GLAD TO BE OF HELP: Reader Scott Houston writes:
You mentioned “House of Cards” the other day on the blog so my wife and I tried it out. Yet another great call. Scalzi, Stross, Volokh, Jacobson, Meade, Barnett, Den Beste, Amazon Prime, LuckyGunner, Helen’s Page, BILL WHITTLE(!)
A hearty “Thank you!” for many great years.
Thanks for reading.
SCIENCE: When Women Outearn Their Husbands.
While close to 50 percent of wives and husbands report being very happily married, both spouses are 6 percentage points less likely to report a “very happy” marriage when the wife earns more. They’re 8 percentage points more likely to report marital troubles in the past year and 6 percentage points more likely to have discussed separating in the past year.
A woman outearning her husband could even doom the marriage, as the researchers report this “increases the likelihood of divorce by 50 percent.”
Read the whole thing. So is this just a cultural thing, or is it a hardwired tendency for female hypergamy?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Marriage Makes You Gain Weight. Actually, the Insta-Wife weighs less now than when we got married.
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Electronics.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 3 Tips for ‘Owning’ Your Name on Google’s First-Page Results. “Don’t let other people control your online reputation. These easy steps can help you dominate Google search results for your name.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Brave New World.
THE BEERCADE MACHINE rewards winners with free beer.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: Four Years In an Attic: The Strange Exile of David Lim.
WHEN RETRO IS PROFITABLE: “Today, mechanical-driven wristwatches account for only about 20% of the global watch industry, but they are its most profitable segment.” Plus, after the EMP attack or Carrington Event, you’ll still know what time it is!
AT AMAZON, a Brother laser printer for $69.00. I’ve had a similar model for a while and it’s an excellent printer.
Also, the Lethal Weapon collection on Blu-Ray for $36.99 (54% off).
SO WHY EVEN TRY? If Higgs Boson Calculations Are Right, A Catastrophic ‘Bubble’ Could End Universe.
“It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable. At some point, billions of years from now, it’s all going to be wiped out.”
He said the parameters for our universe, including the Higgs mass value as well as the mass of another subatomic particle known as the top quark, suggest that we’re just at the edge of stability, in a “metastable” state. Physicists have been contemplating such a possibility for more than 30 years. Back in 1982, physicists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek wrote in Nature that “without warning, a bubble of true vacuum could nucleate somewhere in the universe and move outwards at the speed of light, and before we realized what swept by us our protons would decay away.”
Advertise | AdChoicesLykken put it slightly differently: “The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us.”
That alternate universe would be “much more boring,” Lykken said. Which led him to ask a philosophical question: “Why do we live in a universe that’s just on the edge of stability?” He wondered whether a universe has to be near the danger zone to produce galaxies, stars, planets … and life.
Even Hill found it interesting that the parameters of particle physics put our universe right along the critical line. “That’s something new, which we didn’t know before, and which leads some of us to that there’s something else coming,” Hill said.
Oh, wait, the physicists haven’t lost faith in the future: “To get the exact number, we need more funding.”
“ANOTHER SLEAZY DEAL” involving U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.
I’ve lost my faith in Boston’s federal court and U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.
Yesterday, former Chelsea Housing Authority Director Michael McLaughlin pleaded guilty to shafting both taxpayers and Chelsea’s poor by knowingly lying about his salary, which ballooned from $77,000 in 2000 to $366,000 in 2011.
His motive, said his lawyer: money. His jail time: possibly none, according to the plea deal McLaughlin worked out with Ortiz’s office.
Yet last month, computer prodigy Aaron Swartz took his own life after prosecutors in Ortiz’s office threatened him with multiple years in jail for downloading academic journals from an MIT computer system.
His motive: to make these journals available free.
His threatened jail time: up to 50 years.
It’s called prosecutorial discretion. Some of us think it needs more accountability.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I just found out my wife and I came from the same sperm donor.
HOW BIG BUSINESSES ARE stymieing 3D printer innovation. It’s a disruptive innovation. They don’t want to be disrupted.
WHITNEY CAUDILL: The Dreaded Question: Why Aren’t You Married?
GREEN THOUGHTS: The Environmental Dangers of Not Building Keystone XL. “Opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline worry that if the crude coming down from Canada’s oil sands were to spill, it could be an ecological disaster for areas of the Midwest through which the line would run, which are also home to precious groundwater sources. But if Keystone is killed, the oil still will flow—and more of it might be transported by ship through dangerous waters.”
100 KINDLE BOOKS, for $3.99 or less.
DATING ADVICE FROM AMY ALKON.
IN THE MAIL: From Aaron Clarey, Enjoy the Decline.
VIDEO: Meet The Fastest-Growing Demographic Among Gun Owners: Women. “Between 2005 and 2013, the percentage of women in America owning a firearm jumped from 13% to 23%, and women continue to demand more personal protection. In a relatively balanced report, NBC highlights a recent case in which a woman shot an intruder to protect herself and her six-year-old son.” This bodes poorly for gun control, given that nothing that middle class white women do can be illegal.
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