amh

Large amounts of government funding for scientific research create an equally large incentive to produce results which are politically useful (or at least, not politically inconvenient). In the case of AGW, the easy "solution" is massive expansion of government regulation in all spheres of life, as well as creation of new markets for government carbon indulgences, an excellent mechanism for enriching politicians and selected corporate cronies.

Any contrarian viewpoints are excluded both explicitly and implicitly, because ideas that resemble what's already been published in journals are those most likely to get funding. The vast majority of scientists aren't gonna jump off the gravy train and potentially sacrifice their tenure.

A co-worker of mine got divorced not long ago. I believe it went to court, but not sure (they both had lawyers). No kids were involved. His wife received half his assets, 100% of their co-owned business, all of his retirement money, and substantial alimony for 5 years. He got a devalued house with 2 mortgages and a 15 year old car. The wife is also a skilled, in-demand professional who could easily make $60k/year+.

Hearing face-to-face how badly this guy got fucked over was eye-opening to say the least. The truth is, family courts are highly biased against men. Get a pre-nup if you get married, or learn that truth the hard way.

My current employer once interviewed someone who brought in public photos of the departmental director and printed out webpages relating to stuff he did at previous jobs, I guess to prove that she was interested in what we do. She also made weird comments about visible personal possessions lying around in cubicles. Super creepy.

She didn't get the job.

It would be cool if he offered all the courses as a single download via torrent or perhaps a mail-order DVD.

Free tip if you want to write a better RSS reader: research Usenet newsreaders like trn or tin. Many of the problems with RSS that everyone is grappling with now were solved (to varying degrees of success) decades ago. Usenet news and RSS aren't 100% analogous of course, but they are similar enough that there's a lot of man-years of thought which can be reused.

I find your comment ironic given your username.

At one time, bloodletting was mainstream in the medical world.

The "Free to Choose" television series is really great, second that. They're all on google video, search for the obvious keywords and "long" duration (20+ mins) to find them easily.

I especially liked the debate segment in each show, where Friedman argues his points with both supporters and detractors. It struck me while watching it, you really can't find stuff like this on TV anymore.

Along with the excellent recommendations here, I would add "The Worldly Philosophers" by Heilbroner (http://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosophers-Lives-Economic-Th...) for a slightly different angle. It covers a wide range of famous economists and describes the high points of their theories along with some biographical detail, in a very engaging style. It's the economics version of "Men Of Mathematics", which is also a fascinating book.

Maybe he claims the difference is obvious, but not to my aging eyes (especially at smaller point sizes). Sadly, getting older has had more influence over my choice of fonts than pure stylistic preferences.

And yet, people who don't trust the census and refuse to answer unnecessary questions are considered nutters, even with relatively recent historical evidence that the government can't be trusted.

rsync won't delete extra files at the destination unless you tell it to. Although, there's still the problem of syncing corrupted stuff to the mirror. Keeping multiple versions is certainly more robust, in any case.

Good read, although the comments about saturated fat may be questionable in light of the recent research (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1332954).