Random links
- The Terrible, True Insight of 'House of Cards': Bad People Run D.C.
- Sounds like a pretty accurate description of politics: "Underwood may be a dramatization, but his ticks are familiar. He is a hopped-up version of a dominant archetype in national politics: People who enter the arena for the same reasons a big audience still watches it — the thrill, glory, and ambition. Policy and morality run a distant second and, even then, often serve as props to underscore 'the stakes' of the maneuvers involved, not as dimensions of independent substance." Still haven't gotten around to watching the show... but hopefully will do so in the near future.
- Why You Love That Ikea Table, Even If It's Crooked
- "in new experiments published recently, they've discovered why it happens: Building your own stuff boosts your feelings of pride and competence, and also signals to others that you are competent." The article links up some of the studies on this.
- Programmer Ryan Gosling
- A very strange tumblr - computer-oriented cheesy pickup lines. About as close as this blog is likely to get to a Valentine's-related post.
- Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions
- On addiction and suicide associated with ADHD meds. Drugs like adderall "... improve performance in normal, learning-disabled, and ADHD/ADD students" (src) and the NYT piece suggests that "Various studies have estimated that 8 percent to 35 percent of college students take stimulant pills to enhance school performance." Those figures sound possibly-inflated to me but I haven't done any digging (yet) to verify.