The dating site OkCupid has some brilliant mathematicians behind it. They get you to answer all sorts of questions about your personal preferences to various situations or ideas, and then run mad statistics to figure out who would be good romantic partners for you. It’s surprisingly effective. I never had any good dates out of [...]
...full articleThis last week there was a lot of news coverage of a “daring hostage rescue in Columbia.” Fifteen people were freed from the FARC. Many had been held captive for years, including politician Ingrid Betancourt, and three Americans. The press has been celebrating the victory along several lines. How wonderful it is for these people to be set free after years of captivity. How the US military helped plan and support the operation. How the guerrillas were fooled into giving the hostages up without firing a single shot. (Aren’t we smart! Aren’t they stuipd?) But there’s a dark side to…
...full articleRevolutionaries are idealists. They have to be. They risk their lives to fight for what they believe in. Lenin, Mao, Castro — they all truly and deeply believed that they were fighting for a better way of life for their people. And to a varying degrees, they accomplished that. In fact in all three of these cases — Russia, China and Cuba, the early years after the revolution were relatively good for the people. Wealth was redistributed and poverty decreased. The second world is generally better than the third world. When I was living in communist China, I found it…
...full articleMy 14-year old Subaru is on its way out, and since I’m commuting to Kirkland almost every day I really need a new car. Primary criteria for me are safety and fuel economy / ecological impact. Safety seems to correlate very strongly with model year so I’m looking at new cars. In theory running on bio-diesel gives your car essentially zero net carbon impact. Also, many new renewable organic fuel sources seem to be more like diesel than gasoline. So I looked at what diesel cars can be purchased new in the US these days. I was amazed at how…
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