Libros
Mother Jones
Well, this is weird. Danielle Kurtzleben summarizes a new study called “The Wages of Sinistrality”:
In the data, around 11 to 13 percent of the population was left-handed. And when broken down by gender — that is, comparing women to women and men to men — those lefties have annual earnings around 10 to 12 percent lower than those of righties, Goodman writes, which is equal to around a year of schooling. (That gap varied by survey and by gender, however.) Most of this gap can be attributed to “observed differences in cognitive skills and emotional or behavioral problems,” he writes, adding that since lefties tend to do more manual work than right-handers, the gap appears to be due to differences in cognitive abilities, not physical.
Apparently the cognitive differences were already well known (though I didn’t know about them), but this paper is the first to document the earnings gap. It’s surprisingly large. So if you’re a lefty and you’re doing well, congratulations! You’ve beaten the odds.
From:
Mother Jones
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U.S. officials announced plans Friday to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet, a move likely to please international critics but alarm many business leaders and others who rely on smooth functioning of the Web.
Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance last year.
I won’t pretend I’m thrilled about this, even if it was probably inevitable at some point. Whatever else you can say about the United States and the leverage its intelligence community gets from control over internet plumbing, it’s also true that the US has been a pretty competent and reliable administrator of the most revolutionary and potentially subversive network ever invented. Conversely, global organizations don’t have a great track record at technocratic management, and world politics—corrosive at best, illiberal and venal at worst—could kill the goose that laid the golden egg. I certainly understand why the rest of the world chafes at American control, but I nonetheless suspect that it might be the best of a bad bunch of options.
Then again, maybe not. There are also plenty of global standards-setting organizations that do a perfectly good job. Slowly and bureaucratically, maybe, but that’s to be expected. Maybe ICANN will go the same way. We’ll see.
In any case, I think we can expect Republicans to go ballistic over this.
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Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 2 – J.D. Lenzen
Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 2 (PFT-V2) is the second installment in the paracord fusion ties book series and another stunning achievement by author J.D. Lenzen. Like Paracord Fusion Ties – Volume 1, PFT-V2 reveals innovative and stylish ways of storing paracord for later use. So once again you’ll find crisp, clear, full-color photographs (over 1,000 i […]
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Codex: Adepta Sororitas – Games Workshop
The Adepta Sororitas, also known as the Sisters of Battle, are an elite sisterhood of warriors raised from infancy to adore the Emperor of Mankind. Their fanatical devotion and unwavering purity is a bulwark against corruption, heresy and alien attack, and once battle has been joined they will stop at nothing until their enemies are utterly crushed In this b […]
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Codex: Adepta Sororitas (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop
The Adepta Sororitas, also known as the Sisters of Battle, are an elite sisterhood of warriors raised from infancy to adore the Emperor of Mankind. Their fanatical devotion and unwavering purity is a bulwark against corruption, heresy and alien attack, and once battle has been joined they will stop at nothing until their enemies are utterly crushed In this b […]
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The Art of Raising a Puppy (Revised Edition) – Monks of New Skete
For more than thirty years the Monks of New Skete have been among America’s most trusted authorities on dog training, canine behavior, and the animal/human bond. In their two now-classic bestsellers, How to be Your Dog’s Best Friend and The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks draw on their experience as long-time breeders of German shepherds and as t […]
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Big Book of Loom Knitting – Kathy Norris
Knitting looms are amazingly easy to use, and they’re available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Look at the stylish knits you can create–without knitting needles! All the basic instructions are here. You can make hats, wraps, and a cozy blanket with sleeves (inspired by those popular fleece cover-ups sold on TV!). There are slippers, scarves, a […]
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Warhammer: Dark Elves – Games Workshop
From the desolate wastes of Naggaroth the Dark Elves march forth to enslave the world. Ruled over by the heartless Witch King, they are a race of infinite cruelty and evil. Ancient sorceresses wield hateful dark magics and bathe in the blood of their victims to keep themselves young, while pitiless knights ride cold blooded steeds into battle. Warhammer: Dar […]
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I Can’t Believe I’m Loom Knitting – Kathy Norris
Have you discovered the hot tool that makes knitting easier than ever before–without knitting needles? It’s a knitting loom (also known as a knitting wheel), and using one is as simple as wrapping yarn around the pegs and lifting the yarn loops with a pick-like tool. Clear photos and instructions make it a breeze to learn everything you need to know. T […]
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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier
From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]
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Warhammer 40,000: The Rules – Games Workshop
There is no time for peace. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only WAR. In the nightmare future of the 41st Millennium, Mankind teeters upon the brink of destruction. The galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man is beset on all sides by ravening aliens and threatened from within by Warp-spawned entities and heretical plots. Only the strength of the immortal […]
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Go Crazy With Duct Tape – Patti Wallenfang
Wake up your world with today’s DUCK® brand duct tape! Use their cool colors and prints to design your own jewelry and all kinds of bags. You can customize sunglasses, boots, belts–even a recliner! Lots of photos and the basic how-tos make it easy to finish all these fantastic ideas. Over 40 projects include a necklace, earrings, ring, jewelry gift […]
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Mother Jones
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In the Wall Street Journal today, George Olah and Chris Cox suggest that instead of venting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it causes global warming, we should use it to create methanol:
Thanks to recent developments in chemistry, a new way to convert carbon dioxide into methanol—a simple alcohol now used primarily by industry but increasingly attracting attention as transportation fuel—can now make it profitable for America and the world to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.
At laboratories such as the University of Southern California’s Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute (founded by George Olah, one of the authors here), researchers have discovered how to produce methanol at significantly lower cost than gasoline directly from carbon dioxide. So instead of capturing and “sequestering” carbon dioxide—the Obama administration’s current plan is to bury it—this environmental pariah can be recycled into fuel for autos, trucks and ships.
….In Iceland, the George Olah Renewable Methanol Plant, opened last year by Carbon Recycling International, is converting carbon dioxide from geothermal sources into methanol, using cheap geothermal electrical energy. The plant has demonstrated that recycling carbon dioxide is not only possible but commercially feasible.
Olah has been writing about a “methanol economy” for a long time, and he skips over a few issues in this op-ed. One in particular is cost: it takes electricity to catalyze CO2 and hydrogen into methanol, and it’s not clear how cheap it is to manufacture methanol in places that don’t have abundant, cheap geothermal energy—in other words, most places that aren’t Iceland. There are also some practical issues related to energy density and corrosiveness in existing engines and pipelines. Still, it’s long been an intriguing idea, since in theory it would allow you to use renewable energy like wind or solar to power a facility that creates a liquid fuel that can be used for transportation. You still produce CO2 when you eventually burn that methanol in your car, of course, but the lifecycle production of CO2 would probably be less than it is with conventional fuels.
I haven’t kept up with the details of this lately, so I don’t know what Olah means when he talks about “recent developments” in chemistry. Does he mean stuff that’s been in the pipeline over the past decade, or something that’s genuinely new over the past year or two? I’m not sure. I’d be interested in reading a response from a neutral expert, though.
And why did this appear on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, not a place that’s famous for its concern over climate change? Because Olah and Cox are arguing that for methanol to compete in the marketplace, we need to stop subsidizing ethanol unfairly. I’m all for that, and I guess the Journal is too. I’m also on the lookout for anything non-shutdown related to write about. Any port in a storm.
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Mother Jones
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Apparently Republicans are holding firm on their threat to filibuster every single nominee ever to the DC Circuit Court. Every single Democratic nominee, that is. Not because they have any particular objections to them, but just because they don’t want to lose the current Republican majority on the DC Court.
(Technically, their argument is that the DC Court is “underworked” and all its open seats should be permanently eliminated. This is so obviously specious there’s no real need to pretend to take it seriously.)
In any case, Ed Kilgore wonders if this will ignite any summer recess passion among progressives:
The question is whether … Democratic senators leery of a general position opposing filibusters of life-time judicial nominations might make an exception if the filibusters are being advanced on this type of specious ground rather than objections to the qualifications of individual judges.
The timing, with three DC Circuit nominations heading towards the Senate floor immediately after the August recess, is interesting. Will senators hear about this relatively obscure issue when they are back home? That’s hard to say….It would be nice if Democratic senators known to be wobbly on filibuster reform–ranging from outright opponents like Carl Levin to more questionable cases like Mark Pryor and Reid himself–heard from progressives on this issue in August. I see no particular merit in the counter-argument that countenancing filibusters to preserve the overall ideological character of this or that federal panel is a weapon Democrats might want to use in the future. The kind of judges a Republican president is likely to nominate any time in the near future are going to have the track records and associations that make them debatable on their individual merits; our conservative friends will make damn sure of that.
OK, then. You have your marching orders. Go raise some hell.
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Republicans Holding Firm So Far on DC Court Filibuster Threat
