1. Division of labor and comparative advantage, when operating together, can transform societies. In fact, if division of labor is pursued to its limit, even comparative advantage disappears.
2. Wealth is about a lot more than physical things that can be priced.
3. Permission innovation case #4923: Silly Putty.
4. The ritual sacrifice of valuable items and time have long been a feature of religious worship. The difference is that now virtue requires that we keep it from being buried, and we call it "recycling."
5. This is mostly clickbait, since the drinking water is bottled and the tea and coffee are heated. But it is a little disturbing.
6. Parking and the City. Much of how we think about "free" parking is wrong, at least in large cities.
7. We are ALL on double secret probation. And Dean Wormer can simply steal our property whenever he wants. That's the true nature of the state: creating a legal space for actions that, if undertaken by any private citizen, would constitute theft.
8. Things we call "spices" actually mimic, or actually themselves are, antibacterial agents. That's why our taste buds are attuned to "like them." Saying "because they taste good" is no help. Taste is primarily a set of receptors for good and bad, correlates of biological fitness. Yes, sugar, salt, and fat can now fool us, because we can produce excessive concentrations of them.
9. Wikifeet.
10. Control, and stereotyping. Oh, and pattern deviancy.
11. The butcher and the storyteller, and the Nobel Prize in 2018.
12. Mexico has better ketchup.
13. Don't worry that we collect all your data. We won't actually use. Unless, we feel like it.
14. The high costs of not asking questions.
15. Did Hillary help Tulsi?
16. When are religious exemptions morally required?
17. Greg Gutfield is quite funny.
18. An obscure but interesting piece of St L Cards History.
19. Citizens of New Delhi are asked to stay inside indefinitely. I'm pretty sure that's not good.
20. The WKRP Thanksgiving episode, or at least the excerpt from the end. I really think this is the best 4 minutes of television comedy ever.
21. Prohibition in college sports is ending.
22. This is how book reviews should be written. We've gone soft. Bring back the savage book review.
23. Turtles with swastikas. And a beluga whale playing some fetch. (Made me wonder what the whale thought: "Stupid human, you dropped your ball. Here it is. Please be careful." [human throws ball] "Wha....? Oh, man, these humans are even dumber than I thought." Goes after it; repeat)
24. The. Thing. Itself. Part 391,856.
25. Dopamine fasting. It's also called "graduate school," by the way.
26. Logical extension of Kelo: just let the developers take the land on their own, and cut out all the red tape.
27. His face really DID get stuck like that.
28. French bakeries closing, taken over by automation! Mon Dieu! Except that ACCCCCCCtually the total nuimber of bakeries is increasing, and what's happening is that in the smallest towns where labor costs are too high to sustain a bakery it is true that machines are providing a reasonably good--not AS good, but better than American grocery store bread--alternative.
The Grand Lagniappe: Unicorn Poutine, and the End of the World. To be fair, this outrage happened in Toronto, because....well, because Toronto.
4 comments:
5 to 1 odds that "turtle swastika" story is a hoax.
The article about Mexican ketchup talks about blaming the obesity crisis on high fructose corn sugar. This is a nice theory, the only problem is the data shows that Mexican obesity is rising just as fast as US obesity. Similar obesity increases can be seen in other countries around the world. Since Mexico uses sugar along with most other countries this seems to refute the idea that high fructose corn syrup is to blame.
Another misconception is that the fructose in high fructose corn syrup makes it bad compared to table sugar. It is true that fructose is processed in the liver while glucose is used by cells throughout the body. However, "high fructose corn syrup" is roughly 50% fructose, the same as table sugar. The reason it's "high fructose" is that natural corn syrup is fairly pure glucose. It's processed to convert some of the glucose to fructose so it tastes better (more like sucrose).
I agree that sucrose tastes better and would prefer we eliminate the corn subsidies which produce high fructose corn syrup, but blaming it for various health problems doesn't seem to be supported by the data.
I think obesity is actually RISING faster in Mexico. It is a little too nice a story, you're right, Thomas W.
If I'm not mistaken, Mexico had surpassed the U.S. in obesity per capita some time ago.
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