In this post we explore the way wealth in the U.S. is actually distributed. We all assume normal distribution, but would log-normal or Lévy be a more accurate distribution?
Thanksgiving Myths
November 24, 2011 at 13:05 by
In the spirit of the holiday and my upcoming coffee table book “Everyone Is Wrong” I thought it might be fun to post some common misconceptions about Thanksgiving. It seems like every subject we think we know about is rife with misunderstanding and misinformation; this post (and the book) aren’t really intended to dispel those [...]
The Pepper-Spray Cop Gets Digitally Pepper-Sprayed
November 22, 2011 at 21:05 by
For those who aren’t yet aware, on Friday, November 18th, UC Davis police officer John Pike did something very stupid: He pepper sprayed a line of peaceful protesters holding a sit-in. No one rose up to strike him, no one was visibly armed and no one was behaving erratically or disruptively. It was a picture-perfect [...]
Economics For Couples
November 22, 2011 at 18:31 by
My wife and I, while having been married for a whole 17 days now, have been together for over five years and we’ve lived together and had joint finances for most of that time. Most of our friends are involved in serious committed relationships and at least one is recently married, but all are missing [...]
We Are All Criminals – or – Why I Hate Traffic Cops
November 22, 2011 at 00:55 by
There is not only a law but an entire segment of law enforcement which is making us all into criminals – Traffic law and traffic cops.
Today’s XKCD
November 21, 2011 at 12:30 by
Not a full post, I’ll work on one of those later today, but I just thought I’d make sure today’s XKCD reaches as big an audience as possible. The 99% protesters would do well to snag a bunch of the poster prints and use them as picket signs. The visual representation of worker vs. CEO [...]
Psychopathy in the Star Wars Universe
November 20, 2011 at 17:30 by
For no reason that I can pin down, I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about personality disorders and spotting good examples of them in TV and film. Interestingly enough, this has led me to a sort of Gray Jedi conclusion: The Jedi and Sith orders seem to be two sides of the same coin – they’re [...]
Precision of Language
November 18, 2011 at 11:18 by
I recently had an argument on the internet. This isn’t uncommon, as people are wrong on the internet a lot and, well… Yeah I’m that guy… This particular argument centered around the incorrect use of the words “possible” and “impossible” when terms such as “practical” or “likely” would have been more correct. These are arguments [...]
How I Became A Programmer (And Why It Might Have Been The Wrong Choice)
November 17, 2011 at 12:15 by
A brilliant computer scientist recently demolished his competition on popular U.S. game show “Jeopardy” in a new and interesting way. He compiled a database of Jeopardy questions and looked for patterns in the data, singled out the most important (and profitable) topics, tested his knowledge on those topics and used the resulting data to target [...]
SOPA: What It Does, Doesn’t Do and Why You Should Care
November 16, 2011 at 16:44 by
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), a controversial bill intended to fight online piracy. If you’re a fan of the Pirate Party then I don’t really need to give you any motivation to hate this one, but here’s a quick primer for the rest of you. Assuming you, like many folks, disagree [...]
