They Don't Have A Problem
"The Voynich Manuscript (VMS) is a mysterious illustrated book of unknown contents, written some 500 years ago by an anonymous author in an unidentified alphabet and unintelligible language."#
Tyler Cowen quotes some interesting things that Robert Barro has found about economics and religion.#
1. Religious participation is negatively correlated with economic growth.
2. For the most part religious belief (as opposed to participation) is not correlated with economic growth. Belief in hell is positively correlated with growth, however.
3. Religious pluralism makes people more religious. In other words, the more options available, the more likely that religion will be found appealing.
Chip Gibbons: "If somebody called you a Britney Spears would you be insulted?" (Source of quote below.)#
I mean if you really want to insult somebody, why not call them a George Bush or a bin Laden or a Britney Spears. I'm not even sure what the term faggot is supposed to mean anymore. When he calls somebody a faggot does he mean like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci? Does he mean Merv Griffin, David Geffen, Andrew Tobias, Elton John, George Michael, Boy George, Oscar Wilde or Rock Hudson?
Did he mean all the doctors, lawyers, scientists and people in every other walk of life who just happen to be homosexuals? Was he talking about the people who united to fight ignorance and find effective treatments for AIDS when Christians like Jerry Falwell were claiming it was God's punishment? That God, not a virus, was the cause of AIDS?
Is that what he meant when he screamed faggot?
Gina Smith: "My software company -- Eye Games Inc. -- is partnering with GamePro Magazine to distribute an early version of our new webcam PC game. If you have a webcam -- and who doesn't, these days? -- download the game and let me know if you think we are on to something!"#
Robert Levy, from the Cato Institute, comments on the FDA and a recent piece of anti-smoking legislation. (Read why Philip Morris supports it.)#
Four years ago, the Supreme Court held that the Food and Drug Administration was not authorized to regulate cigarettes. That was the right decision. Yet, for constitutional purists who are concerned about separation of powers, the Court didn't go far enough. Instead of inquiring whether Congress intended to give the FDA jurisdiction over tobacco, the Court might have tackled this more vital issue: May Congress constitutionally assign its legislative role to an executive agency?
Tony Pierce: "are you out of your fucking mind dot com?"#
Matt May went to a Edward Tufte class. I was going to go to one earlier this year but shit went down, next time.#
One thing I noticed about Tufte when I first started reading his books was actually a minor detail in his writing style. Pick up any of his books and flip to any page. Guaranteed, he has finished the paragraph on that page, and with no space to spare. You probably didn't notice any difference in the content itself (that is, he didn't dance around on this page just to fill it), but sure enough, he always completes a thought, and never resorts to typographical crutches ("next page") to get by. His design ethic is in everything I've seen from him, and that's not something you can say about the everyday average guru these days.
Razib posts some weird interesting notes about Mormons. Wild.#
Tyler Cowen mentions the growth of disk sizes.#
Clay Christensen has written about this, a lot, in the case studies for his books on management and technology change.
Brad DeLong says something about the bandwidth of shipping a "railroad car filled with DVDs." Jim Gray pioneered this idea.
Arnold Cling was interested too.
Don Boudreaux writes about Sen. Kerry's proposal to raise minimum wage.#
Sen. Kerry apparently believes in magic. He must believe that the act of writing certain words on paper beneath a marble dome ("No employee in the U.S. shall be paid less than $7.00 per hour") is a ritual sufficient, in his own words, to help "families make ends meet and move another step towards the American Dream."
Kerry proposes that the legislated minimum wage reach $7.00 per hour in 2007. Why wait until then? If government can increase workers' earnings by declaring in a statute that no worker shall be paid less than $7.00 per hour, why delay this move to greater prosperity?
Indeed, why an hourly minimum wage of only $7.00? Why not $17.00 per hour? Or $70 per hour?
Halley Suitt: "Goody bags carry many inherent risks. If you make UNCOOL goody bags, your kid is branded UNCOOL and dies a thousand deaths."#
John Gruber - The Location Field is the New Command Line.#
I've been thinking about the rise of the web as an application platform for a while. But what hadn't occurred to me until I read Spolsky's essay last week is this, which I think is quite remarkable: Microsoft totally fucked up when they took aim at Netscape. It wasn't Netscape that was a threat to Windows as an application platform, it was the web itself.
They spent all that time, money, and development effort on IE, building a browser monopoly and crushing Netscape — but to what avail? Here we are, and the web is still gaining developer mindshare at the expense of Win32.
Alex Tabarrok quotes John Cougar Mellencamp on payola. (Quote via Les Jones.)#
Look, in the '80s when people were paying openly to get songs on the radio, here's the way it worked. "We want you to play this record and we're going to give you a spiff [kickback] of $100 to get it on the radio." OK, the guy plays it for a week and says, "I've been playing the song for a week and nobody likes it." "Well, here's $200 to play it next week." They've been playing the song for two weeks and nobody likes it. Guess what, they're done paying. It's over at that point. You cannot pay your way into having a hit. It won't happen. The only thing you can pay your way into is having the opportunity to have a hit. If you don't pay, you don't even have the opportunity. That's the way it should be done.
Sara Ford emailed Bill Gates and got a few words of a response. Strange.#
Most people, I guess, have learned long before they turn 40 what it means to be in a relationship. Me, see, I've avoided having any relationships of any depth of any sort at all. My friendships barely scratch the surface. My immediate family and I barely speak. I allow my cat to have her way because I'm a little scared that if I chastise her for breaking a nearly-full bottle of my favorite cologne that she'll leave me. The closest thing to lasting relationship I've ever had was making sure I watched every episode of Twin Peaks without failure, until it left one day and never came back. Oh, I see it once in a while, in passing, but we don't talk anymore and it's just not the same as it was when we first met.
[...]
And my answer is: It's easy. Being in a relationship takes time, energy, patience and coordination. You don't fall into it, you work your way into it. A relationship isn't your most comfortable pair of flannel pajamas going in, it's the tightest pair of jeans you've ever bought, but once you get into them you look damned good and want to keep them on forever. A relationship isn't taking a deep, luxurious drink of your favorite beverage at the perfect temperature. A relationship is lifting a mug to your lips and swallowing a draught without knowing what's in the mug in the first place.
Tyler Cowen points out that if you think Medicare is progressive, you may want to think again.#
The Adventures of Seinfeld and Superman -- Commercials, but awesome.#
Skadz links to break dancing Transformers.#