Jun 2015

Combating Hunger in Developing Countries

I can't remember how I ran into it, but I found a post on Facebook about how the local food movement is actually bad for the environment and that massively industrialized agribusiness is the best model for feeding the world's hungry.

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Jun 2

Changing Mind and Fabricating Data

A few weeks ago I was listening to This American Life in the car with ﾐA彡 about how canvassers supposedly changed the minds of people regarding marriage equality.

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Jun 3

Hot Hands

Scientists dismissed "hot streaks" in sports for decades. They were wrong. • Vox • 2013 Jun 3

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Jun 3

Ian Malcolm and GMOs

As background, I'm not one of those anti-science anti-GMO activists who think that GMOs are going to kill us all in some unspecified genetically-engineered bioapocalypse. But neither am I some breathless biotech cheerleader who thinks that GMOs are the only way to prevent a world population crash due to global mass starvation and that anyone who opposes GMOs is de facto anti-science. (For one thing, the simple Malthusian model that predicts unlimited exponential growth until resources run out is unrealistic. Verhulst's sigmoidal curve from the logistic equation is a more realistic way to model population growth, but that never really enters into arguments on Facebook anyway.)

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Jun 4

Google vs. Flash

On the road towards the complete obsolescence of Flash? I suppose that's probably too much to ask.

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Jun 5

Love in the Time of the Internet

While I did meet ﾐA彡 through a dating app, I didn't really use dating apps for anything more than remote idle amusement. (As Aziz Ansari puts it, "You can stand in line at the grocery store and swipe through 60 people’s faces on Tinder while you wait to buy hamburger buns.") Aside from the MySpace era (i.e., the ancient days of yore), I have never gone on a date with anyone else IRL after meeting them online. But, to be honest, in general, I have never really dated.

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Jun 8

Unfinished

I like to think that I know how to build (very specific, mostly useless) things. How to put things together in a playful (and sometimes even artistic) way.

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Jun 9

Supersymmetry vs. Empiricism

A Crisis at the Edge of Physics • 2015 Jun 5 • Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser • NYT • The Opinion Pages

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Jun 9

The Erosion of the Doctor-Patient Relationship in the U.S. health care system

There are some deep cultural problems that underlie the brokenness of the health care system in the U.S.

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Jun 18

Visions

I sat on the sand at Playa del Rey yesterday and closed my eyes. For whatever reason, I haven't been feeling well-rested lately. I mean, sure, I've been sleeping 4½ to 5½ hours a night, so that's probably not been helping. So my mind drifted off quickly.

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Jun 23

Another Time Loop

Clinton and Bush are running for president, a Jurassic movie is number 1 in theaters, and Terminator comes out next month. What year is it?!

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Jun 23

Mass Killings and Mental Illness

It’s not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males • 2015 Jun 18 • Arthur Chu • Salon

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Jun 23

Local Food

Local Food Is Still A Niche. Can It Grow Beyond That? • 2015 Jun 22 • Ezra David Romero • The Salt • What's On Your Plate • NPR

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Jun 23

The Confederacy was a Bunch of Traitors

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Jun 24

Beyond the Wall Where the Shadows Lie

Bran, Hodor, Meera, Jojen, and Coldhands are like the Frodo, Sam, and Gollum of A Song of Ice and Fire. They spend all this time wandering the wilderness for little discernible purpose and I suspect they're the most important part of the plot, but most people probably don't really care what happens to them.

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Jun 24

Corporations Should Subsidize Education

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Jun 24

Massacre in Charleston

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Jun 24

White American Terrorists

White Americans Are Biggest Terror Threat in U.S.: Study • 2015 Jun 24 • NBC News

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Jun 26

Marriage Equality

Justice Anthony Kennedy writing the majority opinion on Obergefell v. Hodges, decided 5-4 that same-sex marriage is a right

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Jun 26

The Civil War was Fought over Slavery

The States' Rights explanation is probably the most common deflection from the root cause of the war that killed the most Americans ever, more than all of the other wars the U.S. has fought combined.

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Jun 30