good stuff
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Christian Humor
Contrary to what the mainstream media and campus secularists might have you believe, thoughtful Christians have a well-developed sense of humor. Exhibit A: the Babylon Bee, which has a special place in its heart for Joel Osteen Exhibit B: the only Lutheran joke I know — A woman of fundamentalist persuasion was traveling, and visited… Read more
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Maybe clothes DO make the man
Here’s a school program that’s so off-the wall it might actually make a difference: providing washing machines in public schools. It’s early days, with little data collected, but compared to Michelle O’s disastrous school lunch madness, it’s an intriguing experiment with potentially outsize benefits. Virginia Postrel might have some insight into ideas like this. Tip… Read more
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An end run around an impossible integral
Ever-insightful polymath John Cook shows how to integrate the Gaussian PDF, in less time than it takes to make breakfast. The trick? Coordinate transformations and the Jacobian are your friends. A suitably-embellished version of Cook’s post will appear in my lecture notes in the Spring semester. Thanks, J.C. Read more
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Holy Brainstorming!
Francis Menton, the Manhattan Contrarian, has been kicking around a idea so radical it might actually work: giving Manhattan public housing units to their residents to kickstart them out of poverty. What really caught my attention was this: Well, what happened to the idea of making it possible for the poor to get out of… Read more
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Rating a Published Clinical Trial…
…can be done in 10 minutes or less, using the Jadad score. There’s a full explanation in the original paper, but suffice it to say, it’s pretty easy to identify sketchy studies using this method. Aaron Carroll, writing in the New York Times, shows how this affects the credibility of nutrition research. For those who… Read more
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Do you have King Salmon in a can?
At last, we tinned fish eaters will have our day! Aaron Gilbreath pens an Ode to Canned Fish, and it’s a treat. Just a few minutes with Bing found some great suggestions from the Chowhound. What’s not to like? I’ve just ordered McIntosh’s Tin Fish Gourmet, and I’ll post recommendations as I try recipes. Tip… Read more
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Frackin’ A’
THIS is the sh1t. Actually, I think these results are pretty dodgy. I know far too many profane folks who are as dumb as a rock. Read more
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Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize
Everybody’s got an opinion on this one, and here’s a doozy: The Nobel Prize is in fact the ultimate example of bad faith: A small group of Swedish critics pretend to be the voice of God, and the public pretends that the Nobel winner is Literature incarnate. … Mr. Dylan may yet accept the prize,… Read more
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Glamour from the 20th Century
Recently finished Virginia Postrel’s The Power of Glamour, and finally understood what all the fuss has been about. Although people often equate them, glamour is not the same as beauty, sylishness, luxury, celebrity, or sex appeal….Glamour is, rather, a form of nonverbal rhetoric, which moves and persuades not through words but through images, concepts, and… Read more
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Art Meets Science
On a day that I’m overbooked, running around campus doing minor, but essential chores, and feeling a bit grumpy about the whole academic enterprise, I stumble upon a jewel like this: Not in a gallery or the administration building, but in a hallway between classrooms. Where thousands of students, and the odd faculty member, can… Read more
The Random Texan 