Monday, August 18, 2014

Monday's Child

1.  News crew goes out to "investigate" app that identifies sketchy neighborhoods.  And their van gets robbed.  Surely this was a setup, right?  Nobody would leave that much electronic gear out in the open in a van.

2.  Duke basketball is "most hated."  Yes, it really is.  In other news, water is still wet.  On the other hand, the most-hated team in North Carolina is UNC, and the most-hated team in Washington state is U-Dub.  Interesting.

3.  Jealous dogs.  Skippy Squirrelbane is VERY jealous.  His bowling ball head is extremely useful for knocking down other dogs that get between him and petting.  He's not aggressive about it, just inexorable.

4.  "Clean energy" is not clean.  In fact, it's not even energy.  Some technologies, especially ethanol from corn, are a net waste of energy rather than a savings.

5.  Family friend and recent Duke grad Jacob Tobia on being "genderqueer at Duke."  Jacob is a terrific person, and was willing twice to give an excellent talk to my intro Econ class on the "Occupy" movement.



6.  Interview questions you should be able to answer...

7.  A rant about airplane etiquette.  And, I do myself wonder:  why do Europeans, especially Germans, simply ignore the obvious "wait until the row ahead of you clears."  The answer is that Germans consider people they don't know to be human speed bumps, or worse.  It's a strange disconnect, since Germans are otherwise quite considerate, pulling over out of the left lane when American just hog it.  This drives Germans nuts (and rightly so, since it's dumb and rude).

8.  A classic "correlation does not imply causation" study.  To be fair, the editor of the journal and authors of the study are quite careful about this.  One can think of several explanations for the correlation.  An interesting classroom exercise, perhaps.

9.  An Al Roker corn maze (a mais maze?).

10.  Local "Freedom of Information" laws are useful.  Says SOMETHING that NY calls it the "FOIL."  As in "I FOILed those citizens again by refusing to provide any information," said Andrew Cuomo.  Cities should be more open.  Folks can find out what contingency plans are in place to be used in case of dragon attack, for example.

11.  I am the Eggman, they are the Eggman, We're all the Unicorn.  Goo goo goo joob.

12. Fair trade....cocaine!   Don't forget this fact:  you can't get it back.

13.  Woman wants to see boyfriend, steals wine. Um, ma'am, I don't think it works like that.

14.  This video has been doctored up, with music.  But just the video is pretty bad.  

15.  A high trust country has a shorter constitution.  Or do short constitutions make for more functional countries?


Headlines:  (Sounds like that SNL skit, where Willie and Frankie would say (in this case), "You know how when you're trying to land a plane, and your arm comes off?" "Oh, yeah, I hate it when that happens.")  Pilot's Artificial Arm Detaches While Landing. (Note, it was a commercial flight.  The pilot was braver than I would have been.  So let's give him some credit, too.)

Speaking of SNL, this guy ("Maserati Patrol Car Raises Police Suspicions") mus have said, "The police?  Yeah...I'm HELPING the police.  Yeah, that's the ticket."  (As in when Tommy the Pathological Liar Meets Jerry Hall in a bar...)

"Colorado town sues voters."  I may try that myself.  You voters are goofballs. Somebody ought to pass a law.

"Florida man accused of killing his friend asked Siri where to hide the body, court hears."  Protip:  If you kill your friend, don't ask Siri where to hide the body.

3 comments:

John Covil said...

Re: #10

Worthing Council was asked to explain its emergency plans for meteor strikes and solar flares.

How is that ridiculous? An earth-directed coronal mass ejection could fry electronics, defeating some or all communications and infrastructure. That hardly seems equivalent to a dragon attack.

Mungowitz said...

I agree, John. It may be odd for a small town to have a plan for a global catastrophe, but that catastrophe is at least POSSIBLE.

Nathanael said...

Everyone in the environmental movement knows that ethanol from corn was a big fat fraud, pushed by Iowa corn interests, and this has been well-publicized for at least 20 years.

That has nothing to do with actual renewable energy, such as solar power.