Vanilla Holiday

Hmm. Interesting?

• What it means to dress immodestly at Brigham Young University February 16, 2012
  For most of us men, it’s not that easy to walk up to a girl we hardly know and hand her a note expressing how we feel. But this past Valentines Day, one BYU student got up the nerve to do just that. He walked up to a girl he’d had his eye on and handed her a note. She — quite reasonably, given the day — thought it would express his admiration for her, but it […]
  Abraham Piper
• State-Run Casinos February 16, 2012
  If state-run lotteries are a bad idea, as I have argued, then state-run casinos are even worse.  But they are starting to pop up.  Moral rot is at the root of all other rot.  Overextended abroad, collapsing within, how long can we last?  Bread and circuses are the people's pablum supplied by a government whose power and reach are its main concerns, not […]
  Bill Vallicella
• Guttmacher doubles down February 16, 2012
  Yesterday, the Obama administration apparently thought it the better part of valor not to continue to push any statistic about 98% of Catholic women--e.g., that they "have used" non-NFP contraception. So they took down the link to that claim. Today, though, the Guttmacher institute has decided to double down on that statistic. Humorously enough, wh […]
  (author unknown)
• Oscar Gets Juiced: LFM Reviews Bullhead February 16, 2012
  By Joe Bendel. It is hard to believe Belgium has any comparative advantage in the beef packing industry. Regardless, watching the Flemish bovine mafia ply their cattle with hormones will not inspire global consumer confidence. One angry breeder takes massive doses himself. Regrettably, he has a very good reason for such treatments, which viewers see […]
  Joe Bendel
• Mollie Hemingway, Ed. : A Lutheran, a Jew, a Baptist and a Catholic Walk Into A Hearing February 16, 2012
  Right now, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee is having a hearing titled "Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?" Witnesses include the head of my church body, the Rev. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church (Missouri Syno […]
  Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
• What it looks like: "a society which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it" February 16, 2012
  Unless you've been in a coma for the past decade or so, you should be at least passingly familiar with the disturbing but altogether common practice of factory farming. Put very briefly, factory farming is a means of acquiring animal products (meat, but also milk, eggs, and so on) that treats the animals in question as though they were machines and not […]
  Eli Horowitz
• Richard Epstein : Now You See It, Now You Don't: The ObamaCare Penalty Morphs Back into A Tax February 16, 2012
  The most highly publicized portion of the complex Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (which is better called by PPACA since it is really neither) is the individual mandate that imposes a financial exaction on those who do not take out health care.  I purposely used the term “exaction” to avoid answering the question of whether this exaction is ei […]
  Richard Epstein
• Homeland Security takes on The Carrington Event February 14, 2012
  While we worry about future threats like global warming, and present threats like Iran’s escalating nuclear program, the sun’s propensity for belching out monstrous solar flares (like the Carrington event of 1859) could almost instantly create a world without modern … Continue reading → […]
  Anthony Watts
• THE DAWN OF RECORDED SOUND IN AMERICA. February 13, 2012
  The Smithsonian has hundreds of the earliest audio recordings ever made, but they have been considered unplayable and nobody knew what was on them. Recently, the Library of Congress and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory collaborated to make optical scanners capable of recording the patterns, and some of the results are becoming available. You can get a b […]
  languagehat
• Save Money and Get a Better Drink with the Secret Short Cappuccino at Starbucks [Coffee] February 11, 2012
  According to news weblog Slate, Starbucks can serve you a better, stronger cappuccino that costs less money; the baristas all know about it, but it's not on any menu. We're talking about the Starbucks short cappuccino, and if you're going to visit the Seattle-based coffee megacorporation you may want to give it a try. More » […]
  David Galloway
• Jason Mraz, Al Gore's new friend February 11, 2012
  Jason Mraz is an American singer and songwriter. The music isn't quite my cup of tea but I think it's good. This YouTube video with his song (which I've heard before) has attracted 120 million viewers: that's quite something. I don't remember seeing a number over 100 million for quite some time if ever. The musician who grew up in Qu […]
  Luboš Motl
• Cottingham, Wittgenstein, and the Religious Impulse February 10, 2012
  John Cottingham, On the Meaning of Life (Routledge 2003), p. 52:     . . . the whole of the religious impulse arises from the profound     sense we have of a gap between how we are and how we would wish to     be . . . .This is not quite right, as it seems to me, even if '"would wish to be" is read as "ought to be."   The sense of th […]
  Bill Vallicella
• Skin Cancer Drug Reverses Alzheimer's Symptoms In Mice February 10, 2012
  An anonymous reader writes "A skin cancer drug may rapidly reverse pathological, cognitive and memory deterioration associated with Alzheimer's disease, according to new research published on Thursday. Bexarotene, a drug that is currently used to combat T cell lymphoma, appeared to reverse plaque buildup and improve memory in the brains of mice wit […]
  timothy
• What would the end of football look like? February 10, 2012
  Kevin Grier and I have a new piece up on Grantland, on that topic.  It is perhaps hard to excerpt, but here is the close of the piece: Another winner would be track and field. Future Rob Gronkowskis in the decathalon? Future Jerome Simpsons in the high jump? World records would fall at a rapid pace. This outcome may sound ridiculous, but the collapse of foot […]
  Tyler Cowen
• Teaching Calculus with O-Notation February 10, 2012
  I was musing the other day on whether it would be easier to teach calculus using O notation. Coincidentally, today I just came across a posted by Alexandre Borovik quoting a letter that Donald Knuth wrote to the Notices of the AMS in 1988 advocating exactly that. […]
  Walt