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Archives for January 2005
links for 2005-01-31
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What’s your secret?
links for 2005-01-30
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Never underestimate the idiocy of the folks in marketing.
links for 2005-01-29
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Need to secure a mechanical license for a cover recording.
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What does that tattoo really say?
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A disturbingly detailed map of where the Simpsons live.
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Commentary on real-time, collaborative and social technologies.
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Information on Basie’s affliction.
The Bionic Cat
Basie has a chip on his shoulder.
Actually, it’s in his shoulder.
I had to take him to the vet yesterday because the pad on his paw was swollen and bleeding. It seems he has a slight case of plasma cell pododermatitis, for which he was given a prescription for Prednisone and some antibiotics.
Since he was already at the vet’s office, I figured it was a good opportunity to take care of something that I had been meaning to do for a long time.
I’m firmly convinced that one day Basie will pull an Andy Dufresne and successfully mount the escape he’s been plotting for the last few years. I already bought him a collar with an identification tag, but I’m afraid it could break off easily. That’s why I decided to have the vet inject one of those newfangled RFID chips into his back.
After you get the chip injected into your pet, you have to mail a form to the company that makes them and register the number encoded on the chip with your pet’s information. I think it would be cool to get one injected in my back and then register myself as a Pekingese.
links for 2005-01-28
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“The New Yorker magazine is noted as one of the few sources that still spells ‘coöperate’ with a diaeresis..”
Creating Pinky and the Brain
National Geographic has a great news article on animal-human hybrid research. Particularly interesting is the discussion of a Stanford researcher who is developing mice with human brains.
Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human.
Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.
links for 2005-01-25
What’s on My Party Shuffle?
Everyone seems to be posting the contents of the “Party Shuffle” playlist that iTunes creates based on their library. I figured I might as well give it a go. Here’s what came up for me:
- “Maquiladora” by The Tiny Bell Trio
- “The Dead Man - Rondo” by John Zorn
- “Hallucinating Pluto” by The B-52’s
- “After You’ve Gone” by Django Reinhardt
- “Quartet No. 4 - Child Holding a Dove” by Ned Rorem, performed by the Emerson String Quartet
- “Aranci, Datteri” from La Bohème, performed by Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stephano, Rolando Panerai, and Anna Moffo
- “Addio Querida” by Tim Sparks
- “This Hard Land” by Bruce Springsteen
- “Bringing Mary Home” by the Del McCoury Band
- “Hell Is Round the Corner” by Tricky
links for 2005-01-22
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A great flash interface for organizing travel photos.
links for 2005-01-20
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Should you switch doors or stay?
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How to take advantage of online casino bonuses for fun and profit.
The Obvious Solution
Bryan Caplan thinks that parents should select the number of children they will have based on microeconomic theory:
Have the number of children that maximizes average utility over your whole lifespan. When you are 30, you might feel like two children is plenty. But once you are 60, you are more likely to prefer ten sons and daughters to keep you company and keep the grandkids coming. A perfectly selfish and perfectly foresighted economic agent would strike a balance between these two states. For example, he might have four kids total - two too many at 30, six too few at 60.
I think there is a more obvious approach to the problem. Why not just have a market for children so parents can buy and sell them at various times to maximize utility at every given point?
(Via Marginal Revolution.)
links for 2005-01-19
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Easily create Flash presentations from PowerPoint.
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A useful command reference for the vi text-editor.
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Numerous tools to help make iTunes your bitch.
links for 2005-01-18
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Uhura was going to leave Star Trek, until Dr. Martin Luther King intervened.
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An interesting way to verify downloads, but what about trust?
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Perhaps the simplest way to charge for online content.
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A great way to connect a turntable directly to your computer for capture.
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A artist friend and old neighbor who is building us a dining room table.
Name Five Female Composers of the 20th Century
I’m rather amused by the firestorm over some allegedly sexist comments Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers made last Friday at an academic conference.
Schools of law and medicine are now overrun with women, who often compose a majority of the entering student body. The supposed reluctance of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks, which Summers explicitly mentioned, is not consistent with those trends. Furthermore, I find it extremely difficult to believe that the academic establishments in math and engineering actively fought the inclusion of females either more vigorously or effectively than the legal and medical establishments.
I once asked a friend who studies contemporary classical music why so few women have risen to prominence as composers in the last century. He pointed out that just as barriers to women were beginning to fall in the visual arts, the musical establishment embraced intensely structured and mathematical artistic movements such as serialism.
Maybe this is just the perpetuation of a stereotype, but perhaps there is a fundamental difference in the types of thinking at which men and women tend to excel. Unfortunately, we’ll never really know know if the people raising the questions continue to be silenced in the name of political correctness.
links for 2005-01-17
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Testing the limits of the US Postal Service.
links for 2005-01-14
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In which the genius discusses his work method and In the Shadow of No Towers.
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
Felipe Rose, the “American Indian attired vocalist” from the Village People, recently donated the gold record he received for “Y.M.C.A.” to the newly dedicated National Museum of the American Indian.
In other news, Prince Harry is apparently making a go at bringing down what remains of the British monarchy all by himself. Just look at his recent decision to wear a Nazi uniform to a costume party.
links for 2005-01-12
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Predictions from a 1961 issue of Weekend Magazine.
Creative CEO Slams iPod Shuffle
A fair point regarding Apple’s new iPod Shuffle, from Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo, as reported on Engadget:
We’re expecting a good fight but they’re coming out with something that’s five generations older. It’s our first generation MuVo One product feature, without display, just have a (shuffle feature). We had that–that’s a four-year-old product. So I think the whole industry will just laugh at it, because the flash people–it’s worse than the cheapest Chinese player. Even the cheap, cheap Chinese brand today has display and has FM. They don’t have this kind of thing, and they expect to come out with a fight; I think it’s a non-starter to begin with.
Irrespective, I still think Apple is going to stomp the competition with this one. People aren’t buying MP3 players based on features.
We just launched a [new site][1] over Christmas for my Dad’s financial planning firm back home. If you’re in the Chicago area and in need of Fee-Only financial planning services, be sure to give them a call. [1]: http://www.reasonfinancial.com
