Rotundus.com

You Eat That?

"Disgust is one of the six basic emotions—along with joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear—but it is the only one that has to be learned ... One of the best places to look for the vast differences in what is or is not considered disgusting in different parts of the globe is food, especially distinctive foods, like every culture's favorite fermented dish."

Biomass projects burned by low natural gas prices

"To reduce its natural gas use, a Benson, Minn., ethanol plant installed technology to gasify wood chips and corncobs. But the low price of natural gas makes the alternative energy uneconomical." Apparently even with the equipment installed it's not economical to use compared to just burning natural gas.

Why I still use the Oxford comma

Normally not a grammar nerd, but I do indeed prefer this style of comma.

Driving With A Cold Just As Bad As Driving Drunk

I guess it's fairly obvious once you think about what sneezing involves. Somehow I'm not expecting governments to ban it though.

Getting a Degree: Less Rigor, More Value

I wouldn't describe it as an increase in value, but more a devaluation of the high school diploma resulting in a decrease in average wages for individuals with only that credential.

The Wall Street Journal's The Hot Blonde in the Coffee Shop: A Lighter Roast examined chains like Starbucks introducing lighter roasted beans and concluded by noting that

Light roasts are best enjoyed without cream or sugar because they can be naturally sweet and not bitter, he adds.

Think this might be enough to get people to rethink their coffee preferences? How do you get people to try it though?

Of course, given that cream and sugar makes crappy coffee taste better, but reduces the tastiness of tasty coffee, given the percentage of crappy coffee out there how likely is such an experiment to be maintained?

Boys raised by traditional families 'do better at school'

"Researchers in the United States tested various theories to explain bad behaviour and low standards among boys and concluded that “home-based” influences played a much bigger part than biological differences, the style of early education, teacher gender or peer pressure. ... The study found that indiscipline reduced among boys brought up by two parents and increased sharply among those raised by single-mothers. ... The relationship between family structure and behaviour appeared to be “much weaker” for girls, it was claimed." Might the lower link between family structure and the behaviour of girls have something to do with most single-parent families being headed by women?

Paging Dr. Siri

"I have nothing against my physician but I would prefer to be diagnosed by a computer. A typical physician spends most of the day playing twenty questions. Where does it hurt? Do you have a cough? How high is the patient’s blood pressure? But an expert system can play twenty questions better than most people. An expert system can use the best knowledge in the field, it can stay current with the journals, and it never forgets."

Novel Nanoparticle Vaccine Cures Type 1 Diabetes in Mice

Would be really interesting if this also works in humans. Guess we'll have to wait to find out.

Pasta Geometries

I posted a bit about this before a few months back, but the New York Times lets you get a better view.

Here's one example letter advocating that the government do nothing about the Old Age Security payments made to Canadians above the age of 65 (currently). His argument:

Taxpayers have paid for these funds and we all expect to see our dividends from these programs when we reach the entitlement age that is currently set. The federal government, our custodian of these funds, needs to ensure the funds collected are sufficient to pay future obligations, and if they are not, then deal with it!

The problem: unlike the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) which has resources, Old Age Security as I understand it has always been paid out of general revenue. Basically it's a ponzi scheme - similar to the US's social security system which holds "assets" in the form of IOUs from the U.S. government.

In short: They haven't paid for these funds, they've paid for disbursement to their predecessors. You could try to revise the system, but then you'd basically be creating a duplicate version of the CPP.

This sort of thing makes me somewhat dubious about future political stability. Compare to some data from the recent NYT opinion piece Where are the Liberals:

Others exercise their power transparently and democratically. As Will notes, in 2009, the net worth of households headed by senior citizens was 47 times the net worth of households led by people under 35. Yet seniors use their voting power to protect programs that redistribute even more money from the young to the old and affluent.

Or to quote another source regarding the implications for younger people: (this is another US source)

In general, they will pay far more in taxes than they will receive from transfer programs, and any expansion of elderly entitlements willmake things worse. For example:

• A 20-year-old female can expect to pay $92,000 more in taxes than she will receive in transfer benefits over her lifetime.
• The future looks more than three times as bleak for her male cohort, who can expect to pay $312,000 more in taxes than he will ever receive in benefits.