The deep thinkers at Lee Valley Tools have come up with a brilliant solution to a perennial woodworking problem:
H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, who said “I’d like to see someone do a legitimate motion study on this and prove that it would actually work”.
In The New Yorker, Tom O’Donnell goes on the road with the hardworking cops of the LPD:
I was shooting heroin and reading The Fountainhead in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole 474 million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down… provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said, “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
H/T to Walter Olson:
The New Yorker correctly tagged this as libertarian satire, Salon would have run it as a documentary [h/t D.H.] http://t.co/oZa3SLVCMg
— Walter Olson (@walterolson) April 1, 2014
Published on 1 Apr 2014
Effective today, WestJet is changing the way we display our flight schedules, switching from our current system of “a.m.” and “p.m.” to metric time. For more information visit http://fly.ws/Metric-time.
From the official website:
WestJet converts to metric time.
Concerned about guest confusion, airline changes schedule display system.WestJet announced it is changing the way it displays its flight schedule, switching from its current system of “a.m.” and “p.m.” to metric time effective immediately.
“We hope that by converting our flight schedule to metric time, it will simplify things for our guests and ensure they arrive for their flights with lots of time to spare,” said Richard Bartrem.
How to calculate your flight’s departure in metric time:
- Take your departure time in 24-hour time. Represented as HR:MIN.
- Multiply the HR by 60.
- Add the MIN.
- Take the total and divide by 1.44.
(HR x 60) + MIN = X / 1.44 = New metric flight time (in milliminutes)
Sample calculation:
5:42 pm = 17:42
(17 x 60) + 42 = 1062 / 1.44 = 737 milliminutes
Published on 28 Mar 2014
Kim Jong Il, who was the supreme leader of North Korea until his death in 2011, was a leading authority on gymnastics, cinema, literature, war, cooking, and the arts. He wrote 1,400 works when he was in college, including a senior thesis that was an achievement comparable to Columbus’ discovery of America. He revolutionized the opera, personally discovered that Paleolithic man originated on the Korean Peninsula, and came up with a theory of art that was as impactful on modern culture as the Copernican Revolution. Why did the supreme leader always wear sunglasses? That’s because his eyes were constantly bloodshot from staying up all night figuring out ways to help his country.
These are details from celebrity ghostwriter (and former editor of Overheard in New York) Michael Malice’s new book Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, a strange, tragic, and humorous first-person account of the supreme leader’s life. On March 18, 2014, at an event held at New York City’s Museum of Sex and sponsored by the Reason Foundation, The New York Times columnist John Tierney sat down with Malice to discuss the book.
Highlights from the event included a discussion of how Malice came to write Dear Reader (1:28); why Kim Jong Il is despised by North Koreans (7:00); how North Koreans are forced to engage in regular self-criticism sessions in which they’re denounced by their peers (9:00); why it was a surprise that Kim Jong Il succeeded his father, Kim Il-sung (12:00); why there’s no hope that political change will come to North Korea anytime soon (20:20); Ayn Rand’s influence on Malice (23:20); why Kim Jong Il hated the Mona Lisa (27:15); an example of a North Korean joke (29:15); why Malice thinks the media’s coverage of Dennis Rodman’s relationship with Kim Jong Un is deplorable (31:35); the story behind the 1987 bombing of Flight 858 by North Korean agents (33:20); the origins of the Korean famine (41:00); Kim Jong Il’s “spot on critiques of U.S. foreign policy” (42:00); why North Korea allows its citizens to reunite with family members from South Korea (43:30); the relationship between China and North Korea (50:00); and North Korea’s nuclear capabilities (51:15).
For more on Malice’s time in North Korea researching the book, read his account from the August/September 2013 issue of Reason.
P.J. O’Rourke finally made his mom proud by filing a brief of Amici Curiae to the US Supreme Court:
Ilya Shapiro, with a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, is Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at Cato and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He often files amicus briefs, especially in cases where constitutionally guaranteed rights are imperiled. But these briefs are serious in tone even though Ilya is funny in person.
He’s also self-effacing, saying, “There are people who know more about Constitutional law than I do, and there are people who are funnier than I am, but I do occupy the very small area of overlap in that Venn diagram.”
The Venn diagram seemed like the only proper approach to a law that would make you a criminal in Ohio for saying that Buckeye president William Howard Taft was so fat his wife had to grease the doorframe and tell him there was a banana cream pie in the Blue Room to get him into the White House.
The fight-a-laugh-with-a-laugh brief was Cato Legal Associate Gabriel Latner’s idea. He wrote the first draft. Cato Research Fellow Trevor Burrus added research. And more jokes. Then Ilya Shapiro took over. I was asked to read it and give it my endorsement because I am an expert on being run out of Ohio. Ask my mother.
Politico posted a condensed version of the brief, and I shared the byline with Ilya. On the Above the Law blog David Lat called it the “Best Amicus Brief Ever.” (Albeit that’s a low “bar” — notice how I casually toss in legal jokes now that I’m arguing a case before the Supreme Court.) And a lawyer friend of mine congratulated me on what he said was the first legal brief in history to go viral.
Emma Pierson does a bit of statistical analysis of some of Shakespeare’s plays and discovers that some of the play names are rather misleading, at least in terms of romantic dialogue:
More than 400 years after Shakespeare wrote it, we can now say that Romeo and Juliet has the wrong name. Perhaps the play should be called Juliet and Her Nurse, which isn’t nearly as sexy, or Romeo and Benvolio, which has a whole different connotation.
I discovered this by writing a computer program to count how many lines each pair of characters in Romeo and Juliet spoke to each other,1 with the expectation that the lovers in the greatest love story of all time would speak more than any other pair. I wanted Romeo and Juliet to end up together — if they couldn’t in the play, at least they could in my analysis — but the math paid no heed to my desires. Juliet speaks more to her nurse than she does to Romeo; Romeo speaks more to Benvolio than he does to Juliet. Romeo gets a larger share of attention from his friends (Benvolio and Mercutio) and even his enemies (Tybalt) than he does from Juliet; Juliet gets a larger share of attention from her nurse and her mother than she does from Romeo. The two appear together in only five scenes out of 25. We all knew that this wasn’t a play predicated on deep interactions between the two protagonists, but still.
I’m blaming Romeo for this lack of communication. Juliet speaks 155 lines to him, and he speaks only 101 to her. His reticence toward Juliet is particularly inexcusable when you consider that Romeo spends more time talking than anyone else in the play. (He spends only one-sixth of his time in conversation with the supposed love of his life.) One might be tempted to blame this on the nature of the plot; of course the lovers have no chance to converse, kept apart as they are by the loathing of their families! But when I analyzed the script of a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet — West Side Story — I found that Tony and Maria interacted more in the script than did any other pair.
All this got me thinking: Do any of Shakespeare’s lovers actually, you know, talk to each other? If Romeo and Juliet don’t, what hope do the rest of them have?
Update, 28 March: Chateau Heartiste says that this study shows that pick-up artists and “game” practitioners are right and also proves that “Everything important you need to know about men and women you can find in the works of Shakespeare”.
Published on 20 Mar 2014
Remy updates the Alanis Morissette hit for a certain senior senator from California.
Approximately 2 minutes.
Written by Remy. Video and animation by Meredith Bragg. Music performed, produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Ben Karlstrom.
For full text, links, downloadable versions and more, go to: http://reason.com/reasontv/2014/03/20/remy-isnt-it-ironic.
Lyrics:
A Senator lady
Got the news one day
The country’s being spied on
by the NSASo she went out defending
on each TV set
but when she found out she’d been snooped on
she got all upsetAnd isn’t it ironic?
I mean, don’t you think?It’s like you’re at Chris Brown’s
and there’s punch in the fridge
or if The Bachelor
passed a geography quizLearning Ted Kennedy
happened to be good at bridge.
And who would have thought?
It figures.Senator, this may surprise you
and the irony bites
but Congresspeople ain’t the only ones
with 4th Amendment rightsIt’s like a minimalist
who does their laundry
with All
or if Woody Allen liked to watch
Kids in the Hallit’s like FDR
got locked in a Honda Accord
a cheap healthcare plan
that you just can’t affordIf Oscar Pistorius
really hated The Doors
and who would have thought?
It figures.I heard the government
is sneaking up on you.
Life has a funny, funny way
of calling you out
calling you out.
At Gods of the Copybook Headings, Richard Anderson explains the nuts and bolts of setting up and running a federal political campaign (in this particular example, he’s discussing the Liberal Party of Canada):
In order to run a political campaign you need many people. You need a leader, who is the public face of the party and all around political Messiah. You’ll also need lots of overpaid and over credentialed back office strategists. If you’re wondering what a “strategist” does it depends on the individual and the party. Some fetch coffee and others drink that coffee. It’s an open question as to which of these two groups is the least valuable to a political campaign. My bet is on the coffee drinkers.
Beyond the Messiah and his coffee fetching / drinking entourage there are some actual technical people. There are pollsters who know something about math, admittedly just statistics rather than anything with letters and weird Greek looking symbols, but stats is a type of math so we’ll give them a pass. Then there are the IT people who design the website. There are also the communications people. In days gone by these were writers, as in people who loved and respected the English language. Today writers have been replaced by “communications specialists.” This latter group treats the English language the way a sailor treats a Marseilles whore.
The above groups are paid political operatives. Their salaries are quite pricey, since bull shitting is apparently a highly marketable skill set in modern Canada. But to run a big political campaign you need a lot more people. Someone has got to knock on doors, nail in signs, man phone banks and get insulted by angry voters. To pay all these people is beyond the resources of a Canadian political party whose annual budgets are rounding errors in most US Senatorial races. That’s why you need volunteers.
[…]
So why would an otherwise semi-rational person volunteer for a political campaign? Well there are the idealists fighting for a better world. God Bless Them. No one else will. This explains a significant portion of those who volunteer for the Conservatives and the NDP. The Liberal Party hasn’t had any principles since they buried Laurier, both figuratively and literally. A sane person no more joins the Liberal Party out of idealism than a man visits a prostitute in search of true love.
That’s two whore jokes in almost as many paragraphs. That’s quality writing people. Appreciate it.
The Grits are the party of political operatives. There are the actual paid political operatives and then there are the interns, otherwise known as volunteers. You volunteer for the Liberal Party largely because you believe that one day, should the political stars align, you too will have someone else fetch the coffee. Besides it looks good on the law school application.
BBC Radio 4 has an online edition of the old Microprose Infocom game The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
I played this game on my very first PC (a Corona PC clone with a massive 256K memory and two floppy drives). It was incredibly frustrating. I seem to remember dying a lot. I think that was the designer’s intent.
Update: Don’t know why I said it was a Microprose product, when the UI clearly states it was Infocom … senility setting in early, I guess.
John Donovan posted this image, and I wholeheartedly agree that it really would make the Facebook experience so much more enjoyable:
Update: Whoops! Forgot the link to the original source.
ESR linked to this. It’s a generator site for “social justice” that produces simulated Tumblr and blog post rants that are indistinguishable from the “real thing”:
This month’s update to the Oxford Dictionary includes the words ‘c**ted’, ‘c**ting’, ‘c**tish’ and ‘c**ty’. The expletives now join the list of 750,000 English words defined by the dictionary. ‘Twerk’ and ‘Selfie’ were added at the last update.
Along with the ‘c**ty’, the words ‘Old Etonian’, ‘Rt. Hon.’ and ‘Right Honourable’ have also been included for the first time, although the choices are believed to be unrelated.
Andre Walker, “Official: Oxford Dictionary Says You Can Get ‘C**ted’ and ‘Twerk'”, Breitbart.com, 2014-03-17
Darton Williams posted this on Google+:
This is a WWII-era political cartoon by Theodor Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss). Why is it still so relevant? Has anything actually changed for the better?
Everyone thinks America Alone is about Islam and demography, but in fact it has a whole section in it on cheese, called “The Pasteurization is Prologue”. Page 181:
I’ve never subscribed to that whole “cheese-eating surrender-monkey” sneer promoted by my National Review colleague Jonah Goldberg. As a neocon warmonger, I yield to no one in my contempt for the French, but, that said, cheese-wise I feel they have the edge.
When I’m at the lunch counter in America and I order a cheeseburger and the waitress says, “American, Swiss or Cheddar?” I can’t tell the difference. They all taste of nothing. The only difference is that the slice of alleged Swiss is full of holes, so you’re getting less nothing for your buck. Then again, the holes also taste of nothing, and they’re less fattening. But, either way, cheese is not the battleground on which to demonstrate the superiority of the American way.
Most of the American cheeses bearing European names are bland rubbery eunuch versions of the real thing. I wouldn’t mind if this were merely the market at work, but it’s not. It’s the result of Big Government, of the Brieatollahs at the United States Department of Agriculture:
In America, unpasteurized un-aged raw cheese that would be standard in any Continental fromagerie is banned. Americans, so zealous in defense of their liberties when it comes to guns, are happy to roll over for the nanny state when it comes to the cheese board… The French may be surrender monkeys on the battlefield, but they don’t throw their hands up and flee in terror just because the Brie’s a bit ripe. It’s the Americans who are the cheese-surrendering eating-monkeys — who insist, oh, no, the only way to deal with this sliver of Roquefort is to set up a rigorous ongoing Hans Blix-type inspections regime.
I’m not exaggerating about that. Nothing gets past their eyes, and everything gets pasteurized. That’s why American “cheesemakers” have to keep putting stuff into the “cheddar” — sun-dried tomatoes, red peppers, chocolate chips — to give it some taste, because the cheese itself has none. And, if you try to bring in anything that does taste of something, the US Government’s Brie Team Six seizes it:
The US fate of the bright-orange, mild-tasting French cheese has been in jeopardy for months and the Food and Drug Administration has blocked all further imports.
Why? Because US regulators determined the cantaloupe-like rind of the cheese was covered with too many cheese mites, even though the tiny bugs give mimolette its unique flavor.
No formal ban has been put in place, but 1.5 tonnes (3,300 pounds) of cheese were blocked from being imported, and nothing is going through US customs.
“No formal ban has been put in place” — because that would involve legislators passing laws in a legislature and whatnot. So they just banned it anyway.
Mark Steyn, “Live Brie or Die!” SteynOnline.com, 2014-03-13
Powered by WordPress