And try to imagine the horror . . . or just go to http://finnsmulders.com/.
If you can’t get enough, here are some bloopers.
September 22, 2009
The Guild, Season 3 Episode 4
September 16, 2009
The Guild, Season 3 Episode 3
Comments Off on The Guild, Season 3 Episode 3
September 5, 2009
Obsession takes many forms
I guess the “collector” urge can manifest itself in almost any form. As proof, here’s iPhone case collector “WyldCeltic” and her collection of cases:
And I was feeling guilty about thinking of getting a second case for my iPhone.
Oh, and on the general topic of the iPhone, you AT&T haters may be blaming the wrong group for all the problems:
For years, AT&T’s iPhone customers have endured dropped calls, slow connections, and crippled service, especially in crowded areas such as New York and San Francisco. And for this, customers pay a higher rate than most other phone users. If you own the iPhone, hating AT&T is practically written into the two-year service contract.
I think AT&T’s getting a raw deal. The company has to shoulder the complaints of people who use their data plans way more than anyone else, sucking up bad blood while other carriers are viewed as knights in shining armor. Oh sure, let’s fantasize about a Verizon Wireless iPhone, but are we sure that Verizon can handle iPhone users, and the ten times more traffic they consume than other smartphone owners?
Comments Off on Obsession takes many forms
September 1, 2009
The suffering . . . the suffering
Dark Water Muse has a terrible weekend:
Offline nobody can hear you scream
Like, Oh My God! WTF!? You so totally won’t believe what I’m going to tell you.
I lost my 5mbs DSL home internet connection sometime after 14:43 and before 15:00 on Friday August 28, 2009.
Now, it’s 19:29 Monday August 31, 2009. Still nothing. I’ve had a high speed DSL connection since the mid-90’s. I was among Bell Sympatico’s earliest subscribers. I shouldn’t be exposed to this kind of thing now. It’s unnatural. It’s the 21st century.
I’ve been forced to endure this for over three days. Can you imagine?
The horror.
The inhumanity.
The uncertainty of where to rest my thumbs if not on the space bar.
I only just managed to survive throughout the weekend. I ate fresh grubs and tender bamboo shoots until my fourth floor apartment condo neighbors caught me and forced me back into my apartment by whacking me with a broomstick. So, at least part of my weekend was normal.
Comments Off on The suffering . . . the suffering
August 21, 2009
QotD: Heroin as a treatment for addiction
Stripped of the medicalese, what the researchers found is that if you give heroin addicts heroin, they will keep coming back for more. They will also be less likely to buy heroin on the street or commit crimes to support their habit. These findings, similar to the results of European studies, are not exactly surprising. The puzzling thing is that we’re asked to pretend that heroin is a “treatment” for heroin addiction. “Study Backs Heroin to Treat Addiction,” says the headline over a New York Times story that begins, “The safest and most effective treatment for hard-core heroin addicts who fail to control their habit using methadone or other treatments may be their drug of choice, in prescription form.”
What the study actually shows is that the problems associated with heroin addiction are largely caused by prohibition, which creates a black market in which prices are artificially high, quality is unreliable, and obtaining the drug means risking arrest and associating with possibly violent criminals. The drug laws also encourage injection by making heroin much more expensive that it would otherwise be and foster unsanitary, disease-spreading injection practices by treating syringes and needles as illegal drug paraphernalia. When you take these dangers out of the equation, regular use of heroin is safe enough that it can qualify as a “treatment” dispensed by men in white coats. That rather startling fact should cause people to question not just current addiction treatment practices but the morality of trying to save people from themselves by making their lives miserable.
Jacob Sullum, “This Just In: Heroin Addicts Like Heroin”, Hit and Run, 2009-08-21
Comments Off on QotD: Heroin as a treatment for addiction
August 8, 2009
Dieting and obesity
Megan McArdle had an interesting-but-lengthy post earlier this week on obesity and both the scientific and political issues surrounding it:
I don’t agree with Paul Campos about everything, but I do agree with some of his core propositions:
- Study after study shows that most people are unable to lose more than a small percentage of their body weight and keep it off without major surgery
- There is evidence to show that this is physiologic rather than pyschological — it is nearly impossible for very heavy people to simply “eat less and exercise more” to a “normal” weight (given that 2/3 of the country is overweight or obese, normal weights, aren’t.)
- The fact that this often operates through the appetite system does not mean it’s “all in their heads” or a lack of willpower. Appetite is a signal as powerful as thirst or pain. Most people can’t ignore it.
- The largest environmental determinant of this trend is probably simply cheaper, tastier calories, which will be very hard to reverse
[. . .]
This really is a pattern that you see over and over again in obesity research. It’s as if researchers are terrified to say anything that might be viewed as giving people license to get fat. The CDC researcher who sharply revised downward the estimates of deaths from obesity, finding that overweight was actually healthier, fell all over herself proclaiming that of course, this didn’t account for quality of life. Because we know that a woman who weighs 160 pounds couldn’t possibly have a decent quality of life . . . ?
[. . .]
I know, I know . . . it’s for the children! I am very fond of children. But I do not actually think that they are some sort of master race in whose name anything at all can be justified. And if I did, I’d be a lot more worried about, oh, abortion, than McDonalds ads.
Two final points. Everyone likes to focus on their favorite boogeymen. To read a left-wing blog, you’d think that about 95% of the leading cause of obesity was agribusiness, chain restaurants, and automobiles. To read a right-wing paper, it’s all the infamous lack of self-control displayed by the poor.
But in fact, most of the things effecting kids are side effects of other efforts a lot of people are rather fond of. Processed foods and chain restaurants have exploded in the last two decades because Mom spends more time outside the home, generating more market income, and less time for home cooked meals. Kids exercise less not because crime is higher, or even because we’ve become more suburban, but because they’re no longer allowed to operate unsupervised until they’re quite old, and Mom and Dad both work. Schools don’t have P/E because they’re using the time to teach kids to read. Maybe those were bad tradeoffs. But they’re not irrational tradeoffs, and switching them back is not costless.
One thing Megan doesn’t touch on in the post (although she had done in earlier posts on this topic) is that metabolic changes over individuals’ lifetimes can actively sabotage good intentions on maintaining a given weight. Up until my late 20s, I could lose weight just by thinking about it, and then suddenly in my early 30s, I discovered that taking weight off was something that now needed a more conscious effort. Now I’m finding it even tougher to manage my weight (and also harder to make and take advantage of opportunities to get some exercise). My innate laziness and enjoyment of good food and good wine can usuallyalways overwhelm any urge to go do something healthy instead.
And no, I didn’t copy the entire post . . . there’s lots more, and it’s all worth reading.
July 17, 2009
How addicted to the internet are you?
Lore Sjoberg provides you with an easy checklist to discover how bad your addiction may be:
If the ancient Egyptians had the internet, there would have been 11 plagues in Exodus, with “unreliable DSL” tucked in between the frogs and the lice.
It’s a pain when your DSL goes down, but the bright side is that it gives you a chance to rate yourself on the Internet Dependency Scale. Just compare your actions to those listed below and you’ll know what sort of pathetic digital symbiont you really are.
Stage 1 Internet Dependency
Immediate reaction: Check the wires, see if you can steal a neighbor’s Wi-Fi, then get up and do something else.
What you do while waiting for the connection to come back: Read a book, watch a movie, go for a walk. Is this a trick question?
If it doesn’t come back in an hour: Call your service provider, then go back to whatever you were doing.
(Cross-posted to the old blog, http://bolditalic.com/quotulatiousness_archive/005592.html.)
Comments Off on How addicted to the internet are you?
July 14, 2009
Random links of possible interest
Just a few links to provide you with click-therapy:
- China decides that electro-shock therapy isn’t appropriate for treating “internet addiction”. No word on whether they’ve invested in Tasers instead.
- Simona Halep ignores an online petition and decides to promote her sports career over the interests of thousand of pasty internet geeks.
- Apollo 11 experience recreated on the web.
- I can’t possibly improve on this article’s title: Pic of the Day (Mid-1930s’ Edition): Economic Suicide Girls Get Tattooed For the NRA!
Sure hope those were temporary tattoos!
- Tim Cavanaugh fisks Timothy Geithner.
- Auto Czar abdicates.
- An over-the-top analysis of why there is a Gender Gap among American voters (link via Gerard Van der Leun).
- Survey shows that one in six people too dumb to be allowed out on the internet by themselves.
(Cross-posted to the old blog, http://bolditalic.com/quotulatiousness_archive/005579.html.)
Comments Off on Random links of possible interest
