It’s Culture Wednesday! Please enjoy this circuitous analysis through art history and the North Korean edition of Kremlinology to figure out whether a painting depicts the DPRK’s heir apparent or his more popular grandfather, and the meaning of both scenarios. Via Brad Steinbacher.
This version of events is a little more nuanced than the one on Madison Market’s registers.
Three governors’ races I failed to note until well after the election: Medicare fraudster Rick Scott won in Florida, anti-evolution reprobate Sam Brownback won in Kansas, and ex-Republican Lincoln Chafee won in Rhode Island.
Noted lunatic Jan Brewer won in Arizona, which wasn’t a surprise, but as in Kansas, I can’t think of a single advantage Obama gained in plucking Kathleen Sebelius and Janet Napolitano out of the KS and AZ governor’s offices, and sending them off to cabinet hell. Two years ago I assumed the wisdom of those moves would be revealed in time, but now they look worse than ever.
I hadn’t noticed, but Neko Case’s lovely “Don’t Forget Me” from Middle Cyclone turns out to be a Harry Nilsson cover. Neil Diamond’s currently picking up the same song, covered in much the same style. He ducks the “when we’re older, and full of cancer” line, though. Oh, the things one can learn from other people’s twitter followers.
The Nilsson documentary I missed at SIFF a few years ago is now available via Netflix instant, with a high rating.
Unless Stephen Colbert’s been rummaging around wikipedia again:
Adult [elephant] teeth do not replace milk teeth by emerging from the jaws vertically as human teeth do. Instead, new teeth grow in at the back of the mouth, pushing older teeth toward the front, where the latter break off in pieces until they are gone.
It gets worse:
The first chewing tooth on each side in each jaw falls out when the elephant is about two years old. The second set of chewing teeth falls out when the elephant is about six years old. The third set is lost at 13 to 15 years of age, and set four lasts to approximately 28 years of age. The fifth set of chewing teeth (molars) lasts until the elephant is in its early 40s. The sixth (and usually final) set must last the elephant the rest of its life.
“Facebook announced Monday that its new messaging system is blurring the line between e-mail and social networking, but that decision is the worst thing that ever happened.”
Every so often the phrase pops into my head for no reason. From season 1 of The Wire:
A great 20-minute introduction to the Schneier worldview. The premise is that “security” can refer to the feeling of being secure, or the state of being secure, but doesn’t necessarily (or often) mean both simultaneously. It’s littered with well-chosen anecdotes, like the once-widespread fear of doorbells, and useful concepts including the availability heuristic, which really changed the way I look at the world when I first heard about it.
Too much baking powder can have the same effect as too little. Neat!
“CBS’ Mark Knoller tweeted Monday that ‘Secret Service says it interviewed book thrower & deemed there was no threat intended - he just wanted Obama to have a copy of his book.’”
via the Washington Post
I knew it was bogus and suspected it was somehow self-propagating, but I thought it might have had malicious origins, and definitely didn’t know it was Windows XP’s fault.
Bagian is the head of the VA, with a background in the space program. This gives him desperately-needed perspective on the appropriate response to medical errors, and gives Atul Gawande a tag-team partner. Bagian’s reaction to the Challenger explosion, toward the end of the interview, is wonkishly swoonworthy.
It’s one-third movie review, three-fifths contextual grounding in/political reframing of Sorkin’s mishandling of copyright and legal policy, and one-fifteenth Randian elevation of Mark Zuckerberg. I guess I’m going to have to see this movie at some point.
Marc Hedlund, Wesabe’s CEO, has an essay up about why Wesabe lost to Mint, which is quite bumming me out.
Yes, both products helped some people — ours mostly through a supportive community and theirs mostly through giving people a rough picture of where their money has gone. But when we analyzed the benefits we saw for our users, and when Mint boasted about the benefits they saw for their users, the debt reduction and savings increase numbers directly matched the national averages. Because our products existed during a deep financial crisis, consumers everywhere cut back, saved more, and tried to reduce their debt. Neither product had any significant impact beyond what the overall economy led people to do anyways.
I loved Wesabe, and still miss it. Maybe my getting smarter about money was merely a coincidence, but I stopped carrying any credit card debt less than a year after I started using the service, because of decisions I made after Wesabe showed me the whole picture.
Mint is like Wesabe’s dim, amoral cousin, with a Zoolander haircut.
