Aug 27
New concept stove
Damn I want to get this so much and I don’t even cook!
The William
I am totally sold. The William is a new concept for an electric, touch screen stove-top.
Renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.
RSA Animate – First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
“The proper aim is to try to reconstruct society in such a basis that poverty is impossible and the altruistic virtues have prevented the carrying out of this aim. The worst slaves owners are those who are kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system from being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it,” he says, partially quoting Oscar Wilde.
Interesting talk. Watch it if you have the time.
Did you know it is, in average, $8,000 cheaper to adopt a black baby than a white one? And that boys are cheaper by $2,000?
Discount babies
THE market is not politically correct. It often assigns lower values to humans (their wages) based on their race or sex, even after controlling for education and experience. It’s just as cruel to children. A few years ago I was disturbed to learn that it’s cheaper to adopt black American children than white. I recently had lunch with NYU Stern School economist Allan Collard-Wexler, who has estimated adoption price sensitivity. He found just how much adoption fees are sensitive to the race and gender of a baby. It’s about $8,000 cheaper to adopt a black baby than a white or Hispanic child and girls tend to cost about $2,000 more than boys.
What can explain the preference for non-black girls? The preference for girls is interesting because people tend to favour male biological children. The authors speculate this may be because girls are considered “safer” in terms of dysfunctional behaviour. The data also includes same-sex couples, which tend to favour girls (both male and female partners), even more than heterosexual couples. (Source: The Economist)
Ah, sensitive issues. Still interesting though.
This train can lay it’s own tracks. Pretty cool. Nieuwe dwarsliggers en ballast werden aangebracht op de lijn tussen Mol en Overpelt.
9-5-2010 eindigden de werken in Overpelt
An interesting tidbit, when you enter any dates on or between September 3, 1752 and September 13, 1752, you get some sort of error and this is the reason why:
The Julian Calendar was built on the premise that the year was 365.25 days long and consisted of normal 365-day years interspersed with a 366-day leap year every fourth year. In 730 A.D., the Venerable Bede (an Anglo-Saxon monk) announced that the Julian year was 11 minutes, 14 seconds too long, building a cumulative error of about 1 day every 128 years. Nothing was done about this for 800 years.
By 1582, the error had grown to about 10 days. That year, Pope Gregory XIII decreed that Thursday, October 4, 1582 would be followed by Friday, October 15, thus correcting the calendar by 10 days. This began the Gregorian Calendar that is in use today. It uses a four-year cycle of leap years, and eliminates each leap year that occurs on three of every four centesimal years. Only centesimal years that are evenly divisible by 400 are leap years. Thus, the year 1600 was a 366-day leap year, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were each 365 days. The year 2000 is also a leap year, as will be the year 2400. (Source: IBM)
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. – Bertrand Russell
A good presentation by Jesse Schell where he discusses the future of game design and the possibility of it entering the real world. Even if you’re not too much a gamer, you should stick check this video out if you have half an hour to spare. You can level up in the process: