No, really! You need to read this. What happens when five math experts try to split a check? I think my favorite part is this:
Economist: I mean it! If there were no taxes, I would have ordered a second soda. But instead, the government intervened, and by increasing transaction costs, prevented an exchange that would have benefited both me and the restaurant.
Engineer: You did order a second soda.
Economist: In practice, yes. But my argument still holds in theory.
*snort*
We all know that oil is used to create plastic. Well now there is an invention to turn plastic back into oil. Watch:
What a goldmine for developing countries! They will get free oil that can be used for heating or cooking all while saving them money and reducing their garbage footprint. I guess this would also come in handy for those industrialized areas that still use heating oil, but small scale stuff like this seems pretty pointless for urban areas. I’m sure there’s a larger scale equivalent that major cities could use to collect the plastic and save on their own electric bills or sell off to someone who is willing to convert the plastic.
The video is, unfortunately, a little vague on details. For instance, what is the byproduct? It can’t all be oil. Regardless, this has the makings of a revolutionary product that may become commonplace as resources get scarcer and scarcer.
Jean-Paul’s Rating 5/5 stars
I generally reserve five stars for movies that I could see myself seeing again and again. “The World’s End” is such a movie. It is the third movie in the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, the other two being “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”. That the trilogy is named after an ice cream treat that figures pretty much not at all in each film should tell you a lot about what kind of comedy we’re talking about here.
All three movies are comedy gold, but “The World’s End” is by far the best. It is full of gags and giggles and guffaws and genuine laugh out loud moments. The overarching premise is familiar to anyone who has seen any of the three movies. People living life as normal only to find out that things are far from normal. “Shaun of the Dead” had zombies. “Hot Fuzz” had cultists. “The World’s End” has alien robots.
The most surprising aspect of the movie to me was how good the action was. It was both comedic and well choreographed. Lots of exploding heads and flying robot body parts used to maximum comedic effect.
The end of the movie gets a little weird. Given the general weirdness of the movie in general, that’s saying something. It was a little bit of a letdown, but not nearly enough to ruin the fun of an excellent movie.
I foresee Three Flavored Cornetto Trilogy viewing marathons in my future. Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, and the gang know how to make quality comedies. I hope they’re not done.
The 2016 Presidential race has already started. Which, by the way, really? Ugh. And the first bit of fun is already upon us!
Tea Party favorite, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), has been looking to follow the Barack Obama plan of joining the Senate for one term and then jumping straight to the Presidency. Well, things are probably starting a little more closely to President Obama’s path than Ted Cruz would have liked this week. It was revealed that Ted Cruz was born in Canada and therefore not real U.S. citizen. Well, according to Tea Party standards anyway. Ted Cruz actually has dual citizenship because of being born in Canada. This is funny in and of itself because of the birther nonsense that surrounded Barack Obama, but leave it to Ted Cruz to make it even more hilarious. Seeing this Canadian citizenship as a stain on his good name and eliminating his chances of winning the Presidency given the crazies that would actually vote for him, Ted Cruz has decided to renounce his Canadian citizenship. Canada thanked him.
The Dust Bowl was a dramatic and devastating event. Taking place during much of the 1930s where there was a severe drought after years of large rainfall, its most well known characteristic is the massive dust storms that stripped the earth of its topsoil making it impossible for anything to grow. Much of the devastation from the Dust Bowl was man made, though. Soil conservation didn’t exist yet and farmers and governments reaped the literal whirlwind of their actions.
Much of the 2000s, the U.S. has seen droughts equal to or surpassing the droughts during the Dust Bowl. Thanks to governmental soil conservation projects, there are no dramatic pictures of massive clouds of dust and no mass migration out of the affected areas. This makes the effects of the drought fairly invisible to those not immediately affected by it.
Things are really bad, though. Smaller towns in the Southwest are running out of fresh water. Las Vegas is desperate to get more water pumped in from anywhere. Water levels in Lake Mead are down 100 feet from normal. Southern California has had to dig deeper and deeper for fresh water. Fracking companies are competing with citizens for water. This is doubly poisonous since not only are they taking fresh water from people who need it, they are also using that fresh water and chemicals to destroy the remaining fresh water.
I’ve been reading this excellent collection of short stories by Paolo Bacigalupi called “Pump Six and Other Stories”. They are all dystopian future stories that have to do with what happens when natural resources like water and oil run out. Read “The Tamarisk Hunter” for a frighteningly believable tale of the western United States with scarce fresh water.
One of the joys of having a cat companion is getting to clean up cat vomit every once in a while. Lindy is no exception in this respect. She’s a long haired cat so hurked up hairballs are a common occurrence. The noise she makes when barfing up a bezoar is the the stuff of nightmares. It sounds like HUG-GAHK-HUG-GAHK-GUH-GAHK-BLEAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaach only with more sliminess. That this occurs 50% of the time at night only makes it more nightmarish.
Last night was such a night. I did what I usually do when she performs her midnight retching ritual, I startle awake, I make sure she’s not on the bed, I listen to the spit up symphony, and I go back to bed. In the morning, I’ll grab some paper towels and clean up the mess. Only, this morning, I look and I look and I can’t find vomit anywhere. Nothing on the floor, nothing under the bed, nothing on the stairs, nothing in the hallway. Nothing. Lindy was all innocent like, “What vomit? I didn’t vomit.”
The way I see it, one of three things is true. Either I dreamed the whole thing or Lindy has found a special new spot to throw up or my cat is gaslighting me. Given that she’s a cat and therefore by definition evil, I am leaning heavily towards the gaslighting. So if I am committed to an insane asylum murmuring about cat vomit and nothing to clean up, you know the reason. Don’t let Lindy to to me what Charles Boyer did to Ingrid Bergman.
The New Yorker has an interesting article regarding medical residents, hours worked, and health outcomes. Residents used to work ridiculous hours. We’re talking 30 hour shifts. That is beyond ridiculous considering that even a little sleep deprivation has been shown to impair cognitive abilities as much as being drunk (which the author of the article both admits and seems to poo-poo as something non-doctors always say). The shift time was reduced in 2011 to “only” 16 hours. This resulted in an increase in the amount of handoffs which is what they call it when a doctor has to leave and hands off care to a new doctor. What they’ve seen is an increase of mistakes related to handoffs not being handled correctly.
To recap, 30 hour shifts lead to doctors making mistakes with their patients. 16 hour shifts lead to handoffs causing mistakes with their patients. Unless I missed something, the end result appears to be a wash. Just as many mistakes are being made either way. But then the author starts talking about how people feel and I just want to roll my eyes. Doctors feel like they’re not getting a complete education. Both doctors and nurses feel like the health outcomes are worse. Ugh.
From my point of view, the 16 hour shift is still infinitely superior to the 30 hour shift even though results so far appear to be the same. I would argue that part of the problem is that shifts should be even shorter. 16 hours is still an incredibly long time and doctors are expected to create handoff notes before they leave which is the time when they are most likely to cause mistakes due to sleep deprivation. The only difference is it’s a fresh doctor that’s making mistakes because of the sleep deprived notes of the previous doctor.
The funny thing about the article is there’s no mention of doing something simple like changing the handoff procedures. To me it’s obvious that’s what needs to be analyzed and changed. I can’t find a link to it now, but there was a study done about ER patients with heart problems and they studied various hospitals, some of which used a physical checklist of things for the doctor to do and some which just had the doctors just perform like they normally do. The hospitals with the checklists had a ridiculously higher quality of outcomes than the non-checklist hospitals. The handoff procedure just screams for something similar to a checklist to be created and used religiously. To me, the obvious addition is a simple question. Why? If the doctor wants to stop a medicine they must both write that they are doing so and the reason why they are doing so with pointers to the tests/observations that made them do so. They should do this at the time they are performing the action and not wait until the handoff.
The end result should be that no handoff is necessary. Yes, it’s still good and important for doctors to talk to each other, but relying on it is a recipe for disaster as much as working 30 hours is.
It’s been a few weeks, but Lindy has finally gotten her revenge for my locking her out of the apartment overnight. When I am on the computer, she is in the habit of sitting in the space between the keyboard and the monitor. It is not a large space and her girth will push the keyboard slightly off the desk as she settles down into her spot. It doesn’t affect my typing at all and it’s cute so I let her be. Yesterday, though, she did her usual and all was fine until I turned away for a moment. Lindy took that opportunity to full on sprawl in the confined space. The result being the keyboard went flying off the table and one of the flimsy plastic collapsible stand pieces broke off.
We’re even now, cat.
Many of you are probably familiar with the White House petition site. The basic idea is that anyone can start a petition and if that petition gets a certain amount of signatures, the White House promises to answer the question. You’re not guaranteed to like the answer, but they will answer it nonetheless.
Well, here’s a website that tracks the petitions that the White House HASN’T answered. Before we get to some of the interesting petitions that have yet to be answered, some interesting statistics. The White House has answered 87% of the petitions that missed the threshold. 202 in total so far. It takes the White House an average of 61 days to answer a petition once the threshold has been reached. Given that this is the first time a White House has ever attempted something like this, the Obama administration deserves some kudos for having this portal to the people.
Some of the petitions that have not been answered are quite interesting. Many are for supporters of bad science like anti-GMO people and pro-naturopaths and pro-acupuncturists. A lot of others are for strange fringe international relations issues mostly having to do with the Far East like investigating organ harvesting of Falun Gong by the Chinese and getting rid of a statue recognizing Korean comfort women that the Japanese used in World War II, but the Japanese claim was more propaganda than truth. There are even a few petitions for cigars and e-cigarettes that have mostly to do with regulation issues. There is one recent one to allow Tesla Motors to sell their cars directly to consumers which I think is a great idea. I’ve never understood why car dealerships are so protected at the state level. One of the more serious ones is about getting the Armed Forces to stop proselytizing and various other tactics that are discriminatory towards atheists in particular and non-Christians in general.
Go check out the web site. It’s worth reading in full. It’s a strange mix of the ridiculous, the fringe, and the serious.
Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars
“Kick-Ass 2”, like its predecessor, is a hyper-violent romp that looks into the world of ordinary people who dress up like superheros and patrol the streets. Strip all of that away, though, and you get a mildly depressing glimpse into the psyche of individuals who you believe actually would dress up like superheros and patrol the streets. Saddest of all is the couple whose son went missing and dress up to make the streets safer for other peoples’ kids. Their superhero name? For Tommy.
The second movie picks up a few years after the first one finished. Dave/Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor Johnson) and Mindy/Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) are in the same high school together, only Mindy always ditches school to improve her crime fighting skills. Dave, sick of the banality of high school and wanting to be a real superhero convinces Mindy to train him to be a real Kick-Ass. Mindy is soon discovered ditching school by hacking the school’s computers to give herself a perfect attendance and then not being there to pick up her award and is forced to give up her role as Hit-Girl. Dave, feeling abandoned, goes looking for superhero support groups and starts teaming up with other masked crusaders.
Meanwhile, Chris/Red Mist/The Motherfucker (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) plots revenge on Kick-Ass for killing his father with a bazooka in the first movie. This is where most of the humor in the movie comes from. The interactions between Chris and his right hand man, Javier (John Leguizamo) are priceless. Chris acts like the privileged rich white kid that he is and Javier tries to keep Chris at his evilest without coming off as a dick.
The movie does a few things quite well. The glimpses into the reasons for people becoming superheroes is touching sentiment in an otherwise mindlessly violent movie. It would have been interesting if they did the same with the villains, but alas, they did not. There is also a “Bad Girls” type glimpse into the lives of high school girls and how they are pressured into being things that they are not that is effective except for the denouement which is filled with unfunny toilet humor.
All in all, another fun summer movie that won’t really stick with you much past the next movie that you see. This one is worth seeing, but if you haven’t seen the first one, I’d recommend that over this one.