http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5653181/ Excellent (and not too US-centric) “Emotional Moments” photographs from the Olympics. 04:51
Archives
This month: 26 entries.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/27MichaelWard.html “E-mail address it would be really annoying to give out over the phone.” 19:46
http://www.ptua.org.au/melbourne/fact.shtml Melbourne Transport Facts from the Public Transport Users Association. These are pretty misleading facts.
“Melbourne has one of the largest rail systems in the world, with 15 lines. The Paris Metro is a third smaller, while San Francisco’s BART is less than half the size.” The Paris Metro is a subway, and is not comparable to Melbourne’s train system. The RER is a more comparable, and it extends much further out than the Metro. What is the point of comparing Melbourne’s public transport system to that of two randomly chosen cities anyway? It’s a simple matter to find cities that are either less well or better equipped than Melbourne.
”We also have the biggest tram system in the English speaking world.” Why the anglocentricism?
“Our motor vehicles produce 81% of those greenhouse gases attributable to transport, while public transport is the source of only 3%.” What the PTUA don’t tell you is that transport accounts for 21.3% of national emissions, and that of this, only 54.9% comes from cars—so overall, cars are the source of about 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions (source). (The PTUA pull a similar trick on this page, which contains a pie graph showing that 49% of household emissions result from transport. It is not at all clear that this is not a per-capita-style calculation.) I’m also suspicious of the 3% figure for public transport—the source linked above provides a category for railways, but it specifically excludes electric rail. (Also, trams burn dirty brown coal.)
“If Melbourne is to cut greenhouse emissions 20% by 2005 (the internationally agreed target), one in every six journeys now made by car will have to be shifted to public transport.” Cars account for only 8% of national emissions, so I don’t see what’s going on here. 08:48
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,
,1275047,00.html Researcher wonders why there’s less coverage
of women’s sport than men’s, even when participation
rates are taken into account. I don’t know that
participation rates are really the right point of comparison here.
Why do flyweight
boxers get much less media attention than heavyweights? Junior
soccer teams less than senior? The drivers of Formula 3
cars get less than those of Formula 1? The sport-loving public seems
to have a preference for the strongest, fastest, highest
irrespective of age, weight and height. To some extent, the
public is probably equally disinterested in a participant’s sex. 04:18
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/technology/circuits/26ipod.html Weirdly-written piece on the iPod’s shuffle function: “Dan Cedarholm, a Web designer in Salem, Mass., insists that his iPod has a predilection for the indie punk band Fugazi. Even though he only has two of the band’s albums stored on his ‘vintage’ 5-gigabyte device, the band seems to dominate his iPod to a degree wildly disproportionate to the amount of space it occupies on his player’s memory, he said. ‘It is truly bizarre,’ said Mr. Cedarholm, who no longer likes Fugazi.” Who no longer likes Fugazi! 17:06
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?040830crat_atlarge Louis Menand on democracy and voting. “… my interest in an election is best served if I choose the candidate whose policies are most likely to benefit me or the people I care about.” Is this how you’re supposed to vote? 23:19
http://browsehappy.com/ Anti-IE advocacy via FUD: “Internet Explorer can make your computer unsafe. Why not switch to a browser that’s more secure?” 04:21
http://www.thesuperficial.com/000250.html “Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro are planning on releasing a sex guide featuring their sexy tips on how to have sexy sex. As interesting as a Carmen Electra sex guide sounds, I’d be more interested in a Dave Navarro ‘Land Somebody Way Hotter Than You’ guide. …” 06:04
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/lax/37056381.html “I Just Landed the Best Fucking Job in the World!” 07:29
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040823ta_talk_toobin More great anecdotes in a Talk column. A construction worker goes into an ACLU office to get a political sticker to put on his helmet, and the only one they have is “Marriage for Everybody”? 23:12
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040809/full/040809-4.html How attractive you’re considered to be depends on your name … maybe. (More information from the researcher. Seems like a useful followup study would be to compare “Tim” and “Tom.”) A few years ago a psychiatrist discovered that his fellow psychiatrists were more likely to diagnose a “Matthew” as having schizophrenia than a “Wayne.” (Waynes were more likely to have a personality of substance disorder.) 06:11
http://www.plasticbagfamine.com/ Australians being encouraged to give up plastic bags for a week; the event is called the plastic bag famine. Way to minimise the real thing, eh? 17:32
http://www.killingwithkindness.com/ Web site for London’s (fairly hard-core) campaign to get people to not give money to beggars.
“Don’t give to people begging on the street; you could be killing with kindness. … those begging are unlikely to be homeless … 62% of people arrested for begging in Camden and 42% in Westminster gave fixed addresses when charged. … Money given is likely to be spent on drugs and/or alcohol … Those arrested for begging in Camden: 80% tested positive for Class A drugs 62% have a conviction for Class A drug offence 83% had a conviction for acquisitive crime offence.” (What proportion had none?)
(Questionable language used in the FAQ: “Beggars can gain fast access to a hostel bed in Camden & Westminster and it does not cost them a penny”; “It is rarely residents who give but they are the ones that suffer the most from the problems of persistent begging in their neighbourhoods and the anti social behaviour that goes with it.”)
There must be an interesting story behind all this. It appears that only one charity is a “partner” in the campaign; I think St. Mungos was once, but they now say that whilst they “broadly support” the campaign, they “would never say that people should never give to beggars, it is up to individual and the circumstances at the time.” 08:33
http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1277111,
00.html “The Virtue of Idleness.” 22:16
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040809fa_fact Profile of Brad Stine, a Evangelical Christian standup comic. 21:56
http://slate.com/id/2104808/ I’d like to know more about some of the astounding disaster-recovery efforts described here. (1) In 1977, a factory that was Toyota’s sole supplier of a valve used in the breaking system in all its cars burnt down; Toyota had only three days’ worth of supplies but was able to get production going at pre-fire levels within a week. (2) A company lost all the people who knew the passwords to their off-site backups when the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center came down, but were able to get access after going through everything they knew about the people who died, and trying variations as passwords. (This surely can’t work very often. I don’t think it would work with mine! Knowledge of past passwords probably helps quite a lot.) 20:47
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-centers2aug02,1,4374833.story On coaching Indian call-center operators to be more, uh, American. After I got some cards stolen in St Petersburg, I called American Express to see how I could get some money out on the Amex card I still had. (I couldn’t, incidentally; if you want support when you’re travelling overseas, get a regular Amex card, not a blue one.) The guy I spoke to explained that in order to do something-or-other, I would have to call back during “business hours.” So I asked what time it was now (to work out the time difference) and then there was a pause, and then he said he didn’t know… 23:13
http://circlelineparty.org.uk/ Circle Line Party set to roll this Friday! 22:53
http://slate.com/id/2104602/ “The Religification of John Kerry.” It still surprises me that more Americans are prepared to vote for a gay candidate (59%) than an atheist (49%). 20:09
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_3_urbanities-czarinas.html Profile of Estee Lauder, Helena Rubinstein, and Elizabeth Arden; each was “a short, hyper-ambitious, social-climbing saleswoman who loved wealth, invented her past, dumped her husband when he seemed a drag on her career, peddled emollients and powders that promised eternal youth, and dined out on her aphorisms.” 02:52
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/3525894.stm Two brothers (out of a set of triplets) need kidney transplants; since they’re almost genetically identical, they’ll both be suited to the same kidneys, meaning that someone (doctors, fortunately) needs to choose one to get a transplant first. 02:13