Monday's Child is Full of Links

1.  Just as Skippy suspected, squirrels chunk their nuts.  Little b***ards.

2.  In which Prof. Thomas Wood of OSU makes a claim.  A pretty sound spanking is administered by Columbia Prof. Musa Al-Gharbi here. (Lagniappe: More of Al-Gharbi's work. Nicely done...)

3. Planetary Resources: the first deep space commercial enterprise?

4.  The neo-Tollison post of the week: a perfect metaphor for the rent-seeking society.  Guy who had actual talents diverted to unproductive but highly remunerative tax shelter writing.  Now, guy is "too fat to jail."  Bob, get that bourbon and diet Coke and toast the world for us.

5.  Against the enemies of modernity.

6.  Hollywood appears to hope that if Harvey is burned at the stake, all the other abusers will just get a pass.

7.  Really? If "Wolfenstein" offends you, you are a snowflake. A Nazi snowflake, to be sure, but a snowflake nonetheless.

8.  Turo! Has anybody used it? Has anybody heard of it?  Seems interesting.

9. Might legalizing cannabis help reduce opioid use?

10.  Many of my colleague on the Left firmly believe in the value of international institutions.  I differ. I believe in their potential value. Their actual value is pretty low.  As evidence, I give you Robert Mugabe, "Goodwill Ambassador" for the WHO.

11. I'm wondering if this isn't the psychology equivalent of "broken window fallacy." The paper seems to say that social deviance can have positive social effects.  In particular, "gossip may be a mechanism through which deviance can have positive downstream social consequences."  Well, a hurricane likely causes increased social cohesion among survivors. But that just means that there is less harm than you might expect, NOT that there are "positive downstream social consequences."

12.  On the other hand, gossip may be beneficial all by itself.

13.  Trial by ordeal.

14. In which legal marijuana is discussed, and Jeff Sessions tells a "joke." Warning: I'm not sure it was a joke.

15. One problem with politics is that it's better to win elections than to lose them. Everything else is secondary.  Having started the "identity politics" crap, the Dems are horrified at the implications.   But it's pretty obvious that if your side depends on identity politics of minority groups, you are going to get hammered.  Yes, it's a shame that your enemies can use weapon that you used first. But the point is to win. That's why I don't trust majoritarian politics as a way of organizing society.

16. Almost Like Praying...

17.  FREE FOOD! In the staff kitchen! (I hear there's cupcakes, Mark!)

18.  Raleigh and the "Research Triangle" are often yammering about light rail. Always makes me think of the experience of Springfield.  Plus, there's a song.

19. KPC fave pmarca is, as usual, on firm ground. It may be true that software eats the world, but it's also true that the next morning there is another new world to be eaten...

Finally, congrats to those terrific Astros, for making the NY Yankees look like this:

THe Nature of Science, or the Science of Nature

So, a study shows that research on mice is nearly useless, in some areas, for understanding effects on humans.  Or, worse than useless, actually misleading.  Science and Nature are two places to publish big, important, but perhaps speculative papers.

Excerpt:

The study’s investigators tried for more than a year to publish their paper, which showed that there was no relationship between the genetic responses of mice and those of humans. They submitted it to the publications Science and Nature, hoping to reach a wide audience. It was rejected from both.


Science and Nature said it was their policy not to comment on the fate of a rejected paper, or whether it had even been submitted to them. But, Ginger Pinholster of Science said, the journal accepts only about 7 percent of the nearly 13,000 papers submitted each year, so it is not uncommon for a paper to make the rounds.

Still, Dr. Davis said, reviewers did not point out scientific errors. Instead, he said, “the most common response was, ‘It has to be wrong. I don’t know why it is wrong, but it has to be wrong.’ ”   Um....it has to be wrong because otherwise we have wasted billions of dollars as a result of forcing people to do studies on mice, when those studies are actively misleading about effects on humans?  Because we know THAT's not right.  Right?

the tree museum*

Walking today in our Nation's capital, I saw the strangest tree. It was on the corner of 31st & R NW if you want to go look at it. It seemed like something from the spiny forest in southern Madagascar than a domestic specimen.

I'd really like to know what kind of tree it is. Here are some pics:

(clic the pics for even more exotic images)

There are little spikes on the actual tree trunk as well.

Any ideas?

*and they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em!

Helium Markets

This is a strange story.

First, the Congress apparently decided to privatize helium producing "mines" in 1996.  I hadn't realized that the helium industry was a state-owned enterprise in the first place.  Was it really necessary to nationalize the inert gas industry, when we already have an inert Senate?

But, okay, fair enough, we privatized the industry.  But the federal government still sets the price?  According to this article, that's the case.

The problem is that very few new producers have entered the "industry."  That may be because there are not many underground stocks of pressurized pure helium.  But it also may be because THE FREAKIN' FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS STILL SETTING THE PRICE.

Economics is hard, but it's not THAT hard.

Happy Mother's Day

This is a very sweet video.

The ending actually made me cry a little bit. But then our house is an "empty nest," or at least it will be as soon as the YYM packs up for Myrtle Beach. He just finished his freshman year at Duke. And the EYM lives in Chapel Hill. (That last bird in the nest has the EYM's hair style, exactly. The tufts: EYM all the way.)

Still, happy Mother's Day, to the LMM and to all the mothers out there!

In the forest: Bach That Thang Up

(Nod to the Blonde)

Tsunami: Just awful

Remarkable, terrible pictures. Cleverly set up, so you can mouse over and see before/ after. (Thanks to the Blonde for the link).

Given how little warning they had, the government likely did the best that could have been done. That was a huge earthquake.

Amazingly, we now have "Tsunami warnings" here in NC, on the coast. Not really very helpful. "If you see a wall of water moving extremely fast, please try to run, even the land here is perfectly flat for about 15 miles." I guess there is the water receding, and the roar. But still, 5 minutes? There's one bridge off the island.

A bonus: you can buy a plagiarized paper, if you want.

Not a real warning. Just a sign that says that if there IS a tsunami, you need to run away. As this page notes there has been...only one tsunami in the Atlantic. Okay, there have been at least ten, but only one that caused actual damage. And that one was the 1755 Lisbon earthquake tsunami, which was admittedly a real son of a b***h: Voltaire thought of it as a metaphysical event, raising questions about God himself. An excerpt from Voltaire's poem responding to the Lisbon earthquake (and anticipating Pat Robertson being an idiot), straight out of Pangloss's playbook.

What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers’ wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.

Happy Holidays

and best wishes for 2011 from KPC