Random links
- Hand sanitizers as Agent Orange?
- " Alcohol-based hand sanitizers kill many bacteria, viruses and fungi, but they don’t selectively target pathogens. They kill a wide swath of the microbial life on your hands, including little-understood non-pathogenic species. For an ecological analogy, think of using Agent Orange to kill a couple weeds."
- A wage cut for Alberta's future
- Basically it's a piece arguing that nearly all additional revenues seen by the Alberta government in recent years have gone towards public sector employees without any real increases in services - "In 2000, Alberta public service pay consumed 25% of expenditures of $20.8-billion. By 2010, that had risen to 45% of $38.9-billion."
- Why wasn’t it women and children first?
- Did the women and children first policy on the Titanic cost lives (including the lives of women and children)? The primary historical example of this policy was the a military transport HMS Birkenhead in the mid-nineteenth century. How well did the policy work there? "Some women did not want to go on their own — they had to be torn away from their husbands, carried over to the bulwark and dropped over the ship’s side." Achievable on a military vessel perhaps, but not so effective on a cruise ship.
- Be It Resolved
- "...the people with the best self-control, paradoxically, are the ones who use their willpower less often. Instead of fending off one urge after another, these people set up their lives to minimize temptations. They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can." There's a reason why I try to avoid keeping chips / chocolate / cookies in my house, although when they occasionally do invade I can't say that my self-control is that great.