Ben of Ben and Alice: Here’s my try: the damage of addiction, irrespective of the narcotic, is that it replaces real life. Potheads, including some friends of mine, generally believe that marijuana is not an addictive drug. But if you check out from the real world every day, you are missing out on real life. [...]
From a lively recap of the liberal revolution (youth movement) in Iran and what Western states can do to help it: See for example how an attempt by the regime to smear an opposition figure by showing him in women’s clothes has backfired – the symbols used by the regime are swiftly being annexed by [...]
This “disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition…is…the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” Those are not my words. They were written by Adam Smith, who regarded the likelihood that [...]
I’ve worn all sorts of ridiculous outfits to stay warm at home. For example: But wearing a blanket as clothing strikes me as more than just an indulgence. Are Snuggies another sign that too few Americans live in energy efficient homes?
I found this to be refreshingly counterintuitive: Everyone knows I am a defender of theocratic government, although not in the current form. The difference lies in the fact that I intended for the people to choose the jurist and supervise his work… I now feel ashamed of the tyranny conducted under this banner. What we [...]
Seinfeld famously explored the social meaning of speed dial. Who has explored the mores of the ringtone? (The “secret lovers” ad for T-Mobile notwithstanding.)
Games that spit out inane status updates will be the death of Facebook as a social messaging tool. It may very well thrive as a gaming platform — and, perhaps, it was always destined to become one. What is “poke” if not a game of tag?
the browser is one of the most useful sites I have found in the last year.
Italy, you never cease to dismay me: Operation White Christmas.
My mother-in-law remembers as a child her mother setting aside a few kernels of corn in early November and placing them in water so that they would germinate by Christmas and could thus be used as decorations for a nativity scene. We are surprised by how quickly time passes. “Is it really Christmas again, already?” [...]
Arete on Wikipedia.
Corruption in Russia – norms in China + clueless European and US consumers = massive illegal logging.
An entertaining and spirited critique of President Obama by Drew Westen.
The NYT on the psychology of restaurant menus: Tabla is just one of the many restaurants around the country that are feverishly revising their menus. Pounded by the recession, they are hoping that some magic combination of prices, adjectives, fonts, type sizes, ink colors and placement on the page can coax diners into spending a [...]
We literally do not know where we are in Afghanistan. via Yves Smith
The excellent every day is the same dream has been making the rounds online this week. It’s a very modest experiment but one yields has rich results; yet more proof that the future of narrative is interactive. With movies and television, the actors are the hook that brings the viewer along. With “games,” the hook [...]
Reading a mostly lame set of predictions for the future, I came across this: “Virtual reality – Glasses which show you a world that isn’t there.” That’s exactly wrong. The drive to realize “Virtual Reality” is not to escape into a world that doesn’t exist but to hone in on the one that does; it’s [...]
From a fascinating discussion of the moral dimension of our economic collapse, Steve Randy Waldman: One group of people who did not violate traditional norms during the course of the credit bubble is the ordinary homebuyer who bought at the top of the market without forming an opinion on valuation, trusting market prices and professional [...]
Mark Lynas: Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying [...]
Avatar is as close to perfect as a movie gets – and certainly one that is oriented, by market forces, for a PG-13 release. Others will do a much better job assessing the movie’s many gifts to our culture (e.g., in terms of technique, it leaves the uncanny valley far, far behind) so I want to [...]
It’s no Prime Minister’s Questions but, edited, the following performance is pretty entertaining. Senator Al Franken arguing on behalf of the reality-based community: I know Franken as a comedian (I’m old enough to remember “Doggone it, people like me.”) so I’m primed to experience what he says as entertainment. That prejudice or, in marketing terms, [...]
Hybrids are difficult. Perhaps, even impossible. Take, for instance, President Barack Obama. He is a white man and a black man. But to his detractors on the far right, he is all Black – indeed, the grossest caricature of an African-American, an exotic African from the distant past. Because President Obama is quite literally neither black [...]
From an excellent interview: SPIEGEL: The US has not yet instituted any kind of reform policy. What we see is the government and the Federal Reserve pouring money into the economy. If one looks beyond that money, one sees that the economy is in fact still shrinking. Volcker: What should I say? That’s right. We [...]
Matthew Yglesias responds to (or dispenses with) Matt Taibbi’s latest essay on President Obama: Matt Taibbi has the latest in the endless series of articles and blog posts by everyone under the sun claiming everything in the world would be great if only Barack Obama were more left-wing. Taibbi is a much better writer than [...]
Writer Charlie Stross asks his readers to design a society that could survive a thousand year journey across space. Many of the responses are intriguing, especially those that are pregnant with possibilities. For example: Chop it up into 5 or 10 distinct physically societies and do everything you can to make sure they don’t have [...]
Just passing that on. via Jon Gruber.
Lindsey Adelman makes beautiful lighting. She also teaches visitors how to reproduce her own works in a detailed PDF document supplemented by links to online retailers of the necessary parts. Warhol is praised (and prized) for making unique art in the age of mechanical reproduction, artists like Adelman are to be credited for adapting to the [...]
An interesting proposition, among many: In the Internet age, a student’s work is just as easily available to a professor on either coast. Why then would a professor be grading his or her own students? It is an invitation to dishonesty. A student who has learned nothing will not receive an F because the professor [...]
To have been in that room: The former US Federal Reserve chairman told an audience that included some of the world’s most senior financiers that their industry’s “single most important” contribution in the last 25 years has been automatic telling machines, which he said had at least proved “useful”. Echoing FSA chairman Lord Turner’s comments [...]
Marketing copy for millionaires: The blue map, curving into the black distance is familiar but has none of the usual marked boundaries. The incredibly narrow ribbon of atmosphere looks worryingly fragile. What you are looking at is the source of everything it means to be human, and it is home.
Vichy France, quite the time and place: German officers, always in impeccable civilian clothes, were loyal clients of the brothel, as were agents of the Gestapo, whose torture chambers on the rue Lauriston were conveniently nearby. If this mélange was not strange enough, Mme Billy’s establishment was frequented by members of the French resistance too. Only [...]
Bin Laden expected to die. His last will and testament, written on December 14, reflected his fatalism. “Allah commended to us that when death approaches any of us that we make a bequest to parents and next of kin and to Muslims as a whole,” he wrote, according to a copy of the will that [...]
An almost technical, brief, eye-opening account of how Sharia law affects financial deals in Dubai in the Financial Times. From a slow-burning diatribe in the Independent: “The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems,” Karen says at last. “Nothing. This isn’t a city, it’s a con-job. They lure [...]
David Rock’s lecture (video) Your Brain at Work is wonderful. No one, not one of us, really wants to think and being asked to do so is experienced as a threat. Apply this to art, politics, relationships, etc. (via MeFi)