Separated at Birth: Tennis edition

Alexandr Dolgopolov & Martina Hingis:

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(clic the pics for more eerily similarity)

'Nuff said

Life in America just keeps getting better

First our overlords decided to let us eat jamón ibérico, and now, in even a bigger culinary coup, HAGGIS IS AGAIN LEGAL IN THE USA!!!!

From the Guardian:

Smuggled and bootlegged, it has been the cause of transatlantic tensions for more than two decades. But after 21 years in exile, the haggis is to be allowed back into the United States.

The "great chieftan o' the puddin-race" was one of earliest casualties of the BSE crisis of the 1980s-90s, banned on health grounds by the US authorities in 1989 because they feared its main ingredient ‑ minced sheep offal ‑ could prove lethal.

Some refined foodies might insist it always has been and always will be: in the words of Robert Burns, in his Ode to a Haggis, looking "down wi' sneering, scornfu' view on sic a dinner". But now, as millions of Scots around the world prepare to celebrate Burns's legacy tonight with an elaborate, whisky-fuelled pageant to a boiled bag of sheep innards, oatmeal, suet and pepper, its reputation has been restored, on health grounds at least.

Some notes on the above quote:

1. they banned sheep guts due to concerns about mad cow? WTF?

2. "great chieftan o the puddin' race"? Robert Burns, who ranks right behind Andy Murray but ahead of Robert the Bruce as the second greatest Scottsman ever.

3. In actuality, ALL meals in Scotland are "whisky-fuelled pageants"! However, speaking from experience, copious amounts of whisky would be a huge help in getting down a plateful of haggis.

hat tip to Felix the Fish

More reasons to not worry about the demise of newspapers

People, you don't need newspapers, you got KPC for FREE! But (as our beloved president loves to say) some would argue that newspapers serve an essential role in a democracy by influencing the electoral process.

Well, not so much, according to a new NBER working paper by Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Sinkinson (ungated version here):

We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends. We find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political participation, with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0.3 percentage points. Newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout: our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market, and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller. The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents.

So to sum up, newspapers don't affect the composition of the vote and since the introduction of radio and then television (i.e. for a long, long time) have only a very small influence on the size of the vote. 

Hey, but at least they do have Dilbert!

I'm a full grown man but I ain't afraid to cry

Beck Hansen and Jack Black. People you KNOW it has got to be good!

Midnite Vultures "Sexx Laws" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Prize!

A fantastic KPC contest, with a FAAAAAAABulous prize!

The 500,000th hit on this site will receive a free, collectible "Munger for Governor!" t-shirt from the 2008 campaign.

So go out there and click like crazy! The current count is in the red box, on the right side, about two screens down.

(Winner has to REALIZE s/he has won, and send me an email with her/his snail mail address, to qualify)

UPDATE: A commenter points to this. Nice.

Also, another commenter notes that the "counter" does not update. Yes, there is a pretty long lag. But all hits are recorded at the Sitemeter website, and so I will have the IP address of the BIG WINNER. All we need is for the winner to send me the physical address, and I'll check to see that the IPs match.

Plus, let's open this up. ANYONE who comes in between 499,997 and 500,003 is a winner. Just check sitemeter to see if you are in the lucky interval, and then claim your FAAABULOUS prize! As the xkcd folks note, the 500,000th person, or any specific number, will likely be some schlep looking for a graphic on "Google Images," and will never even know that s/he qualified!

UPDATE 2: Only about 500 hits away from that FAAABULOUS PRIZE! Just check at Sitemeter

The House Health Care Bill fully explained in a single picture

"Phone call for Nancy Pelosi!!"

Found in the closet: Spider!

Me and Mrs. Angus decided to clean up our music collection. Get everything out of the car, from upstairs, scattered around the offices and file them on the rolling racks. Inevitably, there were some things that I didn't know we had / what they were.

The surprise find of the cleanup was "The way to bitter lake" by Spider, which is the nom de music of Jane Herships. This was self released in 2006 and it is *awesome*. A bit like Cat Power or Joanna Newsom, or the Velvet Underground, but unique enough to make me stop what I was doing and go "wow" (there's that word again!).

Second best find was "Fire on the bright sky" by The Low Lows. Also from 2006 and also excellent. Maybe a Galaxie 500 vibe with the Velvets again thrown in? Just real good music.

Both are highly recommended.

Mrs. Angus goes off her "rocker"

Mrs. Angus is taking trapeze classes!! I am not making this up!!