Culture
Blogging for the inverterately lazy
Hello, to my now single reader. (I still think it’s my mom…)
Anyway, I’ve obviously not got my act together to blog like Megan McArdle, and as I’m thinking more and more, argue like Don Boudreaux (of whom I am enough of a fanboy to recently buy donboudreauxismyhero.com after seeing some sympatico from Steven Landsburg and [...]
Counter-cyclical demand watch #1
So we’re in a recession, and in a recession people tend to buy less of most everything. That is unless you’re dealing with inferior goods. So what’s been shown to be economic inferior goods lately?
Pasta. From a post to Curious Capitalist you can learn about the Pasta Index and the currently fabulous fortunes of the [...]
Strange names likely screw with your kid’s future
Do unusual names really affect future outcomes for your children? A study out of the States by David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee - First Names and Crime: Does Unpopularity Spell Trouble? - suggests that this might be true.
Their objective in the study:
We investigate the relationship between first name popularity and juvenile delinquency to [...]
Economic experience in formative years affects adult attitudes
In a paper entitled Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk-Taking? (PDF) Ulrike Malmendier and Stefan Nagel try to determine what effect the larger economic environment during childhood has on adult economic decision making. They lead in with the idea that people are biased and will incorporate all available historical data from their experience. From [...]
White guys do not look all alike…
Catching up child development and behaviour related articles that I’ve seen and read over the past few weeks.
A study was recently published by Sophie Labrecht, Lara J. Pierce, Michael J. Tarr and, James W. Tanaka, from Brown University and the University entitled “Perceptual Other-Race Training Reduces Implicit Racial Bias“. The team attempted to:
…examine the relationship [...]
Starting up again…
So I’ve actually been nagged by my loyal reader again and have decided to shake off the holiday blahs and get back into this effluent that I call “writing”.
Over the holidays betwixt events and Events and the like I worked my way throughsafer loads of TV and movies and had the chance to read through, [...]
More clueless bureaucrats in the UK
Given the recent lack of posts making fun of UK bureacrats I’ve decided to do an omnibus edition to catch up. Here is a round up of pettiness from the past two weeks.
The Hampshire County Council decided that the tinsel adorning the stop sign of a lollipop man should be removed in case it distracts [...]
Terrorism and lessons from Dubai
Short post since all the good content is on Bruce Schneier’s site.
In the latest Cryptogram, Bruce Schneier puts together 3 short articles on things we should keep in mind after the terror attacks in Mumbai. My favorites are:
Low-tech is very effective. Movie-plot threats — terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists with biological agents, terrorists targeting our [...]
Che Guevara was a murdering thug
Reason TV published a video about the celebrity impact of Che Guevara juxtaposing it with interviews by a Cuban-in-exile musician and a Chinese basketball player who played during Mao’s tenure.
The clearest point made in the segment is that people seem to very comfortable wearing clothing of mass murderers as long as they’re the communist brand [...]
Disincenting everyone is a poor policy idea
I stumbled across this book by Daniel Raventos distributed by the University of Michigan Press. In it Mr. Raventos suggests that everyone should have, freely available, a subsistence income with no strings attached. He supports this idea with these perceived benefits:
Anyone could opt out of employment at any time. Those with few skills would no [...]
Beer ordering gestures studied
A couple of researchers out of the U of A, Elena Nicoladis and Paula Marentette, along with Simone Pika out of Manchester did a study of gestures that various cultures use for ordering beer. They hypothesize:
…it should be possible to guess an individuals’ cultural origin by observing her way of counting up to ten on [...]
Followup to Federal Fiasco - my feelings
Since I’ve been a bit slack on my posts this past week, I missed following up on my political disaster review of last week with an entertaining and engaging blow-by-blow. Since I wrote previously, things happened roughly in this order - focusing on how generally inept Dion has handled this thing from the beginning.
Both McKenna [...]
Tomatoes, Weed, what’s the difference?
A crack team of constables tore apart a Scottish house after mistaking tomato plants for marijuana - explicitly stating their obvious confusion as they burst through the door.
Lulu Matheson had been growing tomatoes on her windowsills and these seemingly set the alarm bells ringing for the local police. Obviously the Northern Constabulary’s training criteria doesn’t [...]
I aspire to write like Rex Murphy…
because of columns like this.
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Canadian political leaders - someone will lose face
I’ve avoided writing about the whole detent going in Ottawa, mostly because the whole thing has been making me utterly furious - almost apoplectic.
Recently, for the first time in 20 years I’ve become more politically active at all four levels of government that sit, some heavier than others, on top of us - federal, provincial, [...]
UK: No more cheap booze
The national government in the UK is determined to slap new regulations on drinking to attempt to curb a rise in anti-social behaviour. The suggestions range from a ban on happy hours and ladies nights, along with stringent labeling on cans and bottles.
From the Daily Mail:
Critics of liberalised licensing laws claim the move three years [...]
1st Annual Christmas gift guide…
What kind of low, boring product would a modern blog be if it didn’t promote some solid seasonal consumerism with a Holiday Gift Guide? Lame, seriously lame. So in the interest of being fabulous and not lame here are the Sauce Captain picks for the season.
Booze
These 3 picks have been real surprises for me over [...]
Thailand dangerous? Telegraph opinion lacks perspective…
The Telegraph has recently reported that Thailand is to be considered one of the most dangerous travel destinations on earth right now, right up there with places like Afghanistan, Palestine, Somailia and the Sudan.
The Telegraph must be edited by people who’s detection of hyperpole must be stunted through a lack of logic or common sense. [...]
Alberta Liberal Party votes - make it matter
The Alberta Liberal Party (ALP) membership* is voting for a new leader coming up very soon. There are three men standing for the job: David Swann, Dave Taylor, and Mo Elsalhy.
The party has been an also-ran player in the province of Alberta for the past 8 decades, many times fading to single-digit seats in the [...]
The Canadian Human Rights Commission publishes report suggesting they were really really wrong
The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), recently famous for the Mark Steyn debacle and other petulant garbage has published a report by Richard Moon, suggesting that the very controversial Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed forthwith. It goes on to say that the CHRC should get out of the business [...]
Science Fiction is mainly collectivist?
L. Neil Smith wrote earlier this year:
But the driving ideology [of Science Fiction] was almost always some form or another of socialism.
While the pap that passes for science fiction for the often has utopian collectivist themes, the truly brilliant writers of the past century wrote of freedom and individualism triumphing over command structures.
Smith continues by [...]
Queen’s Deane doesn’t grasp free speech
Patrick Deane of Queen’s University had the gall to trot out this statement when defending his crack squad of thought police:
Freedom of speech and thought is impossible without respect, consideration and a commitment to mutual understanding.
Is he willfully ignorant or merely inept in his understanding of the words he uses?
Freedom of speech needs nothing but [...]
Clean, immoral people less conflicted
In a study published in the past month, Simone Schnall and her team showed that people who viewed themselves as physically cleaner were more likely to find objectionable actions less repulsive than a control group.
The researchers tried two tests to verify changes in behavior - being primed by ideas about physical cleanliness or through actual [...]
UK says littering should maybe not be considered terrorism
In a landmark psuedo-decision the national government of Britain has decided to stop equating littering with terrorism. It is now safe enough to litter since the government has suggested that surveillance tools and regulations used to attempt to stop terrorism are a bit much when it comes to more mundane offenses - offenses such as [...]
Damn, I have no idea if I’m as smart as I thought…
As a response to the 1999 paper by Unskilled and Unaware of It, Burson, Larrick, and Klayman wrote Skilled or Unskilled, but Still Unaware of It to show that regardless of your skill and intelligence you’re likely clueless anyway.
The original study purported to show that the most unskilled people tend to be the least clued in [...]
London boroughs fighting musical terrorism
In a huge push to ensure the safety of chemically enhanced ravers all over the London, police are targeting live music performances that don’t comply with new strict discloser rules.
Detective Superintendent Dave Eyles of London states:
Music promotions attract people who have a propensity to use violence. That’s not speculation. We have a duty to prevent [...]
Britain to Lojack fatties in war on obesity
Ok, the title is a bit hyperbolic but in Britain is now promoting a new scheme to tag and track people in an effort to improve health by targeting obesity. In addition to the tags, which track calories and exertion, marketing campaigns and fitness facilities will be deployed to round out the effort. They feel [...]
King Charles? Nay says I
So Canada has been a constitutional monarchy since inception in 1867. Through that there have been kings and queens with actual influence and those that mostly faded away. I’d suppose that QE II has skated the fine line between the two general possibilities - facing impending irrelevance with grace, good breeding, and poise …
… Unlike [...]
But I tried really hard. Honest.
From the Post comes an article about a highly entertaining study that shows the level of entitlement of university students. Ellen Greenberg from UC Irvine polled 400 undergrads and developed some conclusions from the results. From the article:
Ms. Greenberger’s study reveals that students who are academically entitled are more likely to engage in academic cheating, [...]
Remembrance Day 08
While war is certainly nothing that I’d wish for, for me my family, my friends or most anyone, I believe that at times war is necessary. There have been certain wars in the last 100 years that have been necessary though I’d presume, given my readings of history, most have been avoidable.
November 11 was established [...]
O’Rourke on how “the movement” blew it
P.J. O’Rourke writing in the Weekly Standard as usual delivers in a libertarian bent with highly engaging and only slightly hyperbolic prose. Writing about how the US conservative movement (in my parlance: libertarianism) blew it over the past many years. I aspire to write as cleanly and here are a few choice quotes:
“After the events [...]
TRoC explicitly supports Quebec separatism
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy* released an email with a variety of articles showing that the Bloc Quebecois would be utterly sidelined without public campaign cash. Here’s some tidbits from the various articles:
“Without federal financing, the separatist party would likely have been unable to mount a serious campaign in the 2008 election.” concludes [...]
Blood donation incentives
Also from Vox comes a paper by Nicola Lacetera and Mario Macis that describes the impact of incentives on the willingness to give blood. The most interesting thing I saw was related to symbolic (non-monetary) awards:
for the symbolic rewards, they also appear to increase donation frequency, but only when the prizes are awarded publicly and [...]
Lower pensions equals more children
From Vox comes a summary of a paper by Vincenzo Galasso:
According to the “kids as consumption good” theory, affected individuals should have lower fertility, since – due to the reforms – they have lower lifetime income and can thus only afford to “consume” fewer kids. The “old age security” motive suggests instead that affected individuals [...]
Kids who watch sex on TV more likely to have sex
In a study published this month in Pediatrics, RAND concludes that teenagers that watch sexual or sexually suggestive shows on TV are more likely to have sex and more likely to become pregnant, than their peers who watch tamer fare. From the NPR site:
Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist at RAND and lead author of the [...]
Read today
Michael Shermer continues his Folk … series with an easy to read installment on Folk Numeracy, covering statistics and confirmation bais.
Thomas F Cooley writes in Forbes about the need for Barack Obama to reaffirm US support for NAFTA.
Rwanda decides that French is no longer going the primary education language in the country - noting that [...]
Anti-drug ads increasing use?
In a study by Robert Honik to be published in the American Journal of Public Health the effects of White House $1 billion, mandated anti-drug advertising is show to be ineffective or worse:
…the Congressionally-mandated evaluation showed the 12.5-18 year old youths who reported seeing the advertisements more often were actually more likely to intend to [...]
Accidents causing death…
The Economist has a nice table showing the likelihood of death by a variety of mundane and more unusual accidents. The stats, derived from the US National Safety Council, show that:
you’re 52 times more likely to be poisoned than drown in the bath;
falling will kill you 56 times more often than electrocution and;
your more [...]
