What's better than a soft cheese like Brie or Camember, or a blue cheese? One that combines them: Cambozola, a soft-ripened cheese with blue veins.
Actually whether it's better could be debated; the blueness is a lot milder than full blue cheeses. OTOH, it's spreadable, not crumbly.
Also picked up was a petit munster, which seems decent, and a very expensive Red Hawk brine-washed-rind cheese, which stinks quite a lot (at least up close) but seems mild in flavor. Though all the cheeses are still cool.
Links:
* Comparison of the House and Senate health bills (PDF, despite the URL)
* CIA helping with climate monitoring
* Average faces beautiful
* Full-body scanners run afoul of child porn laws
* (from shiver) American Law Institute abandons support for the death penalty; they'd been the main legal arguer in the US.
* More on the Big Zero decade in the US
* Pakistanis may like our drones? I don't know if I should jokingly compare to Culture drones or Berserker goodlife.
* Is Indonesia's democracy shallow?
* Nate Silver's harrowing flight home, and more terror statistics.
* Nate Silver on Rasmussen polling bias.
* Willpower as limited muscle and why your New Year's resolutions will fail -- especially the one to lose weight. Starved brains don't have good willpower.
* Economists are cheapskates
* Fixing California -- oh, please let it pass!
* Divisions in the parties. GOP as uneasy alliance of neocons, libertarians, and the religious right (itself with divisons, e.g. Mormon vs. evangelical), having expelled the Rockefeller (or Roosevelt) Republicans; Democrats as uneasy alliance of neoliberals, New Dealers, and Greens, with different opinions about means if not goals.
* Democrats likely to drop superdelegates, continuing their trend of being, ahem, more democratic. (Previous major item is state delegates being allocates proportionally, in something like proxy or asset voting, whereas the GOP primaries are still winner-take-all.)
* Same author of the previous two, Michael Lind, rants about the failure of government, or what are we paying them for anyway?
* Movie of Pre-Columbian America, Kings of the Sun. Probably flawed but notable for subject matter. Haven't seen it, just heard about it.
* Iowa and New Hampshire both have gay marriage; will this affect the next presidential campaign?
* Horrible chemistry blog. ClF3 burns sand and produces HF in reaction with water. *Produces* HF, WTF. Dimethyl mercury is horrible.
* Blasphemy law in
* Religiosity by state.
* Pink science for girls
Hasty selection of summer photos. Yes I know a couple aren't rotated.
Plant links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_eve
duckweed invasion
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/v
http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurri
plant behavior
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/scien
plant carnivory might be more common
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3433317
I calculated that the smallest 21 states, controlling 41-42 Senators, have 34 million people, or 11% of the population. You need half the people in those states to control the Senators, so in theory 6% of the population could shut down Congress via filibuster. Vs. needing an ideal 26% to control the House.
Politics links
* Krugman on Obama's non-progressiveness
* and on simulating single-payer
* "Most valuable Democrats"
* The deficit: Mostly Bush
* Gay marriage legalized in Mexico city
* Fringe? GOPer jokes about Obama hunting tags; schoolchildren in his area had chanted "assassinate Obama".
* This is sadly true in some purist regions.
* Ben Nelson is a reasonable compromising conservative; Lieberman is an unpredictable rogue.
* The pre-existing Democratic consensus on health-care reform.
* Needle exchange funding ban repealed by Congressional Democrats
* Soldier's family denied entry to the US
* "I'll just add that I understand the model in which you don't agree that this bill will expand and improve as it develops its constituency over time. But I don't understand the model by which you believe this bill won't be improved over time but you simultaneously believe reformers can get something better in the foreseeable future."
* Israel used to take organs without asking. Bit foolish given the blood libel history.
* SCOTUS law clerks increasingly polarized. Apparently law schools are seen as "overwhelmingly liberal".
I'm going to take my chances flying to Spokane this year. Hopefully this flu-like thing (third sickness this term, wtf) will blow over soon. Anyone want to drive me to a 10:10am flight Thursday the 24th, for $25? The shuttles are suboptimal.
* Quotes in favor of proportional representation
"[legislatures in the United States] should be an exact portrait, in
miniature, of the people at large, as it should think, feel, reason, and
act like them." -- John Adams
"... the portrait is excellent in proportion to its being a good
likeness,...the legislature ought to be the most exact transcript of the
whole society... the faithful echo of the voices of the people." --
James Wilson at the Constitutional Convention
* Editor of libertarian magazine Reason prefers French health care.
* US health reform timeline over the decades
When people (Jared Diamond) talk about the Americas not having had many domesticable species, why don't bison and wild rice count?
* For all the helicopter parenting, sex talks tend to be too little, too late.
* Outrage over teaching masturbation in Spain; article mentions what other sex-ed programs do. Makes the USA sound stuck in the Dark Ages.
* The anti-statism obsession in America
* Cake vs. screamers: increasing marginal utility of 'reliever' goods and the persistence of poverty.
* Obama aims to shrink the war on terror from "terrorism" to "Al-Qaeda", on the grounds that only A-Q is targetting us, plus movements like Hamas and Hezbollah and even the Taliban have nationalistic roots in the people, and can't simply be stomped.
* Palin's fake bus tour, call for the US to dedicate itself to God, and flirtation with the Birthers
* Manual for GOP obstructionism.
*composting toilets progress.
* Christmas defined
* Blood plasma from border Mexicans. US is one of the only countries to allow paying for blood and plasma, and a massive exporter of plasma since other countries don't collect enough. I smell a causal connection, there...
* Ada Lovelace: the Origin
* Evolution of Nintendo controllers
* Robert Fisk on the Armenian genocide
* Tony Judt on social democracy, past present and future.
* North Korea sabotages self more.
* Uganda attacks gays. With US Christian support.
* Migration trends in the US. Wonder whether people are leaving a state and how many? Now you can find out easily -- well, for the 2005-2007 period.
* WWJD?
* Protectionism and the Great Depression
Great Hedge of India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hedg
maps
http://www.rmoxham.freeserve.co.uk/m
salt tax in India, health effect of deficiencies
http://www.rmoxham.freeserve.co.uk/s
"The official figure for famine induced deaths in the 14 months from
November 1877 to December 1878 was 1,266,420" Like Pol Pot!
discussion
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/215
The British set up a hedge-fence down the middle of India for 100 years, to control opium trade and enforce their self-declared salt monopoly; salt taxes continued right up to independence, being one of Gandhi's issues, even after the Hedge burned down. The third link talks about how people *need* salt, especially people who sweat a lot in hot tropical climates. Like... India.
Ah, colonialism/British capitalism. A megadeath here, a megadeath there, soon it's like Communism!
In other cheerful news, Canadian customs stopped and questioned NPR journalist Amy Goodman.
Rapid expansion of the food stamp program, as honest hardworking American families continue to assume that *other* recipients are mooching off the system but they're just on hard times themselves and it's a great relief to be able to feed the kids in this time of unemployment. Says the Bush administration worked to reduce stigma, which surprised me.
Link from last month and mlc23 on General Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan. Plus this one that I haven't read yet. First one has him arguing that we should either pull out or commit a lot more forces if we want to accomplish something. He's been doing good work trying to protect the population from ourselves as well as the Taliban, but you need more troops to actually protect everyone vs. playing whack-a-mole.
Speaking of which, calls to make the wars on budget and deficit-neutral.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opini
The general messages: unemployment is disastrously high and there's no sign it's going to get better and no one's doing anything about it. Instead, they, including Obama, are whining or worrying about the debt and inflation, even though the debt isn't that high comparatively, there's no more sign of inflation than there is of employment, and it all seems like a herd effect of conventional wisdom stupidity like the runup to the Iraq invasion, where if you go against the herd you're a crazy person even if you're right.
Inflation: rates are low, people with money like Pimco are moving *into* government bonds, and Japan has been in its recession for the past 20 years, with high debt, and... 1.x% interest rates. It's a phantom menace. But people are worrying about it more than 10% or 17% of the workforce being un- or under-employed, local governments not being able to hold on to their teachers or repair roads.
* Salary gender gap in engineering
* A quarter of US teen girls get STDs, many from their first partner.
On happier or funnier notes:
* Zeppelins over LA
* Unauthorized index of Palin's book
sentence, actual
________"As the soles of my shoes hit the soft ground, I pushed past the tall cottonwood trees in a euphoric cadence, and meandered through willow branches that the moose munched on," 102
Totally unrelatedly, Kroger doesn't have corn tortillas -- not real ones, just pre-cooked shells. Bloomingfood's West does though, possibly their cheapest starch -- $1.89 for 36 tortillas, 1800 calories. Well, raw grain is probably cheaper.
We have a Thursday Doctor Who night, watching Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane... Red Dwarf for a while. Tonight we branched into Leverage, off DVR instead of DVD or Netflix online. We got exposed to commercials! I haven't seen commercials in years, except for ones in movies.
links:
* Facebook application scams: one, two. Maybe you shouldn't have been playing so much Mafia Wars.
* Better school lunches mean better student performance. Which implies most of us should be eating more vegetables, too.
* Divisions among American Muslims. It's almost as if they're normal people, with class, culture, and race differences!
* Health care: it's subsidies that cost, not the public option per se? Why is Lieberman nattering about blocking the public option to save the budget? Well, lots of insurers in his state...
* Krugman can't watch Fox Business.
* Europe's lessons on unemloyment, and India's job guarantee. (From Randy)
* Ten year old boy in Arkansas sits down for gay rights
* Lindsey Graham, highly conservative Senator, is censored by his state for being too compromising with liberals. One, two.
* AMA says marijuana could have medical use, should get more research
Catholic shenanigans: threatening to stop charity in DC over benefits for gay employees; fighting for anti-gay discrimination in adoption in Britain, a battle they already lost in Boston.
Irony
* The Republican National Committee has offered employees a health plan covering abortion since 1991. They say they'll stop though, now that Politico pointed this out.
Ever wonder what a rehabilitation-oriented prison system would look like? Norway gives a small clue.
* Visit to a high security prison, which includes Internet access.
* Photos of a low-security prison
* Eco-prison, actually modifications to an existing open prison
* More on what open prison means. It looks luxurious, but it's actually rehab for prisoners nearing the end of their sentence; they start in a more traditional closed prison. (With Internet.) They retain the vote, even in prison, and there was a teleconferenced political debate between politicians and prisoners. 21 years is the maximum sentence. More
* Stats on who ends up in prison. Unsurprisingly: low education, unemployment, mental problems.
* For Fanw: a secular German coming of age rite.
* the missing Republican women legislators
* Anonymous whistleblower says IEA has been lying about oil production, peak oil is nigh.
* Pro-choice Democrats voting for the Stupak amendment
* Failure breeds failure, success breeds success
* Long essay on US high-speed rail. China's pulling well ahead of us. Amtrak's Acela is "high-speed" only by our primitive standards.
* Dangers of the paranoid takeover of the GOP.
Evening links:
* Rosy memories of Communist Hungary. See comments as well.
* Libertarians and climate change denialism
Older links:
* Heroic blacks on TV: bald head and goatee
* Female urination device
* GOP as group therapy for fear? Though it often seems like they feed on fear. Fear the Muslim/liberal/socialist/PC/feminist...
* Sexism in Holmes (author, not Sherlock) D&D supplements
* glass armonica
* The lost generation of growth
* "All Christian" prison
* Is New England like Europe? Nationalism vs. piety.
* Does exercise work for weight loss?
* In American dynastism, Liz Cheney carries on her father's advocacy of torture and fearmongering, along with not contesting an assertion that Obama isn't American.
* One thing about religions, they often introduce holidays for the poor. Maids in Jakarta get Ramadan off, with rich families having to cope with fetching their own glasses of water. Or check into luxury hotels.
* The standoff in Honduras continues, with the ousted President Zelaya having slipped somehow into the Brazilian embassy. I've been sympathetic to the 'coup', but closing radio stations and cracking down on civil liberties burns that up.
* Why is the Supreme Court hearing half as many cases as it used to?
* State Republicans want to contest a health insurance mandate via amending state constitutions. Unclear on the concepts of the supremacy clause or how health reform can work.
* Logicomix, a comic book about Bertrand Russell and the quest for certainty in mathematics.
* Modern miracles: helping the blind see.
* The new education fad: teaching executive function, aka self-control
Cool or important stuff
* Krugman (and 9 page Kenneth Arrow PDF) on why markets fail at health care.
* Jimmy Carter breaks with Baptists over gender equality. He's for it.
* Yet another article on the plural 'they'. This one is new in describing whom to blame for the idea that it's bad.
* Racial whitewashing of covers.
* House of Representatives size over time
* Creepy vintage ads
* Some people say rich people are fleeing California due to high taxes. They're wrong. A lot of people have been gloating about people leaving California; none have acknowledged California's population perhaps unsustainably in dot-com and housing bubbles.
* Prenatal air pollution lowers IQ. Ah, poor people, getting shafted even before they're born. "Just work harder!"
* Replacement fertility isn't a constant 2.1. It's approximately the reciprocal of (chance of a girl being born)*(chance a girl will survive to average age of maternity). So given 50% ratio but 50% chance of survival, the average woman would have to have 1/(.5*.5)=4 children just to keep the population going. Current numbers go from 2.05 to over 3.
** Decadent liberal countries having more children
* Obama did get more young voters to turn out.
* Law and order in the West Bank. But some people think they should be expelled.
* Bus rapid transit. Speaking of Third World megacity sprawl, it seems to me that much of LA is well-adapted to rapid busways, e.g. there are spare lanes to hijack.
* If you listened to the media, you'd never think Nobel-winning economists worry the stimulus is too small.
* Poland weathering the recession
Krugman/Stiglitz dump
article on Stiglitz
http://www.newsweek.com/id/207390
Krugman on it
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/0
Newsweek on Krugman
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191393?tid=r
column excerpts
http://www.newsweek.com/id/191398?tid=r
female Japanese 'Krugman'
http://www.newsweek.com/id/204874?tid=r
( GOP news )
( fitness links )
( random )
* Cute studies: Children of lesbian mothers less susceptible to mental illness. Take with as much salt as a single study deserves, but cute result anyway given the debates.
* Politics geek: Overseas departments of France. Unlike the American empire, or the American capital, they get representation in the legislature.
* Hope: Confucian enviornmentalism?
* Less Hope: Spain limits universal jurisdiction.
* Tech: Bicycle cars!
* Human interest: Gay Iraqi Jew Israeli who helps Palestinians.
* Current events: Honduran 'coup'. You've probably seen the standard version (military coup!), see the other side. I've been looking at bad translations of the Honduran Constitution (Google Translate is a bit less bad than Babelfish) and yeah, it *does* look like the President disqualified himself from office -- and that there's no formal impeachment mechanism. Noel Maurer
* RPG geek: 4e D&D for taking a shit
* Rainbow flag: not just for gays
* "Gayby boom": the wave of kids who've grown up with gay parents.
* How the media incorporates blogs on Iran.
* Corporate crooks: travel protection fraud. Bankrupted with health insurance.
* Freedom, Environment: now legal to collect rainwater in Colorado
* Mad Science!: hot rock projects underway, and causing earthquakes. Geo-engineering. The global ant super-colony.
* Retro-tech: 13 year old experiences Walkman.
* Interrogating Saddam Hussein
* Gay sex decriminalized in India for now. Illegal (10 years in prison) under British colonial law; Delhi High Court has overturned. Religious leaders object; case may be appealed to the Supreme Court.
* Forced marriages and Britain
* CBO analyzes plan with public option, hey, this time it works. President of the AMA comes out in support, sort of.
* Swine flu: US deaths (updated Fridays). Spread in Argentina.
* US and UK deregulated finance and got a bust. Canada didn't and has stable banks. Hmm.
* Effect of minority judges on the Court.
* Outline of Predictably Irrational, a collection of cognitive bias experients and results.
* AMA continues the fight against reform, has contributed heavily to the GOP.
* US care as viewed by a Canadian. Supplements an older piece in the opposite direction. And a comparison with France.
* Tobacco to be more regulated now. Also.
* Militants respond positively to Obama's speech
* Scott Roeder warns of more murders of abortion doctors. Can we call him a terrorist yet? Should we waterboard him?
* Would gay marriage support be higher if framed as "should the government have the power to prevent gays from marrying?"
* From Randy: Portugal's empire superimposed on Europe.
* Moonshine resurgence. Article ends covering the one legal moonshiner. Authorities were pretty helpful when someone asked how to make corn whiskey legally. *shock*
* Bert and Osama
* Failure of US rail. Slower than it was in the 1920s.
* Liberals and conservatives have different reactions to authority and disgust.
* Marijuana legalization bill!
** Ambiguity about Obama's enforcement
* Closing of the Canadian border
* Newsweek criticizes Oprah's gullibility
* Republican car dealerships
* Long term whiteness of the GOP, with 98% of Reagan's 1980 votes being white. Though Nate's "always" doesn't see as far back as pre-FDR black Republicans.
* GOP lawmaker claims liberal media is biggest threat to America.
* Health insurance companies invest in tobacco companies.
* Reagan's role in the financial crisis
* Stagflation myth
* Cats don't understand strings
* One man's experience with taking female hormones
* Grilled cheese as metaphor for sex.
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