links for 2009-11-03

"Last week British Home Secretary Alan Johnson fired University of Bristol neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt as chairman the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for failing to recognize that "his role is to advise rather than criticise." Translation: Nutt made the mistake of publicly telling the truth about drugs. In particular, he noted that the hazards posed by marijuana pale beside those associated with cigarettes and alcohol, and he said the British government's decision to move marijuana from Class C to Class B, which is associated with more severe penalties, was based on political rather than scientific considerations."

"Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year."

"Federal investigators reported Thursday that imported Chinese drywall that homeowners have linked to health problems and odors had higher levels of some chemicals than its domestic counterparts. The investigators, however, were unable to link the chemicals, sulfur and strontium, to the health problems and smells in thousands of homes built during the recent housing boom, and said further testing was under way to determine any possible connection."

"Yet, for some reason, Adobe feels they're essential to the new administration's mission of transparent and open government. I on the other hand feel like picketing the event they're having next week to sell their wares (hey hey! ho ho! your-binary-low-parsable-formats-for-government-data has got to go!) because in fact, they're quite the opposite. Here at Sunlight we want the government to STOP publishing bills, and data in PDFs and Flash and start publish them in open, machine readable formats like XML and XSLT. What's most frustrating is, Government seems to transform documents that are in XML into PDF to release them to the public, thinking that that's a good thing for citizens. Government: We can turn XML into PDFs. We can't turn PDFs into XML. This is nonsense. The fact is, sticking to open, standards based technologies like HTML, XML, JSON and others are far more important and useful in getting your information out to the public than the proprietary formats of Adobe."

"Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio says his office doesn't racially profile people while looking for illegal immigrants. So how do they decide whom to question? "Certain criteria," said Arpaio. "No identification. Look like you just came from Mexico, and they admit it. That's enough." Jerry Sheridan, Arpaio's director of custody, explains, “I think you can tell people that are not from this country. And I’m not talking Hispanics. Maybe someone from France looks a little different than somebody from Europe or somebody from England looks a little bit different than we do." " I literally can't add anything else to this.

"The Democratic brand is marginal in about half the country, but the Republican brand is radioactive in about two-thirds of it. You can actually make the argument — although maybe it's not a good one — that Republicans should in fact find a way to pull a Blackwater and switch their party ID when nobody is looking, from Republican to capital-C Conservative. This would probably involve at least some degree of bona fide structural change, and undoubtedly some near-term trauma: an orchestrated chaos. But the 'conservative' brand is just as powerful as it ever was in America, whereas the Republican brand is as weak as it has been."

"IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity – how much information you can hold in mind. But the tests fall down when it comes to measuring those abilities crucial to making good judgements in real-life situations. That's because they are unable to assess things such as a person's ability to critically weigh up information, or whether an individual can override the intuitive cognitive biases that can lead us astray."

"Sometime in the next few years (if it hasn’t happened already) the world will reach a milestone: half of humanity will be having only enough children to replace itself. That is, the fertility rate of half the world will be 2.1 or below. This is the “replacement level of fertility”, the magic number that causes a country’s population to slow down and eventually to stabilise. According to the United Nations population division, 2.9 billion people out of a total of 6.5 billion were living in countries at or below this point in 2000-05. The number will rise to 3.4 billion out of 7 billion in the early 2010s and to over 50% in the middle of the next decade. The countries include not only Russia and Japan but Brazil, Indonesia, China and even south India."

"The health insurance industry likes to cite figures showing that 87 cents of every dollar in premiums is spent on medical claims. But a new Senate analysis suggests that for-profit insurance companies are spending much less than that, especially for policies sold to individuals and small businesses. Instead, as little as 66 cents of each dollar paid in premiums goes toward doctor and hospital bills, while the rest covers administrative expenses, marketing and company profits, according to the analysis."

"Earlier this year, as part of a partial settlement in an ACLU lawsuit involving the right of women prisoners to obtain timely, safe and legal abortions, Arpaio agreed to follow a 2005 court order prohibiting Maricopa County correctional facilities from requiring inmates to obtain a court order before an abortion. However, in the course of settlement negotiations, Arpaio decided inmates must prepay transportation and security costs associated with obtaining the procedure. In his ruling today, Judge Robert H. Oberbilling of the Superior Court of Arizona indicated that requiring inmates to prepay security and transportation costs could be more onerous than the court order Sheriff Arpaio previously required."

"I think this says it all."

"This is why, as engineers, we stick with something that works for us. This is why the ancient likes of vi and Emacs continue to flourish. Once we find a tool that works for us, once we’ve chosen that tool, it becomes ours and remains ours. It allows us to get foamy."

"Muslim women in a district in Aceh Province will be forbidden to wear tight pants or jeans under a regulation that will go into effect in January. Officials in West Aceh district said the Shariah police, who are charged with enforcing Islamic law, will shred any offensive clothing and require women in tight pants to change into government-issued skirts."

"But never fear, Geocities-style sites remain alive and well in one corner of the Internet: .gov! Check out the site of the Senate Armed Services Committee for a classic example"

"I will agree that belief in demons is a sign that you're dealing with a primitive religion and superstition."

"Is this surprising? Not to an economist. It is relatively easy to move around the timing of when someone purchases a durable good, but much harder to affect whether they buy a durable good or not."

"Yep: after one of the biggest moves toward budget balance in history, a majority of Republicans, and a plurality of all voters, believed that deficits had increased."

"Though many advances have been made in rendering on-screen typography, most have been aimed at treating the symptoms and not the disease. Until everyone has a 200 PPI monitor sitting on their desk, it will be up to designers and developers to use the proper technologies to ensure legibility without degrading the design of the typeface."

"Mr. Friedman, who had written a column for Newsday since 1996, quit last week over the paper’s decision to require some readers to pay for access to its Web site."

"A little late for Halloween, but still amusing" Jesus as a Venn Diagram.

"Wow — you’ve gotten acquainted with javascript frameworks! In fact, it appears you’ve gotten so good with the popular javascript frameworks that you’re using multiple in each of your client websites. I see jQuery, MooTools, and Dojo in the same page! Good idea — the more frameworks you add to the page, the more plugins you can add without needing to code any javascript yourself. Well thought-out. I also see that you’re adding javascript frameworks for simple getElementById() selection — why not? I’m sure you’ll use more advanced javascript on your client’s website at some point, so best to include the libraries now."