Football, er, soccer, and promotion
For the promotion-phobics, the Premiership is a gilded fake while the Championship represents authentic football. ‘In my years as a supporter I have seen seven relegations and six promotions’, recounts Watford fan Graham Smith. ‘That is what being a football fan is all about. It is about supporting your team through thick and thin. It is about suffering the bad times and enjoying the good times. That’s why I like being a fan of a team that basically belong in the Football League rather than the Premier League. It is real football.’
"Every team wants to be promoted, right? Wrong," by Duleep Allirajah, Spiked!, May 9, 2008 [emphasis added]
More
- GolTV
- Fox Soccer Channel
- Major League Soccer (MLS)
- NY Red Bulls
- Jersey Sky Blue
- United Soccer Leagues (USL)
- Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA)
- Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS)
- US Youth Soccer
"Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn?"
In the late 1800s, a German scientist named Hermann Ebbinghaus made up lists of nonsense syllables and measured how long it took to forget and then relearn them. (Here is an example of the type of list he used: bes dek fel gup huf jeik mek meun pon daus dor gim ke4k be4p bCn hes.) In experiments of breathtaking rigor and tedium, Ebbinghaus practiced and recited from memory 2.5 nonsense syllables a second, then rested for a bit and started again. Maintaining a pace of rote mental athleticism that all students of foreign verb conjugation will regard with awe, Ebbinghaus trained this way for more than a year. Then, to show that the results he was getting weren't an accident, he repeated the entire set of experiments three years later. Finally, in 1885, he published a monograph called Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. The book became the founding classic of a new discipline.
Ebbinghaus discovered many lawlike regularities of mental life. He was the first to draw a learning curve. Among his original observations was an account of a strange phenomenon that would drive his successors half batty for the next century: the spacing effect.
Ebbinghaus showed that it's possible to dramatically improve learning by correctly spacing practice sessions. On one level, this finding is trivial; all students have been warned not to cram. But the efficiencies created by precise spacing are so large, and the improvement in performance so predictable, that from nearly the moment Ebbinghaus described the spacing effect, psychologists have been urging educators to use it to accelerate human progress. After all, there is a tremendous amount of material we might want to know. Time is short.
"Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm," by Gary Wolf, Wired, April 21, 2008
More
- SuperMemo - Super Memory: Forget about forgetting
- "SuperMemo Helps You Remember Everything Before You Forget," lifehacker, April 22, 2008
- Introduction to "Memory" Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885/1913), by Robert H. Wozniak
- SuperMemo Library
- SuperMemo and learning English
"How Roses Handle Water"
A team of chemists from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China figured out why tiny water droplets seem to get stuck to petals of red roses. Not unexpectantly, the mechanism, known as the Cassie impregnating wetting state, is a result of nanostructures ("hierarchical micropapillae" and "nanofolds") on the surface of petals.
"How Roses Handle Water," medGadget, April 29, 2008
Reminds us of the invention of Velcro by George de Mestral.
The World's Best Restaurants?
First published by Restaurant magazine in 2002 and now in its seventh year, The S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants is recognised around the world as the most credible indicator of the best places to eat on Earth.The S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants. In the US:
- 5. The French Laundry, Yountville, CA [Yelp]
- 6. Per Se, New York [Yelp]
- 17. Jean Georges, New York [Yelp]
- 20. Le Bernardin, New York [Yelp]
- 21. Alinea, Chicago [Yelp]
- 37. Chez Panisse, Berkeley [Yelp]
- 38. Charlie Trotter's, Chicago [Yelp]
- 41. Daniel, New York [Yelp]
Rounding out the top 100:
52. Nobu, New York [Yelp]
54. Masa, New York [Yelp]
63. WD-50, New York [Yelp]
85. L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, New York [Yelp]
87. L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon, Las Vegas [Yelp]
"Hillary is Dunkin Donuts, Barack is Starbucks"
Hillary is minivans and American sedans, Barack is Range Rovers and Hondas. Hillary is cross-trainers with jeans, Barack is Abercrombie and Fitch and Banana Republic. Hillary is Dunkin Donuts, Barack is Starbucks. And their supporters are equally vocal, in different ways.
"Primary concern: Nasty fight between Obama, Clinton could blow it for Democrats," by Lisa van Dusen, Edmonton Sun, April 22, 2008
John McCain is Costco.
"McCain Knows Where to Vote Shop: Costco," Washington Whispers, April 18, 2008
These Yorkies love riding on the Piaggio MP3
Useful Yorkie Stuff | Piaggio MP3
Contemporary China-bashing
Since the military suppression of the anti-China protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa last month, the focus on China’s treatment of its Tibetan population has intensified. But while it has been the West doing the focusing, the Beijing Olympics has provided the lens. Everything related to the games, as French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent threat to boycott the Olympics opening ceremony shows, has now become an opportunity for moral grandstanding, an opportunity to portray China as everything we in the West are not. The 31-mile journey of the Olympic torch, from Wembley in north-west London to Greenwich in the south-east, was to prove no exception.
Yesterday morning at the British Museum stage of the route -- one of the protest points for the campaign organisation Free Tibet -- the air was already thick with indignation.
"Grown-up politics goes up in flames: Yesterday’s public grappling with the Olympic torch shone a light on the self-satisfied, cartoonish nature of contemporary China-bashing." By Tim Black and Brendan O’Neill, spiked, April 7, 2008
The attacks on China’s boys-in-blue looks like history repeated as farce. In much of the coverage of the torch relay, commentators have talked about the ‘supine’ British government and the ‘cowardly’ Bush administration which are failing to stand up against the brutes from the East, while cheering the French protesters and the Australian government for taking the Chinese on. As in the past, the driving force behind this outbreak of China-bashing is a perception that the West is in political and social decline, and the East might take its opportunity to snuff out ‘our’ civilisation once and for all. That 15 men in tracksuits could give rise to such an hysterical, out-of-control, fin-de-siècle, prejudicial debate reveals so very much more about contemporary Western fear and irrationalism than it does about Chinese wickedness.
"The invasion of the robotic thugs: The attacks on the ‘horrible, ominous, retarded’ Chinese men guarding the Olympic flame are historical prejudice repeated as farce." By Brendan O’Neill, spiked, April 9, 2009
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is apologizing to those who were disappointed when the Olympic torch relay route was changed Wednesday. However, the mayor isn't apologizing for his decision.
Faced with thousands of anti-China protesters, San Francisco authorities pulled a last-minute switch during the torch relay yesterday. The late change rerouted the torch away from thousands who had crowded the city's waterfront to witness the flame's symbolic journey to the Beijing Games.
"San Francisco Officials Defend Torch Decision," KCBS, April 10, 2008
"Ribbon Culture"
In many respects, Ribbon Culture is an analysis of several apparently contradictory aspects of contemporary culture. The ribbon is, explains Moore, ‘both a kitsch fashion accessory, as well as an emblem that expresses empathy; it is a symbol that represents awareness, yet requires no knowledge of a cause; it appears to signal concern for others, but in fact prioritises self-expression’.
. . .
It is the commercialisation of causes, which both empties them of all content and transmits messages that are negative and misleading, that Moore sees as problematic. In seeking to understand why the individuals she interviewed wear the ribbons or wristbands that they do, Moore’s account stands out through her refusal to pander to the rhetoric of ribbon culture, which emphasises ‘awareness’, ‘caring’ and engagement with a cause. In reality, these positive rhetorical sentiments mask an anxious, self-obsessed, depoliticised culture.
"The relentless rise of the ribbons," by Jennie Bristow, a review of "Ribbon Culture" by Sarah Moore, spiked, March 2008
2008 Congressional Pig Book
The Congressional Pig Book is CAGW's annual compilation of the pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. The 2008 Pig Book identified 11,610 projects at a cost of $17.2 billion in the 12 Appropriations Acts for fiscal 2008. A "pork" project is a line-item in an appropriations bill that designates tax dollars for a specific purpose in circumvention of established budgetary procedures. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by CAGW and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition.
Citizens Against Government Waste
A pork-barrel project is a line-item in an appropriations or authorization bill that designates funds for a specific purpose in circumvention of the normal procedures for budget review. To qualify as pork, a project must meet one of seven criteria that were developed in 1991 by Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) and the Congressional Porkbusters Coalition:
- Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
- Not specifically authorized;
- Not competitively awarded;
- Not requested by the President;
- Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
- Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
- Serves only a local or special interest.
The pork label is not a subjective judgment of a project’s merit. Rather, it refers to lapses in the procedures erected by Congress to review and consider the wise expenditure of taxpayer dollars.
"All About Pork: The Abuse of Earmarks and the Needed Reforms," by Tom Finnigan, Citizens Against Government Waste, March 7, 2007
Also see CAGW's blog, The Swine Line.
For links to selected CRS Reports, legislation and articles on earmarks, see TheCapitol.Net's Federal Budget Links and Research Tools. Also see our blog posts about earmarks and OMB's Earmarks database.
Martin Hayes - St. Patrick's Day
Forget the cloying confection of Celtic Woman or the puréed folk balladry of the High Kings, two Irish imports calculated to appease the pledge-drive hunger of U.S. public television stations. If you're seeking something genuinely special in your Irish musical diet this St. Patrick's Day, look no further than the fiddling of Martin Hayes.
. . .
"For me, the genius of Irish traditional music is in the music. It endures in appeal because of melodic structure, which can be very powerful and even hypnotic."
. . .
"I think a big problem in Irish music today is a disconnect with its dance origins," he said. "If I play a reel slowly, I'm still playing it with the syncopation of set dancing in Clare. Those set-dancer rhythms echo in my head. When I play gently and reflectively, it's not about eliminating the dance. It's about reducing its ratio to the melody."
"Fearlessness and Fidelity Mark This Irish Fiddler's Art," by Earle Hitchner, The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2008
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
More
- Martin Hayes web site
- - Profile on Ceolas
- - Profile on GlobalVillageIdiot
- Album Details for Meet Paddy Canny. All-Ireland Champion: Violin - from IrishTune.info
- Tulla Ceili Band - from Set Dancing News
Bubbles: Housing and the next bubble
"In the future, scientists will learn how to convert stupidity into clean fuel."Prediction 16, "The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Business Stupidity in the 21st Century," by Scott Adams (1998).
A financial bubble is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry, a shared speculative hallucination and then a crash, followed by depression.
. . .
Because all asset hyperinflations revert to the mean, we can expect housing prices to decline roughly 38 percent from their peak as they return to something closer to the historical rate of monetary inflation. If the rate of decline stabilizes at between 6 and 7 percent each year, the correction has about six years to go before things stabilize, leaving the FIRE economy in need of $12 trillion.
. . .
There are a number of plausible candidates for the next bubble, but only a few meet all the criteria. Health care must expand to meet the needs of the aging baby boomers, but there is as yet no enabling government legislation to make way for a health-care bubble; the same holds true of the pharmaceutical industry, which could hyperinflate only if the Food and Drug Administration was gutted of its power. A second technology boom--under the rubric “Web 2.0”--is based on improvements to existing technology rather than any new discovery. The capital-intensive biotechnology industry will not inflate, as it requires too much specialized intelligence.
. . .
The next bubble must be large enough to recover the losses from the housing bubble collapse. How bad will it be? Some rough calculations: the gross market value of all enterprises needed to develop hydroelectric power, geothermal energy, nuclear energy, wind farms, solar power, and hydrogen-powered fuel-cell technology--and the infrastructure to support it--is somewhere between $2 trillion and $4 trillion; assuming the bubble can get started, the hyperinflated fictitious value could add another $12 trillion. In a hyperinflation, infrastructure upgrades will accelerate, with plenty of opportunity for big government contractors fleeing the declining market in Iraq. Thus, we can expect to see the creation of another $8 trillion in fictitious value, which gives us an estimate of $20 trillion in speculative wealth, money that inevitably will be employed to increase share prices rather than to deliver “energy security.” When the bubble finally bursts, we will be left to mop up after yet another devastated industry. FIRE, meanwhile, will already be engineering its next opportunity. Given the current state of our economy, the only thing worse than a new bubble would be its absence.
There is one industry that fits the bill: alternative energy, the development of more energy-efficient products, along with viable alternatives to oil, including wind, solar, and geothermal power, along with the use of nuclear energy to produce sustainable oil substitutes, such as liquefied hydrogen from water. Indeed, the next bubble is already being branded. Wired magazine, returning to its roots in boosterism, put ethanol on the cover of its October 2007 issue, advising its readers to forget oil; NBC had a “Green Week” in November 2007, with themed shows beating away at an ecological message and Al Gore making a guest appearance on the sitcom 30 Rock. Improbably, Gore threatens to become the poster boy for the new new new economy: he has joined the legendary venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which assisted at the births of Amazon.com and Google, to oversee the “climate change solutions group,” thus providing a massive dose of Nobel Prize–winning credibility that will be most useful when its first alternative-energy investments are taken public before a credulous mob. Other ventures--Lazard Capital Markets, Generation Investment Management, Nth Power, EnerTech Capital, and Battery Ventures--are funding an array of startups working on improvements to solar cells, to biofuels production, to batteries, to “energy management” software, and so on.
"The next bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash," by Eric Janszen, Harper's, February 2008 (footnotes omitted)
More
- Web 2.0 - wikipedia
- "Oil Price Bubble? Supply is up, demand is down, yet the price is soaring. Here's why." By Ronald Bailey, reasononline, March 12, 2008
- "Those who do not know history..." by Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution, March 11, 2008
- "The Energy Future: Scenarios," by Arnold Kling, TCS Daily, March 6, 2008
- "Was there a Housing Bubble?" by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution, February 13, 2008
- "Leaks in the alternative-energy bubble," by Adam Lashinsky, Fortune, January 3, 2008
- "Bubble Energy?" by Mark Mills, Forbes, October 2007
- "Venture Capital Rushes Into Alternative Energy," by Matthew Wald, The New York Times, April 30, 2007
- "The Dot-Com Energy Boost," by Daniel Gross, The Washington Post, July 23, 2006
- "Bubble Schmubble," by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution, June 26, 2005
Posted March 13, 2008 06:37 AM · Permalink
· Caught Our Eye
, Caution
· Comments (0)
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Night owl or morning person? Can't sleep?
Night owls are more creative, more flexible and more caffeinated, while morning people are healthier, more conscientious and more emotionally stable, studies have found. So, with the help of several experts, our columnist -- and longtime night owl -- has been working to reset her biological clock.
"Learning to Live Like an Early Bird," by Melinda Beck, The Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2008
More
- Sleep deprivation - Wikipedia
- National Sleep Foundation
- "Sleep Habits: More Important Than You Think: Chronic Sleep Deprivation May Harm Health," by Michael J. Breus, WebMD
- "How to Become an Early Riser," by Steve Pavlina, May 23, 2005
- "How to Become an Early Riser," from eConsultant
- "How I Became an Early Riser," from zenhabits, January 31, 2007
Chinese Restaurants in America
Chef's Ma Paul Tofu (Wu Liang Ye Restaurant, NYC)
What most Americans know as Chinese food would be more properly termed American Chinese food, a category that includes chop suey and lemon chicken, dishes born in the U.S. Given, as Lee points out, that there are about 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., "more than the number of McDonald's, Burger Kings, and KFCs combined," Chinese food might be our national cuisine. "Our benchmark for Americanness is apple pie," she writes. "But ask yourself. How often do you eat apple pie? How often do you eat Chinese food?"
Chinese restaurants are ubiquitous, usually taking the form of urban carryout shops and suburban buffets. But how did these restaurants flourish across the American landscape? For the most part they are independently run, so how is it they seem to share similar characteristics, such as gigantic menus filled with egg rolls, garish red sweet and sour sauce, and General Tso's chicken?
Each chapter answers these questions and more, examining soy sauce, the distinctive shape of takeout boxes favored by Chinese restaurants, and fortune cookies, which Lee discovers are Japanese in origin.
"West eats East: A fact-filled look at Chinese food, which just might be America's national cuisine," by Bich Minh Nguyen, ChicagoTribune.com, March 1, 2008
More
- Author's blog: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
- Chinese Restaurants on Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide
- Chinese Restaurants on A Guy in New York
- "Review: 'The Fortune Cookie Chronicles'," by Heller McAlpin, Special to Newsday, March 2, 2008
- "Solving a Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Cookie," by Jennifer 8. Lee, The New York Times, January 16, 2008
Posted March 3, 2008 08:47 AM · Permalink
· Caught Our Eye
, Chinese
, Food Blogs
· Comments (0)
· TrackBack (0)
Campus rape
The campus rape industry’s central tenet is that one-quarter of all college girls will be raped or be the targets of attempted rape by the end of their college years (completed rapes outnumbering attempted rapes by a ratio of about three to two). The girls’ assailants are not terrifying strangers grabbing them in dark alleys but the guys sitting next to them in class or at the cafeteria.
. . .
If the one-in-four statistic is correct--it is sometimes modified to “one-in-five to one-in-four”--campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. No crime, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20 or 25 percent, even over many years. The 2006 violent crime rate in Detroit, one of the most violent cities in America, was 2,400 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants--a rate of 2.4 percent. The one-in-four statistic would mean that every year, millions of young women graduate who have suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience. Such a crime wave would require nothing less than a state of emergency--Take Back the Night rallies and 24-hour hotlines would hardly be adequate to counter this tsunami of sexual violence. Admissions policies letting in tens of thousands of vicious criminals would require a complete revision, perhaps banning boys entirely. The nation’s nearly 10 million female undergrads would need to take the most stringent safety precautions. Certainly, they would have to alter their sexual behavior radically to avoid falling prey to the rape epidemic.
. . .
University of Virginia students, for example, have at least three different procedural channels open to them following carnal knowledge: they may demand a formal adjudication before the Sexual Assault Board; they can request a “Structured Meeting” with the Office of the Dean of Students by filing a formal complaint; or they can seek voluntary mediation. The Structured Meetings are presided over by the chair of the Sexual Assault Board, with assistance from another board member or senior staff of the Office of the Dean of Students. The Structured Meeting, according to the university, is an “opportunity for the complainant to confront the accused and communicate their feelings and perceptions regarding the incident, the impact of the incident and their wishes and expectations regarding protection in the future.” Mediation, on the other hand, “allows both you and the accused to discuss your respective understandings of the assault with the guidance of a trained professional,” says the school’s sexual-assault center.
Rarely have primal lust and carousing been more weirdly paired with their opposites. Out in the real world, people who regret a sexual coupling must work it out on their own; no counterpart exists outside academia for this superstructure of hearings, mediations, and negotiated settlements. If you’ve actually been raped, you go to criminal court--but the overwhelming majority of campus “rape” cases that take up administration time and resources would get thrown out of court in a twinkling, which is why they’re almost never prosecuted. Indeed, if the campus rape industry really believes that these hookup encounters are rape, it is unconscionable to leave them to flimsy academic procedures. “Universities are equipped to handle plagiarism, not rape,” observes University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Charles Kors. “Sexual-assault charges, if true, are so serious as to belong only in the criminal system.”
"The Campus Rape Myth: The reality: bogus statistics, feminist victimology, and university-approved sex toys," by Heather MacDonald, City Journal, Winter 2008
See also "How Crime in the United States Is Measured," by Nathan James and Logan Rishard Council, CRS Report for Congress, RL34309, January 3, 2008 (68-page pdf 
)
Yorkies and Happy Owner
The Most Spoiled Girl In The World?
Hmmmmm....
Piaggio MP3 250 - 3 wheel scooter
The Piaggio MP3 250 is a 3-wheeled scooter with 2 front wheels, increasing stability.
More
- "Piaggio MP3 Three-Wheel Scooter Review," by Jess, Modern Vespa, December 18, 2006
- "Piaggio 3 Wheel MP3 Scooter," by Paul Crowe, The Kneeslider, May 11, 2006
- "Piaggio MP3 Scooters Getting Good Reviews," by Paul Crowe, The Kneeslider, April 30, 2006
- Piaggio MP3 250 mfrs page
- "A three-wheeled extravaganza! Piaggio MP3, VentureOne, KTM X-Bow and Can-Am Spyder," AutoblogGreen, February 23, 2007
- "Piaggio's MP3 Positioned As Practical Scooter For Earth-Lovers," Marketing Daily, January 23, 2007
- "2007 Piaggio MP3: Italian scooter is three-wheeled wonder," by Arv Voss, San Francisco Chronicle, December 1, 2007
- Wikipedia
Dogblogging
Baxter after being neutered: You b%a#s*a#d - just wait until I get these stitches out....
Baxter: Hey! I was kidding! (under breath: You b%a#s*a#d...)
Ollie after being neutered: Ohmigosh! I LOVE cottage cheese! Life is so good!
Who will the D & R nominees be?
See intrade for folks betting money on the outcome.
And after the election, for analysis of what it means in Congress, see TheCapitol.Net's Capitol Hill Workshop: 2008 Election.
More
- Campaign Finance Information Center - from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.
- Campaigns & Elections magazine
- opensecrets.org - show me the money
- CQ Money Line - show me the money
- Iowa Electronic Markets - includes a political section - "real-money futures markets in which contract payoffs depend on economic and political events such as elections. These markets are operated by faculty at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business"
- Politics1
- PollingReport.com
Dogblogging
Ollie: Who, me?!?!
Baxter: Don't look at me pal...
To sleep, perchance to dream.... Since we caused enough mayhem already.
What's wrong with this picture?
What's wrong with this picture?
Caution: this is a professional actor. Do NOT attempt this at a business meal!
There are at least eight business meal etiquette mistakes in this picture.
Answers here.
Amazon reviewers and Web 2.0
I had imagined Amazon's customer reviews as a refuge from the machinations of the publishing industry: "an intelligent and articulate conversation ... conducted by a group of disinterested, disembodied spirits," as James Marcus, a former editor at the company, wrote in his memoir, Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut.
Given Amazon's lack of greater transparency, it's hard to judge the merits of the vote-swapping claims. What is clear is the corruptibility of democracy, Web 2.0-style.
. . .
This is not to say that a Top 10 ranking doesn't come with some sub rosa incentives for the reviewer. Free books, first and foremost; in an e-mail, Grady Harp told me he was "inundated with books from new writers and from publishers who know I love to read first works." This fall, when it invited select Top Reviewers to join its Vine program--an initiative, still in beta-testing, to generate content about new and prerelease products--Amazon extended the range of perks. "Vine Voices" like Mitchell and Harp can elect to receive items ranging from electronics to appliances to laundry soap. As long as they keep reviewing the products, Amazon's suppliers will keep sending them.
"Who Is Grady Harp? Amazon's Top Reviewers and the fate of the literary amateur." By Garth Risk Hallberg, Slate, January 22, 2008
More
- "Frequently Asked Questions about Reviewers" - from Amazon
- Top Reviewers on Amazon
- Top Reviewers on Amazon UK
- "The Fakery Behind Amazon's 'Top 10 Reviewers'," The Consumerist
- "The Write Stuff: Interview with Freelancer, Powerseller and Amazon Reviewer Jane Corn," by John Brougher, FreelanceSwitch, October 19, 2007
- Amazon Vine Voices Begins 8/15 - free books or movies for reviews - Bargain$hare.com
- "The following are excerpts from actual one-star Amazon.com reviews of books from Time’s list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to the present. - from The Morning News, October 21, 2005
- "Customer Reviews Get Hijacked," Varien, August 31, 2006
- "Writing Amazon reviews," Pete the music and horse racing fan, June 28, 2007
Dogblogging
Ollie is digital: On or OFF, no in between.
Baxter is analog: a mix of hot and cold. Maybe it's the lousy haircut I gave him....
May your worst enemy....
Moral: May your worst enemy have a lawsuit in which he knows he is right.
"The Perfect Case," by Jacob Stein, The Washington Lawyer, February 2008
Legal Spectator & More, by Jacob Stein
Detroit Public Schools Book Depository
Sweet Juniper’s photos show the ruins of the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository.
"Abandoned hope," Joanne Jacobs, January 21, 2008
"It will rise from the ashes," Sweet Juniper! November 26, 2007
"Rotting textbook warehouse in Detroit," boingboing, January 19, 2007
flickr photos: sweet juniper, flickr search
Dogblogging
Gratuitous Yorkie pics
Ollie
Baxter - embarrassed by a recent trim; it will grow back
Useful Yorkie stuff
"Humanity, thou art sick"
"In my mother’s generation, shy people were seen as introverted and perhaps a bit awkward, but never mentally ill."
So writes the Chicago-based research professor, Christopher Lane, in his fascinating new book Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness. ‘Adults admired their bashfulness, associated it with bookishness, reserve, and a yen for solitude. But shyness isn’t just shyness any more. It is a disease. It has a variety of over-wrought names, including “social anxiety” and “avoidant personality disorder”, afflictions said to trouble millions’, Lane continues.
Lane has taken shyness as a test case to show how society is being overdiagnosed and overmedicated. He has charted - in intricate detail - the route by which the psychiatric profession came to give credence to the labelling of everyday emotions as ‘disorders’, a situation that has resulted in more and more people being deemed to be mentally ill.
"Humanity, thou art sick: Shyness is now ‘social phobia’, and dissent is ‘Oppositional Defiant Disorder’. How did everyday emotions come to be seen as illnesses?" a review by Helene Guldberg of "Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness," by Christopher Lane, in spiked, December 2007
