#WARONTECH: US Arrests Bitcoin Pioneer.
Archive for 2014
January 27, 2014
NEOTENY: Recess for grown-ups? Hottest new trend in workouts involves playground-inspired relay races and tug-of-war. Meanwhile, of course, the actual kids don’t get recess any more . . . .
WHAT PORN STARS DO when the industry shuts down. Mostly, it’s more evidence of sexism. “Porn’s enterprising female performers pursue other avenues for revenue. For example, a female performer who’s scored fame starring in porn movies can hit the road as a headliner and make money feature dancing at strip clubs across the country. And technology has proven to be the modern porn star’s best friend. Live webcam shows, subscription websites, and digital storefronts bring in extra income. . . . For men who work in porn, moratoriums are tough. The demand for male porn star strippers is minimal, and women aren’t shelling out tons of money to see guys perform sex cam shows.”
SHOCKER: School ditches rules and loses bullies.
Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing trees, riding skateboards and playing bullrush during playtime, but surprisingly the students don’t cause bedlam, the principal says.
The school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing.
Principal Bruce McLachlan rid the school of playtime rules as part of a successful university experiment.
“We want kids to be safe and to look after them, but we end up wrapping them in cotton wool when in fact they should be able to fall over.”
Letting children test themselves on a scooter during playtime could make them more aware of the dangers when getting behind the wheel of a car in high school, he said.
“When you look at our playground it looks chaotic. From an adult’s perspective, it looks like kids might get hurt, but they don’t.”
How about that?
YOU KNOW, this workout sounds an awful lot like Mark Rippetoe’s. Which means it’ll work!
GIVEN THAT EVERYTHING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DOES IS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED, I KNOW WHICH WAY TO BET: Is the Prosecution of Dinesh D’Souza Politically Motivated?
EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: Foot-Long, Sex-Crazed Snails That Pierce Tires and Devour Houses. And my usual garlic-and-butter solution is iffy: “Yes, you can eat giant African land snails. But cook them well. I mean really well. Just boil them for a month. Grill them with napalm if you have it. Because like many snails and semi-slugs, this species carries the deadly rat lungworm.”
AT AMAZON, Top Deals on Valentine’s Day Gifts.
NEW FRONTIERS IN “IRISH DEMOCRACY:” My USA Today column is on how passive resistance is killing ObamaCare and the Drug War.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The College Board Is Too Expensive For Students.
It seems odd that the College Board—a nonprofit whose CEO, David Coleman, was pulling in $750,000 as of 2012—cannot send a few numbers over the Internet for just a dollar or two, or maybe even free. Instead, I am shoveling out another $100-plus just for electronic submissions, another contribution to the swelling pockets of the College Board (annual revenue in 2011-2012: more than $750 million).
With almost complete control over the business of pre-college standardized testing, the College Board squeezes every penny it can from high-school students—or their parents. The company charges at every turn while attempting to “connect students to college success,” loading on additional fees for every missed deadline and “rush” delivery of electronically sent scores, scores that apparently otherwise take weeks to navigate the labyrinth that is the World Wide Web.
The College Board should behave more like the nonprofit it claims to be.
Most everyone in higher ed is charging too much. Because they can. I expect that’s in the process of changing, though.
AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING LIKE A BROKEN RECORD, MY KNEES HARDLY EVER HURT SINCE I STARTED DOING SQUATS: How do I prevent my knees from hurting when I descend stairs? And in my case it’s not about arthritis. Since I was a kid, I had knee pain when I was tired or ill; people said it was “growing pains” then, but I never grew out of it. I’m sure that it was instead caused by some sort of muscle imbalance, which got worse when the weaker muscle got tired. Anyway, that doesn’t happen any more.
Will squats, done properly, cure all your ills? Nope. But they’ve done a lot to correct many of my physical issues. Which also proves that you can’t just assign these problems to age, whether youth (“growing pains”) or getting older. The “you’re just getting old” diagnosis is usually a sign of a lazy doctor.
Practically-mandatory Mark Rippetoe plug here. Hey, this stuff has worked for me.
PRIVACY: Your Driving Data Can Reveal Your Routes. “Using data about when you drive, the times of your starts and stops and your speed, insurance companies may be able to also tell where you go, even without GPS.”
I WONDER IF OBAMA WILL TALK ABOUT IT IN THE STATE OF THE UNION? A Republican plan to replace ObamaCare, cover pre-existing conditions and lower costs.
OVER AT VOLOKH, Prof. Nicholas Johnson guestblogs about his new book, Negroes And The Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms.
The book chronicles a tradition of church folk, merchants, and strivers, the very best people in the community, armed and committed to the principle of individual self-defense. This black tradition of arms takes root early and ranges fully into the modern era. It is demonstrated in Frederick Douglass’s nineteenth century advice of a good revolver as the best response to slave catchers. It is evident in mature form in 1963, when Hartman Turnbow of Mississippi fought off a Klan attack with rifle fire. Turnbow considered this fully consistent with the principles of the freedom movement, explaining, “I wasn’t being non-nonviolent, I was just protectin’ my family.”
Indeed.
STEPHEN HAWKING: There Are No Black Holes. This seems like an extrapolation of stuff he’s been saying since the 1970s, though a lot of the press accounts make it sound completely new.
DON’T BLAME GERRYMANDERING for the GOP’s House dominance. “The problem for Democrats is that they have overwhelming majorities not only in the dense, poor urban centers, but also in isolated, far-flung college towns, historical mining areas and 19th-century manufacturing towns that are surrounded by and ultimately overwhelmed by rural Republicans. A motivated Democratic cartographer could produce districts that accurately reflected overall partisanship in states like these by carefully crafting the metropolitan districts and snaking districts along the historical canals and rail lines that once connected the nonmetropolitan Democratic enclaves. But such districts are unlikely to emerge by chance from a nonpartisan process. On the other hand, a Republican cartographer in these and other Midwestern states, along with some Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee, could do little to improve on the advantage bestowed by the existing human geography.”
Solution: “nonpartisan” redistricting committees made up of “motivated Demographic cartographers.” That’s how they did it in California!
IF I WERE GOING TO BLOW A LOT OF MONEY ON A NEW SPORTS CAR, WHICH I’M NOT, THIS WOULD BE IT: Test-Driving The 2015 Jaguar F-Type V-8 R Coupe. Or maybe an Audi R8.
YOU KNOW, THE LEFT REALLY DOES SEEM TO BE TURNING ON SILICON VALLEY AND THE TECH COMMUNITY: Mother Jones: How Silicon Valley Conspired to Pay Everyone Less So That CEOs Could Make More. What seems to be left out from this discussion, though, is the massive importation of low-paid coders from India and China, also to keep pay down.
HYPERREGULATION IS BAD FOR THE POOR: Wendy Bach: The Hyperregulatory State: Women, Race, Poverty and Support. In fact, the hyperrregulatory state is best for rich, mostly white men with strong political connections.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 263.
MICHAEL TOTTEN ON CUBA BEYOND HAVANA: The Lost World, Part 2.
OKAY, THIS ISN’T FROM GREG ABBOTT’S CAMPAIGN, but it’s pretty effective.
JOHN ROSENBERG: Is “Diversity” In Science Necessary? Legal?