Asides

I get the argu­ment he is mak­ing… but there are some chan­nels I dis­like so much that their pres­ence in a bun­dle makes the bun­dle less desir­able to me. I would pay more for less.

Does Cable TV Ripoff Peo­ple Who Don’t Like Sports?

Recent­ly the LATimes ignit­ed a firestorm of anti-sports com­men­tary by argu­ing that peo­ple who don’t watch sports are being ripped off by Cable TV. A key con­cern is that the high­er bills dri­ven by spor…

This is good — espe­cial­ly the last sen­tence: “I think research in moral rea­son­ing is impor­tant because under­stand­ing why good peo­ple do evil things is more impor­tant than under­stand­ing why evil peo­ple do evil things.”

Tor­ture in a Just World

If the world is just, only the guilty are tor­tured. So believ­ers in a just world are more like­ly to think that the peo­ple who are tor­tured are guilty. Per­haps espe­cial­ly so if they expe­ri­ence the tort…

This is absolute­ly true. One key insight: “I know much of suc­cess is luck, but I nev­er real­ized how much the mind­set of suc­cess comes from who you know. Luck­i­ly, who you know is up to you, not luck.”

It’s all who you know? | Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers Home, Blog, About, Projects

Awe­some com­ment at the end (although I do not know if it is true or not): “Do note that death insur­ance did­n’t sell well until it was giv­en the less accu­rate but more affa­ble name, life insur­ance.”

Road Fare>Congestion Pric­ing?

Con­ges­tion pric­ing sounds like some­thing to avoid since nei­ther term is some­thing you want. Eric Jaffe held a con­test for replace­ment terms. Decon­ges­tion pric­ing is one pos­si­bil­i­ty since it at least h…

I am nev­er sure how much to trust the details in these sto­ries, but one sec­tion real­ly leaped out at me: “He told Kim he would have to drop a case. A 9/11 case. “I hate to say it,” he said, “but being a Chris­t­ian is gonna trump being an Amer­i­can.”

‘Imag­ine the Worst Pos­si­ble Sce­nario’: Why a Guan­tanamo Pros­e­cu­tor With­drew From the Case

Lieu­tenant Colonel Stu­art Couch tru­ly believed Mohame­dou Ould Slahi was guilty. He also believed that Slahi’s inter­roga­tors had bro­ken the law — tor­ment­ing him phys­i­cal­ly and sex­u­al­ly, and threat­en­ing…

Prac­ti­cal advice on stop­ping gos­sip in its tracks.

Pyro­ma­ni­acs: How to shut down gos­sip and its nasty kin

First, under­stand what gos­sip is. Gos­sip is spread­ing harm­ful infor­ma­tion in an ungod­ly man­ner — with­out love, and thus to no pos­i­tive end. Its bas­tard stepchil­dren are the triplets: Strife, Dis­sensio…

This is a pret­ty good chart. It leaves out some options (and a ton of detail), but empha­sizes the right things.

End Times Info­graph­ic

Click on the image below to see the full-size ver­sion: HT: Josh Byers

The sec­ond quote is the one to focus on. If you are squea­mish, be cau­tious when order­ing cal­i­mari. For the record, I don’t think this would affect my will­ing­ness to eat arti­fi­cial cal­i­mari.

Fred Armisen hosts This Amer­i­can Life as Ira Glass

This week’s episode of This Amer­i­can Life is about dop­pel­gangers, so they decid­ed to have SNL’s Fred Armisen come on the show and

This is the best sum­ma­ry of the issue I’ve seen yet.

Pas­tor Dis­in­vit­ed from Giv­ing Inau­gur­al Prayer Because of Ser­mon on Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty

The mes­sage of reli­gious intol­er­ance being deliv­ered by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, his staff, and many of his sup­port­ers is unmis­tak­able: If you do not affirm homo­sex­u­al­i­ty then you can­not be fair-mind­ed. The m…

This reminds me of an obser­va­tion some­one made a few months ago, “The prob­lem we have is that one par­ty is dan­ger­ous and the oth­er is stu­pid.”

Lib­er­als accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tives, con­ser­v­a­tives accord­ing to lib­er­als

A 2006 CBS News sur­veys asked peo­ple who said they were con­ser­v­a­tive a few ques­tions about lib­er­als and asked peo­ple who said they were lib­er­als the same ques­tions about con­ser­v­a­tives (peo­ple who said…