Link
February 24, 2012
ABC News investigates Foxconn

ABC News investigates Foxconn. The whole piece is worth watching. A few scattered thoughts:

  • The suicide rate among Foxconn employees is lower than the national average of China
  • Suicide is a phenomenon for the wealthy, and it’s suicides naturally cluster from the copycat phenomenon
  • To paraphrase Brandon Berg, the poor aren’t having their options limited by Foxconn; they’re having their options limited by being poor. Restricting their options will not help them.
Photo
December 31, 2011
Waffen-monopol für Verbrecher? NEIN

Waffen-monopol für Verbrecher? NEIN

Text
December 22, 2011

When proponents of government programs deny the existence of crowding out effects on the labor market, are they ever really making a nuanced case about the elasticity of labor demand? If so, what data do they cite? My hunch is that most have only a shallow understanding of how labor markets work, and suffer a strong make-work bias.

Photo
December 21, 2011
So begins the collection of shot glasses made out of ice.

So begins the collection of shot glasses made out of ice.

Video
December 18, 2011
35 notes

vanityfair:

Just watch.

[“The Immortal Rejoinders of Christopher Hitchens,” VF.com]

Photo
December 18, 2011
2,501 notes
vanityfair: Without a doubt, this is our favorite freewheeling photograph of the late, great Christopher Hitchens, whose passing we can barely comprehend. So we turn to the words of Graydon Carter, who writes of this image in his touching memoriam: “I once sent him out on a mission to break the most niggling laws still on the books in New York City. One such decree forbade riding a bicycle with your feet off the pedals. The photograph that ran with the column, of Christopher sailing a small bike through Central Park with his legs in the air, looked like something out of the Moscow Circus.” Photograph by Christian Witkin.

vanityfair:

Without a doubt, this is our favorite freewheeling photograph of the late, great Christopher Hitchens, whose passing we can barely comprehend. So we turn to the words of Graydon Carter, who writes of this image in his touching memoriam:

“I once sent him out on a mission to break the most niggling laws still on the books in New York City. One such decree forbade riding a bicycle with your feet off the pedals. The photograph that ran with the column, of Christopher sailing a small bike through Central Park with his legs in the air, looked like something out of the Moscow Circus.”

Photograph by Christian Witkin.

Quote
December 15, 2011
"Learning about rationality, and how widespread irrationality is, sparks an important realization: you can’t assume other people have good reasons for the things they believe. And that means you need to know how to evaluate other people’s opinions, not just based on how plausible their opinions seem, but based on the reliability of the methods they used to form those opinions."

— How rationality can make your life more awesome

Quote
November 27, 2011
"The inaccessibility to reflexive inquiry of the rules that govern conscious thought entails the bankruptcy of the Cartesian rationalist project and implies that the human mind can never fully understand itself, still less can it ever be governed by any process of conscious thought."

— John Gray; Hayek on Liberty

Video
November 27, 2011
5 notes

cmaaarrr:

Minor traffic accident enhanced with Mario sound effects

(via noisyastronomer-deactivated2012)

Quote
November 22, 2011
"Israel is the only democracy in the world where Jews don’t have freedom of religion."

—

Nitzan Horowitz

Ben-Gurion and the Orthodox Question – Tablet Magazine