for shock value. But somehow the site is incredibly gripping. The kind of “secrets” people send in are often mixtures of the most depressing, vulgar, endearing, and ordinary events and feelings people experience.
PostSecret makes me think that if you had near absolute...
This seems dangerous
Armed senior citizens in the NYT.
1 tag
If Economists are Less Moral, Should we Stop...
Twice recently I’ve heard people blame “supply and demand” when asked about higher prices and lower salaries. Seems like economics gives us some common principle to excuse unkind actions—we‘re mere slaves to rationality, sorry.
There’s some evidence for the hypothesis that economists are less moral people — that they‘re more self-interested or less cooperative. If students of...
1 tag
Gawande on Solitary Isolation
Atul Gawande, author of Better, has a piece in the New Yorker about solitary isolation.
The evidence is absolutely clear that prolonged isolation causes serious psychological trauma. Inmates are literally brought to banging their heads against the wall. We should restructure or scrap the supermax prisons dotted around the US devoted almost entirely to this practice.
Interestingly, in the...
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Radical Honesty is interesting but probably...
Esquire has a painful piece on some VA guy’s project of hardening himself to social norms. A couple thoughts: First, it’s an interesting example of someone being a moral entrepreneur, and a self-serving one at that. Second, the project seems to have much more to do with being blunt than being honest. It’s like, there are certain risky conversational moves — always take...
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Let 'em vote
It’s a little ridiculous to me that felons are denied the right to vote. I’m mad that felons who’ve done their time often can’t vote. But it’s equally frustrating to me that those in prison are barred from voting.
Philosophically: felons don’t lose their citizenship with the last pounds of the judge’s gavel. In many ways, they’re still meaningful...
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Dear Greg Mankiw
When Greg Mankiw leaves facebook then you know it’s time. He loves nothing more than promoting himself and harvard. I’d argue most of his blog posts could be tweets.
But in all seriousness who’s in the left outer join of facebook and twitter? That is, who is on twitter but not on facebook? My sense is it’s older people; journalists especially. And some super-hip young...
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Lewis on Iceland
Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, has an interesting article about the devastating crash of Iceland’s economy. The theme: “Iceland is no longer a country. It is a hedge fund.” The only upside of the financial crisis is the growing number of fascinating stories of excess and contagion.
Two unrelated tidbits I liked:
You can tell a lot about a country by how much...
1 tag
Memory Erasure / Dampening is Way Interesting
People are talking about it now but it’s been here before too.
Well, the more recent article is closer to Eternal Sunshine / MIB-like targeted erasure than simple memory dampening. Seems like a lot of the issues raised are similar (though magnified with targeted erasure). Of course we do all sorts of conscious / sub-conscious memory editing when we tell stories and recall stuff, but...
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Charts 'n Stuff
Getting Past the Pie Chart only talks a little about pie charts. It gets excited and then starts talkin’ all kinds of crazy stuff about charts. Seems like the people at Seed agree with Tufte that small multiples are the way to go. I feel like sparklines are a nice way to go along those lines. They also hate on wordle and some of the old nyt visualizations as just being flashy without adding...
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A Strange Nassim Taleb Article
While I really like Taleb’s The Black Swan, his piece Ten Principles for a Black Swan-proof world in yesterday’s Financial Times falls short.
The title itself is ridiculous - the problem with Black Swans is that they’re unpredictable and extremely rare. 10 two-sentence principles cannot Black Swan-proof your world. In fact, part of the reason Black Swans exist is that we use...
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Style
Geoffrey Pullum’s article in the Chronicle criticizes Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style for grammatically incompetent bossiness that is harmless and silly at best and hypocritical and ignorant at worst.
A little harsh.
Most of the Pullum’s complaints about Strunk’s grammar advice follow the form: ” The Elements of Style has X rule, but I checked and Mark...
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Book Notes: Better
I just finished reading Atul Gawande’s Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance. Better uses the Malcolm Gladwell model of conveying broadly explanatory ideas (in this case, about success and failure) through a series of interesting anecdotes. I don’t know how much of the book would be revolutionary or even interesting to someone with background knowledge about medicine, but I...