News fast experiment

Steve Pavlina reports on his experiences of going “news free”:http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/overcoming-news-addiction/. In fact, he calls it “overcoming news addiction.” He lists some very good reasons to go news free. I’m thinking about it. I certainly think this would change the nature of the blog, because I would not be reacting as much to events. It may [...]

See the contrast?

“Ben Franklin or Richard Jackson, 1759″:http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin: bq. Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. “??WaPo??, 2006″:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092800824.html?sub=AR: bq. The Senate joined the House in embracing President Bush’s view that the battle against terrorism justifies the imposition of extraordinary limits on defendants’ traditional rights in the [...]

Good news in Iraq

They’re building a $75 million “police academy”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087928/ in Iraq. No, wait, that isn’t right. They’re building a $75 million “police academy”:http://sadlyno.com/archives/3914.html in Iraq. Oops. Let’s try one more time. They’re building a $75 million “police academy”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15022363/ in Iraq. Technorati Tags: Iraq

Innovation in evangelical churches: sometimes I just shake my head

One church puts a “tithing ATM(Automated Teller Machine)”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-holyatm28sep28,0,7916395.story?coll=la-home-headlines in its lobby. Apparently you can go up to the machine, stick in your credit card to be charged at the 19% interest rate (or higher, whatever it is for cash advances), and then walk into the sermon without feeling guilty for refusing the offering plate. What [...]

Mmmmmm… transfatdoughnuts — write Krispy Kreme

The other day, my wife and I engaged in a bad death-bringing activity known as “stress-eating” (perhaps not bad for the cavemen, but bad for a person living in modern society). We bought a dozen “Krispy-Kreme”:http://www.krispykreme.com doughnuts, and proceeded to scarf one down. Then, after this had a brief moment of life-saving lucidity and examined [...]

Your shadow self

Apparently, if you stimulate part of the brain (left temporoparietal junction), you induce the feeling of _autoscopy_ or _heautoscopy_, where you experience a double of yourself. Mind Hack discusses some of the “recent research”:http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2006/09/inducing_the_shadow.html behind these phenomena. Technorati Tags: brain, neuroscience

Walmart vs. Big Pharma

Insider has the “scoop”:http://pharmagossip.blogspot.com/2006/09/wal-mart-vs-big-pharma-first-casuality.html on Walmart’s decision to sell generic drugs for $4 per 30 day supply. It seems to me that the 800-pound gorilla is trying to help its neighbors while still making money. Making money is still definitely at the top of the priority list, but maybe helping neighbors has climbed a few [...]

Ph.D. means Piled higher and Deeper

PhDComics shows us the “difference”:http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=761 between the scientific method and the actual method we use in research. Technorati Tags: science

More on listening to podcasts in half the time

So, I casually browse the productivity sites, because from time to time they have really neat tips that can help make some process run smoother, better, or just more efficiently. One of these, I think, will be listening to podcasts in half the time. I’ve just allowed my podcatcher to catch too many things. Part [...]

The New Statistics?

A group has “claimed to find a better way”:http://www.slaterfund.com/slaterfund/content_template.asp?file=newsdetail.asp&newsID=17 of doing statistics in clinical trials. It is based on a “pure likelihood”:http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:gmTfSWoOwSQJ:igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2004-0301-095707/c7.pdf+%22clinical+trials%22+%22pure+likelihood%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4 approach, which, at first pass, seems to take the size of the p-value into account as well as whether it is below 0.05. I’ll have to investigate this a little more closely, but [...]