Unfortunately, there's a downside.
(HT Instapundit)
Sunday, September 16, 2007
How to Make Your Mouse Roar
Did you know that if you're using a tabbed browser, clicking on a hyperlink with your mouse scroll-wheel will open the link in a new tab? Neither did I.Here are 9 ways to make your mouse roar.
(HT Lifehacker)
Is Marriage the New Dating?
Dr. Helen Smith on the starter husband:An article on MSN entitled "The Starter Husband" caught my eye this morning, mostly because the caption addressed to women seemed so ridiculously misandric: "You'd never buy a car without test-driving it first right? So why settle into a lifelong marriage before trying one on for size?"Here is an excerpt from the MSN article:
The article, as one can gather from the title, is about women who marry in their 20's for practice and see nothing wrong with taking a guy out for a test-drive and dumping him off at the curb once the sheen wears off.
For some, a starter husband is like a starter home — a semi-commitment where you're willing to do some of the surface work, like painting the walls, but not the heavy lifting, like gutting the whole foundation; he's just not a long-term investment. Others compare a starter husband to a first job, where you learn some skills and polish your resume before going after the position you really want....To which Helen Smith responds:
It's easy to write these women off as callous or self-absorbed. And yet on some level, they just might be pioneers: Why stay put in an empty shell of a marriage — an arrangement on paper only — instead of calling it what it is? "This generation is reinventing marriage," says Paul.
I thought pioneers were supposed to be brave people who ventured out to discover new things and make the world a better place, not cowards who are too afraid to say "no" to a marriage that they don't want just to "have a gorgeous party, and make my parents really, really happy" as one woman put it.Read the whole thing and let's all hope this is not an increasing trend.
(HT Instapundit)
Weight-ography
An interesting map of the distribution of obesity in the US:
See this post on how changing prices of food affect what we eat and listen to Russ Roberts' podcast on the economics of obesity.Percent of Obese Adults - Body Mass Index Greater than 30, 2006
Source: Centers for Disease Control. Click here for Body Mass Index maps by county.
Interesting perspectives from two of my favorite bloggers, Julian Sanchez and Ryan Avent.
Are Most Scientific Studies Sloppy?
Most science studies appear to be tainted by sloppy analysis:Here's more:Dr. Ioannidis is an epidemiologist who studies research methods at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece and Tufts University in Medford, Mass. In a series of influential analytical reports, he has documented how, in thousands of peer-reviewed research papers published every year, there may be so much less than meets the eye.
These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data analysis. "There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims," Dr. Ioannidis said. "A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true." . . .
Statistically speaking, science suffers from an excess of significance. Overeager researchers often tinker too much with the statistical variables of their analysis to coax any meaningful insight from their data sets. "People are messing around with the data to find anything that seems significant, to show they have found something that is new and unusual," Dr. Ioannidis said.
Ioannides attributes this to "messing around with the data to find anything that seems significant," and that's probably part of it. The other part is that, even if all statistics are done according to plan, the estimates that survive significance testing will tend to be large--this is what we call "Type M error." See here for more discussion.I wish I could say economics had a better track record...
(HT The Volokh Conspiracy)
Life Imitates Star Trek
Is the Star Trek tricorder soon to become reality?The tricorder from Star Trek was a pretty fancy piece of equipment. Wave it around, let it make an odd whistling sound for a few seconds, and it could tell you almost anything, from the presence of nearby life forms to the chemical composition of a particular rock.
It might seem far-fetched, but Marc Reisch at Chemical & Engineering News reckons some very similar devices might soon become a reality.
Reisch writes that many scientific instrument makers are working hard to make portable and rugged versions of mass spectrometers, infrared spectrophotometers, ion detectors and other devices. He presents an interesting survey of the field - X-ray fluorescent analysers, flash luminescent analysers, ion detection units and more. You name it, it seems someone is trying to fit it into a convenient hand-held device.
First we had flip-up cellphones that looked like Star Trek communicators; then Bluetooth earpieces that look a lot like the earpiece Lieutenant Uhura wore. Soon there will be tricorders too. As the 21st century progresses, life increasingly imitates Star Trek.
Use Aluminum Foil to Sharpen Scissors
Last week it was tennis balls. This week it's aluminum foil:Home improvement site DIY Life has compiled a list of fifteen uses for aluminum foil; among them is the ability to sharpen scissors. All you need to do is stack about seven pieces of foil together and slice through them with your dull scissors, and voila! Scissors are sharp again. I tried this myself and it took more than one cut-through, but it actually did work. After your sharpening work is done, you can recycle the foil for other tasks around your kitchen.
Want To Reduce Carbon Emissions?
Greg Mankiw argues in favor of a gas tax. On the other hand, you could just dump iron into the ocean.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)