Treacherous Evidence

Paul Krugman pushes out a post assuring his loyal readership that the Republicans will not, in fact, storm back to power in 2010. Which seems likely, because the party is if anything getting even more reactionary, on average. But I find it strange that he would use this graph to argue for his position:
If we [...]

Vindication!

From payscale.com , via Greg Mankiw.
Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary

Methodology
Annual pay for Bachelors graduates without higher degrees. Typical starting graduates have 2 years of experience; mid-career have 15 years. See full methodology for more.

I mean, yes, that Aero charts highest is a surprise, but even so. Divide by 5 for median IITian salaries, I [...]

Online Discourse Part 2: Pareto Ideologies.

Julian Sanchez comes to the same conclusions that I came to, in an interesting post:

Given that my current idée fixe seems to be the depressing rarity with which people actually understand the views of people with different ideologies, I was pleased to see Tyler Cowen’s attempt at a sympathetic summary of what he sees as [...]

Irony

The New York Review of Books has on archive a rather interesting short biography of Milton Friedman. It is, on the whole, well-written, and I don’t know nearly enough about the facts here to question it’s accuracy, although Tyler Cowen, who should, does express some doubts. It contains the following passage:
Milton Friedman played three roles [...]

Objective Reality, Rationalism and the Nature of Belief

I was in the middle of an utterly normal conversation with a friend when it suddenly veered off into a discussion of whether beliefs are a matter of choice. I said, obviously not, and she said, “of course they are!”. And then we quickly got into a tangential discussion which ended with her comparing me [...]

Dangerous Dungeons and Dragons

So, I was reading these, which are truly, amazingly fantastic, and I got really excited about Dungeons and Dragons, and then I went and found I had a complete collection of the rulebooks for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2, and then I found that it’s really, really tedious. Which made me give it up.
And then [...]

Unicorn Waltz

Wrote a poem in about 20 minutes on, well, unicorns. I’m too scared to put it up here. It’s on my deviant art page.
I’m not not putting it up here because people will think I’m a bad poet- I don’t write poetry anyway, except for yesterday’s sudden impulse, so I don’t have much ego associated [...]

Thought of the Day

Wait, why am I finding out that Kerala has universal health coverage from the New York Review of Books?

Voting for Kids

Scott Aaronson actually has a rather good post on why children should get to vote-well, apart from the rather specious argument that Gerorge W. Bush getting elected twice proves that it’s not like adults know how to pick ‘em, either- although he sort of lets it drag for a bit and lets you down at [...]

Pretty much exactly what I wanted to say

Well, not really, I would’ve ranted a lot more, but this is probably what I would have said if I weren’t so pissed:
The Media Wrongs In Mangalore.
Great article,dude. Essential point(or at least my essential point): Beating up women in pubs has nothing to do with Indian culture, and the debate about what constitutes Indian [...]