Now that’s a tag cloud to be proud of, if I do say so myself.

Apparently, my laptop bag retains heat for a little while.

Stacy Curtin posted an excellent article on how the United States sucks for Internet and media access. This has been one of my issues for a long time, and it’s been damned hard to get the point across to the “USA! USA!” crowd who assumes we’re the best at everything.

In fairness to the telcos, it is true that wiring up the United States is a hell of a lot bigger project than most countries. A proper expense comparison should be to the whole of Europe. That said, most of us are clustered in highly dense population centers, so we should stop letting the last mile argument cloud the fact that the best we can get is still pretty damn bad—and expensive as hell.

When I need wicked fast Internet access, I go to Penn campus, where I get alumni Net privileges. That only cost me $80,000, but hey, it’s a lifetime membership.

I don’t know whether to wash my hands or make a salad.

Number of RSS hits to my blog this month: 1,998.

Number of known RSS reading humans here: 2. Maybe 3.

If you’re out there, please let me know (if your initials are not MOW or CP). It’s a lot easier for me to recommend subscribing separately to the Conspiracy Theories and Illuminatus feeds, than it is for me to come up with a WordPress master feed excluding Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter. Thanks.

(Re my other categories: I think I can force them into the “top two” feeds by making them subcategories. Will play with this once I find out what my strategy is.)

Spotted on Penn campus last week.

As I’ve recently been in a debate where I was called hysterical and totally fixed in my opinions, I’ll relate the following: liberals more than twice as likely as conservatives to change their opinion based on social network interactions.

Damned liberals. Can’t even get the goosestep marching right.

SNS users who are liberals and moderates are more likely than conservatives to say their use of the sites has prompted them to change their views on a political issue: 24% of liberal SNS users say that; 18% of moderates say that; and 11% of conservatives say that.

…and you learn something new every day.

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically valid sentence in the English language.

John F. Kennedy, 1961:

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Ronald Reagan, 1980:

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

NPR, 2012:

Are You Better Off? That’s The Question As Democrats Gather

Back in the 1980s, we used to ask ourselves whether asking that question meant that we had become self-centered narcissists, caring more about our individual well-being than our country. I guess now that’s a given.

Update 8:40 AM: Krugman with another angle on why it’s a horrible question.

Ebert just tweeted this ad, supposedly from BMW Germany for used cars:

Two thoughts. First, if the ad is from Germany, why is the URL for bmw.gr? Second, if the ad is in English, why is the website in Greek?

Not buying it. But I assume I’ll see it again.

This is one more reason why I believe the current DRM model of distributing media is doomed.

Who inherits your iTunes library?

Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes. But when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us.

Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.

How to waste your campaign ad dollars:

1. Jeff opens a web page.

2. Fail #1: a video advertisement for Mitt Romney starts autoplaying somewhere on the page. I can’t see the video, so I can’t see where to turn it off.

3. Fail #2: a second copy of the same advertisement starts autoplaying somewhere on the same page, so the audio is now playing in an echo chamber.

4. Fail #3: the few words I can still make out are Romney Olympics something something efficiency something high quality management.

5. Fail #4: I mute the sound. Still have no idea where the video is, but now I don’t care.

6. Worst (or best): the page in question? Failblog.

Or to quote Jim Dalrymple:

Yep.

Note: I read this as confirmation of the dates. I don’t take as gospel the rest of the announcements in the article Jim links to.

That’s the thing about cheap shots: you can’t make them if they’re not true. HT Jim Dalrymple.

Team Coco: Samsung Calls BS On Apple’s Charges Of Copying

Two interesting items crossed my radar today.

First, the Schoolhouse Rock version of “I’m Just a Bill”, courtesy of Mark Fiore:

And here’s a story on just how frickin’ easy it is to set up an offshore corporation. Easiest place to do it without filing any paperwork? The United States.

Back when I was in college and getting radicalized, one of the major political arguments in favor of my pro-choice beliefs was the theory that removing abortion from the table essentially turned women into walking incubators. The alternative view: women can consider themselves fully functioning members of society—until they get pregnant, or are at risk of getting pregnant. After that, well, think of the children and give up your control over your health and your body.

As it seems to me that every woman between the ages of fifteen and fifty are at least nominally at risk of getting pregnant, this is a no-brainer. As it also seems to me that there is absolutely no situation where a man is ordered to give up his own freedoms in such a way, well, it seems to me that any self-respecting man should agree with me.

That’s why I’m posting this link: as a member of the “have not spawned” community, it seems to me that most of my peer group goes a little batshit crazy about monitoring the absolutely perfect health of their offspring (as if that were possible), and it’s 1,000 times worse for pregnant women. Sure, it’s easy to stay on the side of opposing laws that restrict a woman’s freedom—but in the case of women who voluntarily do so in order to abide by societal rules, well, the problem seems to be getting worse with no easy fix.

Salon: My pregnancy rebellion

Ironically, within a few minutes after my news feed told me that Jonah Lehrer resigned from The New Yorker, my articles-to-read randomizer plucked out this piece from June titled “Why Smart People Are Stupid”, which begins with an apology that Lehrer self-plagiarized the beginning of the piece.

FWIW, I think Lehrer is a smart writer and I’m going to miss his long-form pieces. I don’t necessarily think there’s a correlation between fabulizing a quote and the accuracy of the overall piece, hence the link.

When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics. Instead, their decisions depend on a long list of mental shortcuts, which often lead them to make foolish decisions. These shortcuts aren’t a faster way of doing the math; they’re a way of skipping the math altogether.

Corollary: smart people are more likely to trust these shortcuts, IMO.

I have no idea if this works, but thought it was worth sharing.

Mr. Kaminsky’s manifesto makes the not-altogether-depressing argument that some of us might be able to tame our gluttonous appetites (and maybe even slim down) by focusing on eating foods that deliver maximum flavor.

Eating Well Without the Flavor of Shame