Good short reads

I read way, way, way too many economics articles, but I am always looking for a prompt to help make the best decisions possible. (Economics isn't the study of money per se, but rather an explanation of decision making.)

What follows are a collection of mainstream articles by economists that really caught my eye this month.

First up: great tips from an economist on how to find great food when dining out. Tyler Cowen presents 6 ways that thinking like an economist will result in a better meal and a better deal.

Next: 25 great quotes from Thomas Sowell. A brilliant economist, Sowell is most known for making economics accessible and for challenging on economic grounds racial and political orthodoxy.

Then: Cowen on how America is changing and what it will mean for the next generation. If you read one economics article this month, read this one. His analysis is fundamentally econometric, but the real highlight are the distilled implications and strong, direct conclusions.

Finally, here's a cool graphic that sums up the case against the TSA:



Created by: OnlineCriminalJusticeDegree.com

Small knee update, with cool graphics

It is early March in central Virginia, and the high temperatures this week will all be 70 degrees or better. The unseasonably warm weather has allowed me to undertake some quality cycling, and allows me to gauge my progress in recovering from articular cartilage implantation surgery (carticel) eight months ago. 

Though I am still not permitted to stand up on the pedals - essential for climbing in anything but the lowest gear - I surprised myself yesterday by accidentally choosing a cycling route with 2 x category 5 climbs. (>1mile each, with an average grade >3%), so I realized that I maybe ready to do one of my favorite rides that has a good amount of climbing. This also allows me to do a direct comparison with my pre-surgery performance - something that I've stayed away from. 

Today's moderately hilly route was 20.2 miles, with 413 feet of climb. My pre-surgery rides of this route averaged 1:09, an average speed of 17.3mph.

Today's (post-surgery) ride was 1:20, an average speed of 15.1mph, so I was ~13% slower, but I'd say that the wind was a bit heavier than usual today, and more importantly, I was a bit heavier today. (I still haven't worked off all of my post-surgery and winter weight gain.) Wind and weight probably explains at least half the performance gap, so all in all, I enjoyed a good ride, and seem to be recovering well. 

When inputting the ride data into a tracking site that I use (www.mapmyride.com), I noticed a new, cool option that I'd like to share: 3-D flyover of your cycling route. Take a look below, and pay attention to the speed of the flyover - the flight accelerates or slows based on whether the course is downhill or uphill - very cool.

I can't believe that this very cool technology can be applied to my simple bike rides in central Virginia.

Why we kiss.....

I really enjoy it when pop culture and biology intersect. Just in time for Valentine's Day, a technical but understandable explanation of the biological roots of kissing.

No one knows for sure, but one guess is that we kiss because that's how some of our ape ancestors fed each other!

Another guess is that it is how women biologically screen their potential mates. The theory is that at a subconscious level, women are looking for mates with different immune responses than their own, making their offspring sturdier, and that this information (MHC complex) is detectable via kiss.

Any and all of these explanations might be scientists reaching too far, but they're all technically plausible.

More cool stuff.....

Check out these kitesurfers jumping over a huge pier during a storm off of England. It's absolutely crazy!






Next up: some mind-blowing statistics from Worldometers.info. Did you know that every day the world expands by ~220,000 people? (It's like adding another Dallas-Fort Worth to the world every month.) Or did you know that 3X as many people will die this year due to smoking as will die from HIV/AIDS?
(Hat tip to ScienceRoll for pointing out this site.)




Finally: 35 insanely cool pictures of the Martian landscape like the one below hosted at the incomparable "Big Picture" blog at Boston.com. (You should have this in your RSS reader or check their picture compilations at least twice a week.)

(when I first saw this, I couldn't tell if it was an ink stain, a person's tattoo, or shift desert sands, but it's really Mars.)

Grab bag with more cool stuff.

Here's a quote worth reading and couple of great articles to make up for my Facebook-like natterings:

Quote:


"This is the issue...... Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.


You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”


The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose."


Is that Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul or Jeff Flake critiquing the Obama governing philosophy? Nope, it's from 1964, also known as the beginning of the Great Society. This quote was delivered as part of a larger, very prominent speech written and delivered by none other than Ronald Reagan in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. As CATO points out, today is the 45th anniversary of the speech, and it is as relevant today, as it was then.

2 articles worth your time:

Everything You Know About China Is Wrong

and

The Long Road to Indecision

If you're an Obama fan, this article tracks the evolution of the US Af-Pak strategy. If you're not an Obama fan, you'll read this as 7 months of dawdling, indecision, and confusion. 

At the least, it is clear at this stage that Obama is waiting for the US elections next week before announcing his decision on McChrystal's request. No matter which way he goes, he'll disappoint a large number of people. I just wonder if the the stalling ight be costing lives.

How to pick your religion......

Check out this hilarious flow chart to help you select your next religion. Who knew the keys to finding spiritual bliss were your attitude towards hummus and bacon.

(Original found here: the Friendly Atheist.)

Cool stuff....

Stuff so cool I just had to share:


A map of every space mission in the last 50 years. National Geographic plotted every previous and current space exploration mission. My favorite part is the "mileage" gauge at the bottom of the graphic. (Hat tip to Instapundit and Popular Science for linking to Nat Geo.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcrowe/4002050596/sizes/o/

The Geography of Jobs - a very cool graphic showing where job growth and decline occurred in the US from 2004-2009. If you mentally overlay local economic models, you can come to some cool conclusions For example. Texas grows and Michigan shrinks. I wonder if that might have something to do with low taxes vs. high, and right-to-work vs. high unionization. Or, draw your own conclusions.....

Finally, check out this SNL skit where Barack Obama transform into "Rock Obama," featuring Charlottesville resident Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson ripping off the arm of Senator Mitch McConnell, and throwing Sen Max Baucus out a White House window. It's good for a chuckle, but I think SNL missed out on a chance for an even funnier skit.

Cool flying stuff

A selection of cool aviation pictures:

Whoah! Here's a picture of an F-16 pilot ejecting a second before impact (and out of danger to the 60,000 people attending the airshow.) I don't know what's more amazing, though - the pilot's escape, or the fact that someone perfectly captured the image. (image via the Flight Image of the Day blog.)

Check out this graphical representation of world aviation flow in one day. (via The Economist).



Finally, someone has turned a 747 into a hotel. Located near the Amsterdam airport, I'd definitely stay there, except for the fact that I think Amsterdam is a stinkhole, and I hope to never spend time there again.

Cool picture of the day

This looks like something from the movies (maybe Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back). Instead, it's a view of Dubai.



(Hat tip: Radley Balko's "The Agitator.")

Check this out: cool gizmo showing Olympic medal hauls thru history

The NYT has a very, very cool way of presenting Olympic results by country in the form of a map that changes over time. Think about that, then click here to take a look.

What's your Chinese name?

One of the most popular postings on this blog was the "Brazilian Soccer Name Generator." A little more serious is Hilton's Chinese name generator.

Head to this site and enter your name, and birthdate, and you'll get back an approximation of your name in Chinese.

I'm officially now Guo Tian Mu, with "Guo" being any easy approximation for Gallagher, and Tian ("sky, heaven; god, celestial") and Mu ("long for, desire; admire" being how the Chinese ear hears "Tim." (I've also heard Tim translated as "Tamu.")

One interesting thing is how closely the translation from Chinese for "Tim" (one combination being 'admire God,') matches the translation from Latin of "Tim" - "honoring God."

-Guo Tian Mu

Another baseball vid.....

OK, I'm definitely overdoing it on the baseball-themed YouTube vids, but take a look at this one:




If you haven't already figured it out, the vid was totally staged and the ballgirl had a lot of help climbing the wall. Still, it's pretty cool.....

funny pic of the day

Though I don't agree with the conclusion - that the Democratic primary is all but finished, I still thought this was a funny picture.

hat tip: Club For Growth blog

Fun stuff for today

Here's a guide to the Subprime Crisis, cartoon style.

A good read: 20 ways that Wal-Mart Clinics will affect US Healthcare.

Whoah! Smashing global warming idea from Richard Branson

Richard Branson - mega entrepreneur and environmental advocate - has a global warming idea that really deserves additional consideration. He suggests (in the article linked above) that rising seas due to global warming be channeled into African or Asian hinterlands to create new inland lakes. The lakes would bring life to deserts, reducing carbon in the atmosphere (as new trees grow), and conceivably boost the very poor local economies. Additionally, the lakes would help to cool the earth, acting as heat sinks.

One counter argument might be that the lakes would change weather patterns, but on the whole, I think this is a brilliant idea. What if we could actually create arable land from desert?

A few worthwhile links....

Reader's Digest 23 tips to reduce the likelihood of catching a cold or the flu this winter. (Love the idea of using your drying towel in a restroom to open the restroom door to exit.)

Website to access your annual free credit report.

Video of the Iranian Navy "harassing" the US Navy in the Persian Gulf (hat tip to the Cato blog for pointing out this video.)

Your Brazilian Soccer Player Name

Know how great Brazilian soccer players go by one name? (Pele, Ronaldinho, etc.) Well, visit this site to find out how your name would translate into Brazilian soccer.

Anybody got other silly but fun web-apps?

Whoah!

Unbelievable image from a Navy Blue Angels low-level flying demonstration. Watch for the cone of water vapor generated by near-speed of sound flight.



hat-tip to Gizmodo for pointing this out.

Whoa - very cool reading

Moon-mined Helium-3 to provide abundant energy? This is an unheralded goal (purpose?) for a NASA moon base.

Wired magazine often writes about neat-0sounding far-off technology, but 2 quotes from competitors stood out:

From a Russian scientist, a Helium-3-focused US moonbase would "enable the U.S. to establish its control of the global energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out."


A leading scientist from the Chinese space program said about moon-mined Helium-3: "Whoever first conquers the moon will benefit first."

So this possible energy solution relies on a moonbase and economical fusion, which makes it speculative, at best, but I'm guessing that 20 years from now we'd be very happy to not rely on Oil from the Middle East of Venezuela.

Also cool and worth a visit:

1-Online, streaming versions of Milton Friedman's Free to Choose TV series. I wonder if I can strip this out into a podcast video version.....

2-See where you stack up financially version others in your age group.

3-22 Ways to overclock your brain. Use it, but also take a few specific steps.