Improve your vocabulary using… rice?
Found this website today where you can improve your vocabulary and feel good doing it. Click on the link below to find out why.
http://www.freerice.com/index.php
It’s not time-wasting if it’s helping feed people.
Found this website today where you can improve your vocabulary and feel good doing it. Click on the link below to find out why.
http://www.freerice.com/index.php
It’s not time-wasting if it’s helping feed people.
Nice article on ‘repugnance constraint’ markets - how moral repugnance may constrain a free market and if/what should be done about it. Very interesting to me was the reference to a paper [pdf] that I tracked down. It estimates the price at which the kidney wait backlog would be eliminated if live donors were allowed to be paid (see pages 11, 12). This is for the US, and the value they come up with is $15,200 per donor. Among other things, they take into account the value of a ’statitistical life’ ($1.5 million to $10 million for an average annual income of $35000), lost wages pre/post operation, risk of death, etc.
They did not have a good way to quantify loss of quality of life (they added an arbitrary $7,500), and they did not as far as I could see, take into account the ‘repugnance factor’ of paying for an organ. Not much comfort I’m sure for all those people who are waiting for a transplant.
Saw this short movie today, and thought I’d share it. The full version is not available on youtube, but the first chapter is shown above, and you can catch the full movie in one piece at:
Some of the things shown are overly simplified, but then cramming even a broad explanation of a complex problem into a 20 minute short necessitates a certain amount of abbreviation. There are some little nuggets here that are revealing. Only 1% of the consumer goods purchased in the US is used 6 months after its purchase?? That’s a telling statistic! [see comments below]
On a related note, there’s a stunning documentary doing the rounds right now which I highly recommend. The movie is “Manufactured Landscapes” and it’s a documentary by Jennifer Baichwal, on the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky. Baichwal follows Burtynsky on his travels as he photographs the impact of humans on the landscape. Some of the shots in the movie are scarcely believable, as the scope of industrialization in parts of our planet takes time sink in. The images will stay with you long after you’ve left the theatre. The opening tracking shot of a factory is worth the price of admission in itself. Watch, and wonder.
Wolfman discovers the joys of the primary season (by proxy.)
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Earlier this week, the Indian government was having a tough time figuring out the correct protocol of dealing with a visiting head of state’s girlfriend. French president Nicolas Sarkozy was coming to town and the rumor had it that he was bringing his new found love, former supermodel, Carla Bruni. One moment she was coming, the next, not. And now apparently she is going but separately. This is less troublesome but still a spot of bother for the protocol keepers as the couple are planning to visit that old monument of love, the Taj Mahal.
The global media has been all over the Sarkozy-Bruni romance as it’s not often that we get to see heads of state in the same predicament as a Hilton or Spears (please, I beg you, let’s leave Bill Clinton out of this). Even the bastions of serious journalism, The New York Times, The BBC, and horror of horrors, The Wall Street Journal (Rupert Murdoch is already showing his true colors at the newspaper) had lengthy articles on the relationship.
Bruni is quite familiar with this sort of attention having dated a who’s who of bad boys (Eric Clapton, Sir Mick Jagger, Vincent Perez, and even Kevin Costner). She retired from a lucrative modeling career (apparently she appeared in around 250 magazine covers) at the age of 30 and is now trying her hand at singing when she’s not visiting ancient monuments with Sarkozy. Lovers of French cinema will probably know that Bruni is the sister of noted French actress, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. Today, the Journal even compared her to Norah Jones. Curious, I dug up a video of the woman singing on youtube and I have to admit, I am impressed (see below). Too bad the Sarkozy tie might actually hurt her singing career. Though, let’s hope not.
Aleksey Igudesman and Richard Hyung-ki Joo met when they were 12 years old at the Yehudi Menuhin music school. Their goal of bringing classical music to the masses is now a reality after premiering their unique show called “A Little Nightmare Music” in 2004 at Vienna’s esteemed Musikverein. They seem to combine humor with real talent in their show. There are many clips of their performances on youtube. Among the best are “Rachmaninov had big Hands,” “I will survive” and the following medley of Mozart and the James Bond theme:
[Thanks to Jonathan Adams for the facebook post]
Recently, I rediscovered a true classic – a movie that I’d watched and enjoyed several times in years gone by, but had almost forgotten. The movie is Mughal-e-Azam, K. Asif’s magnum opus of Prince Salim (later to become Emperor Jahangir), and his ill-fated love for the beautiful courtesan Anarkali. The legend of Anarkali (literally - pomegranate blossom) has been immortalized in art, but its historical authenticity is disputed due to the lack of official records corroborating the story. There is a tomb in present day Lahore, Pakistan which is generally believed to be that of Anarkali, but historians are not sure if that is indeed the case. Regardless, it is a story that has drawn painters, poets, musicians, and of course, movie makers.
Living close to one of the world’s great wine producing regions, going to wine tasting events is unavoidable. Years ago, a few friends and I started a drinking club called Oinos, the purpose of which was to get together to taste expensive liquor including fine wine. We used to pitch in money to buy and taste spirits and wine that were often beyond the scope of individual purchases. A few of the participants in this developed a good taste for wine and became, for lack of a better phrase, wine snobs. Some actually can distinguish between different varietals and regions of origin but others are merely pretentious fudgers like me. After years of trying very hard to act sophisticated when tasting wine and spouting off adjectives from the aroma wheel, I am giving up and have decided to settle on a simple system of tasting wine. If the wine snobs among my friends don’t like my new system, I don’t care.
My system involves only two ratings: good or bad (1 or 0). I either like the wine or I don’t. If that means an occasional white zinfandel or rose wine will slip through and be rated 1, so be it. Whether or not you like a wine is highly subjective (like all food). The critics might have their favorites among the expensive wines but for mere mortals (especially people like me who have damaged taste buds from years of eating spicy food), a simple system is better than trying to come up with which berry the wine tastes like or whether there is a whiff of tobacco in the air after swirling the liquid about in your latest Riedel purchase. I wish everyone would just shut up and drink.
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