February 2012
9 posts
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Nogales, Mexico - A Few Steps, and a Whole World... →
An excellent piece by Paul Theroux on the mysteries that lie behind fences.
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“The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently calculated...”
– America Is Europe - NYTimes.com
It’s shocking, but I actually liked a David Brooks column. Preach, brother.
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Nanobrewing…the next trend in beer « BeerCraving →
This is not a bad option in terms of starting a brewery. If you’ve got more energy than money and a passion for beer (check and check, in my case), then this could be a cool idea to pursue.
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The Young Person’s Guide to Emigration - Telegraph →
Decent article with some simple insights and tips about moving abroad for work and a “wealthier” lifestyle as a young person, even if it does use the 14%-of-Americans-have-passports canard.
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Four Ways to Slice Obama’s 2013 Budget Proposal -... →
This is an awesome interactive infographic detailing Obama’s proposed 2013 Federal budget. The bubbles for Social Security and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid are … prominent.
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'A Clockwork Orange' Strikes 40 - Adam Chandler -... →
An excellent article looking back at one of the most innovative films of all time, from its resistance to genre to Kubrick’s unprecedented release of the film to our misunderstanding of Alex.
January 2012
19 posts
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The Youngest Metro In The World | English Russia →
Pretty. It’s in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
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High Speed Railroad Map Europe 2011 - Wikipedia,... →
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Nicolas Sarkozy – the view from Britain | World... →
Fascinating profile of Nicolas Sarkozy, that most loathed of French presidents, from a British journalist’s perspective. I’ve long had a (mild) fondness for his policies, and this confirmed that to some extent. Definitely a good read for Francophiles with an interest in le Président de la République.
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Jarrett Walker’s Human Transit: Are we thinking... →
Walker is my favorite transportation blogger. This is a review of his new book. Pretty good read.
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C'est (la rue) Cyrano de Bergerac ! That is all. →
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30 Insane Examples of Beautiful Architecture |... →
I just … go look. I can identify locations on three of them (Seattle, New Orleans, Montréal), and that makes me happy, although I’ve only seen one in person. I went looking for the New Orleans one, but didn’t end up finding it.
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10 steps to becoming fluent in a language in 6... →
I’m about to embark on a bit of intensive Spanish learning and found this post really helpful. I generally dislike lists, especially ones on travel, but enjoyed this one.
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The New Gmail Sucks — Crooked Timber →
A quick rundown explaining why. I agree with it all. Between this and Gmail’s overzealous ‘Bulk’ filter, I’m thinking about switching. Any recommendations?
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Airline meals as a collective action problem
I have to fly tomorrow (to where? who knows!) and got to thinking about airline meals. We vegetarians have to consider this sort of thing, you know, lest we end up with a piece of airline chicken in front of us. I always diligently request a vegan meal in advance of the flight. However, it isn’t unheard of for vegetarians who do this to receive a non-veggie meal anyway (with the über-helpful...
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Press Release: Fallout MMO Rights Restored to... →
As a fan of the Bethesda Fallout games, this is really exciting news to me. I would love to play a Fallout MMO by them.
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A Coder's Guide to Coffee →
For a rising coffee-geek, these are words to live by. An excellent and concise guide to drinking better coffee.
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Activating a clean installation of Windows 7 with... →
Stupid Microsoft. I couldn’t activate my version of Windows 7 because I was using an upgrade disk to perform a clean installation. I called their toll-free number, thinking that it was just a matter of having them put something in their system that would allow me to do that. Instead, the customer support person told me that I would have to install Vista and then install 7 in order to...
December 2011
14 posts
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Google to pay $900M to remain default search... →
The more you know.
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Watch(via Sport Science - Denard Robinson - ESPN Video - ESPN)
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Where will the ECB’s billions go? | Felix Salmon →
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“Cochrane could argue that there must have been “real” factors at work, but...”
– TheMoneyIllusion » Cochrane needs to review Hume, Fisher, and Friedman
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How To Perform Nearly Any Task From Your Browser's... →
I just found this post this morning as I was trying to fix my search bar in Opera. These are excellent tips.
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“One, it wasn’t the last episode, but one of the last. Two, Beck was still...”
– This is why I love the internet. From a Wikipedia reference archive.
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The Symbolism Survey (Paris Review) →
A student sends a survey on symbolism to some of the great writers of the day (and of any, as it turns out), and many of the writers responded. This is a pretty fantastic blog post to read if only for the correspondence from the authors.
Forget Skyrim. I want this game. →
A video game about a Christian militia slaughtering Jewish and atheist New Yorkers who won’t be converted in the name of a particular brand of Christianity will be on the shelves of more than 10,000 American retailers in time for the Christmas season, including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Circuit City, GameStop, EB Games, CompUSA, Amazon.com, Costco and numerous others.
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TheMoneyIllusion » Paragraph of the Year →
Excellent. The paragraph itself is from Reihan Salam. This is why thinking people are frustrated by everything about the American political sphere. The people in power, and their voting enablers, do not understand these facts, and that’s a problem.
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Robert Griffin carries the banner across the... →
Just give him the Heisman already. Good lord. This year it will be especially hard to watch SEC running back du jour or Pac-10 Pac-12 NFL quarterback du jour win it over the best player in the country.
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A win-win on drugs? Fighting gangs by legalizing... →
Copenhagen continues to amaze and entice me. Maybe I should connect with my distant, small Scandinavian ancestry and learn Danish.
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Marijuana in California and Colorado: Highs and... →
Here’s hoping the Obama administration calls off the dogs and lets Colorado opt out of this particularly disgusting and destructive part of the War on Drugs, which punishes users of a substance that is less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. I won’t get my hopes up, though. There’s always 2012, after all, and why would Barack want to open himself up to being called soft on drugs?
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“Sen. Levin has disclosed, as Dave Kopel documents, that “it was the Obama...”
– Congress endorsing military detention, a new AUMF - Salon.com
Oh, great!
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Debbie Stabenow's nonsense reply on PROTECT IP
I contacted her office two weeks ago asking her to vote against the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (PROTECT IP) Act and received this today:
Thank you for contacting me about your concerns with legislation designed to fight Internet piracy. I appreciate hearing from you.
I believe that in a globally-competitive environment, it is more...
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Uh, ok. Thanks, Kaplan.
I just read this in my GRE prep book as an explanation of the answer for the analogy “shingle : roof ::”: “A shingle protects a roof. Let’s try the answer choices. A rind protects a melon. No; eliminate (A).” I don’t think Kaplan understands the concept of a rind.
November 2011
30 posts
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WatchEarth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS (by Michael König)
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Derren Brown robs a guy. [VIDEO] →
This is level-100 pickpocketing. It’s worth a watch for anyone who frequents crowded spaces or who wants to pick up some new techniques.
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Holiday spirit: Thanks for nothing | The Economist →
Classic Will Wilkinson on how Thanksgiving is the epitome of what Jon Hanson calls “system justification”. I think he’s right, but of course I would as a vegetarian on this day featuring such an unjustly treated turkey carcass.
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Xbox 360 Skyrim saves transferrable to PC | Game... →
Here’s a useful tip for this Sunday. Beautiful to know.
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Technocrats: Minds like machines | The Economist →
The technocrat has been and appealing concept to many different governments in many different contexts. History suggests that Greece and Italy’s newly ascended technocrats will find themselves without the time needed to achieve the necessary changes.
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