My New Blog

Well, it's official. I'm shutting down this blog. The 11 months without a post was probably clue to any readers I still have left. Anyway, today I launched a new blog. This one is going to be more focused on issues of policy, politics, science, technology, and the shaping of the future (which means you can get the good stuff without having to sift through my rants, inside jokes, and self-indulgence). The blog will also serve as the new home for the BurgerMap. So here are the relevant links.

The blog: Policy, Science Burgers
The BurgerMap: BurgerMap Philly
My first bizarrely popular post: A Missed Connection (why is this one getting more hits than all the others combined?)

I've had a lot of fun with this blog, but it's been mostly a "play-blog." I like to think of myself as graduating to a real blog. I won't say goodbye; hopefully I'll see you on the new site. Thanks for everything, readers,

-Matt

So in addition to this blog, Awesomeopolis, BurgerMap Philly, and a couple guest posts on Urban Direction, I'm also a financial blogger now:

http://kanjoh.com/2010/02/18/hank-paulsons-ideas-for-financial-reform/

I'm a regular renaissance man. Like Leonardo da Vinci...except I'm terrible at art and I don't have a ninja turtle named after me. Also, I'm pretty sure I have more blogging experience than he did.

(Incidentally, the BurgerMap's up to 70 burgers...)

How the economy works.

Zombie Harmony:
http://mingle2.com/zombieharmony/free-dating-sites

Like eHarmony, for Zombies.

While on the subject of really specific dating sites, has anyone heard of BeautifulPeople.com? Apparently it's a dating site for those who are equal parts superficial and good looking (and pretty big parts at that).

Anyhoo, they recently kicked 5,000 members off the site for gaining too much weight over the holidays, the BBC reports. I tried to take a look at the site, but just finding out how to browse it without signing up and being approved as a beautiful person (or at least trying to) is a bit of a trick. Not that I'm not confident I would make the cut, I just don't have that kind of time.

Getting kicked off your internet dating site for getting too chubby over winter break. That's gotta be good for the self esteem. "Sorry, you're too unattractive to meet someone over the internet..."

This post on a New York Times blog ends with the best sentence ever written in journalism. Seriously, if you're busy, just read the last sentence.

Well, I've been absent for quite a while. I've been involved in a few side projects, which have been taking up all of my time that isn't spent working (a rapidly diminishing quantity, sadly). So, to anyone who's still reading this, sorry, and I haven't forgotten about you (hypothetical though you may be).

And just so this isn't a boring self-interested post providing nothing of value, I nominate the following so-called "research" for "Most Unnecessary Research Ever" award:

Research Shows That People Really Love Bacon

I'll try to post more.

I really want to know how this story works out. A couple college kids refused to pay an automatically added gratuity at a restaurant which provided terrible service. Now it's going to trial as a criminal case.

Personally, I'm rooting for the kids. Any lawyers out there think they have a case? Or don't? I'd content the automatic addition of a gratuity for service constitutes a promise by the establishment to provide acceptable service, a promise the students acted upon in good faith by ordering off the menu in a group of 6 or more as clearly stated. If the establishment didn't follow through, the students shouldn't still be on the hook for services rendered--or in this case, not rendered.

So, it seems like people with economics degrees find this comic a LOT funnier than people without economics degrees...

Geek Movie Plot Holes

So Wired magazine published a list of the Top 10 Unanswered Questions in Geeky Movies. (HT: Neat-O-Rama)

I thought it was a good read that merited sharing, but not without comment. A few of these plot holes aren't really plot holes at all. Specifically, the Star Wars ones. Maybe some of the others have explanations too, but I don't know enough to offer a rebuttal.

Quoting from the article:
"4. Star Wars: The Death Star’s slow attack - So the Death Star follows the tracking device on the Millennium Falcon to the rebel base. They jump out of light speed, and, for no clear reason, emerge on the far side of the planet Yavin from the moon where the base is. This light-speed jump takes a split-second, but now they have to wait minutes so they can clear the planet. Not only that, but the Death Star is capable of blowing up entire planets, not just moons, so why don’t they just blow up the entire planet of Yavin? Surely that would effectively destroy anything on its moons as well."

Resolution: The Death Star is a giant space station that travels very slowly. Hyperdrives (the faster-than-light) technology operate on completely different principles than the sublight drives. The Death Star followed the Millennium Falcon to the Yavin system, and once it got there, had to use its slow engines to get around the planet (the long lag time makes sense). Why not hyper-jump around the planet? Hyperdrive jumps take a while to calculate, and gravity is a big obstacle that limits where you can go safely. Intra-system jumps were never part of the story--hyperdrives only get you from system to system.

Why not blow up the planet Yavin itself? This one bothered me too, and several answers come to mind. One, it's a gas giant, so blowing up the relatively tiny core might not be a guaranteed kill against the moon, especially if most of the planets mass is actually in the gas or there are other strange principles at work (magnetic ones come to mind, but I won't expand on that here). Why not blow up the planet, THEN blow up the moon if you miss? I'm guessing a giant superlaser like that takes long enough to recharge that it made sense to go for a guaranteed kill after a 20 minute trip than to risk having to wait around for hours (maybe more) for your second shot, giving the Rebels plenty of time to evacuate.

A bigger unanswered question in my mind would be: why didn't the Rebels start evacuating the moon of Yavin IV immediately, just in case 24 one-man fighters didn't manage to destroy a space station that was 235 miles in circumference?

"2. The Empire Strikes Back: Time dilation - Luke and R2D2 leave Hoth to go to Dagobah at the same time Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C3PO leave to go… well, they never really say what their initial destination is. Anyway, on Dagobah, Luke embarks on an intensive Jedi training course with Yoda — it’s never stated, but it’s heavily implied that this takes a long time; and besides, you would think a full course of Jedi training would take at least months, right? (We know it’s a full course, because when Luke comes back in Jedi, Yoda tells him he doesn’t need more training.) So, at the same time that Luke finishes this months-long training and runs off to Cloud City, his friends have clearly just gotten there a short time before. Yet all they did on the way was flee from a Star Destroyer and fly down the gullet of a giant space worm. That must have taken hours, not months. So was the Millennium Falcon flying at close to the speed of light (but not at light speed) for a while and thus experiencing time dilation? Yeah, that’s the ticket."

Resolution: This one's pretty easy: the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive was out. They had to make the trip from Hoth to Bespin at sublight speeds. I think it's more amazing that didn't take YEARS, as planets are typically pretty far apart (and Hoth was in a supposedly remote region). What's amazing here isn't that Luke's training was so short--it's that the OTHER storyline was so chronologically compact (or, conversely, that the training was so long and the Falcon had enough emergency rations so no one died of starvation or dehydration along the way).

My Question

My favorite blog on the internet published an interview today with Tim Harford, the "Undercover Economist." The way Freakonomics interviews work is that readers submit questions, and the interviewee picks a few of his or her favorites to answer. Well, I got a question in this time (the 5th of 8 in the interview). I was excited to see it there, and appreciated the response. I have my own comments, but I thought I'd share it with my readers and see what you guys think first.

Star Wars Food

Usain Bolt Humor (~1 minute video).

I know a lot of dorky readers who will appreciate these rarely seen Star Wars photos. (Hat Tip: Lilly)

Sadly, I know a lot of people who would probably enjoy this handbag...

Saw something awesome while in Harrisburg.

How 'bout that Sarah Palin?

For the sake of my entertainment, I hope we haven't seen the last of her.

I would play this game.

Innovation like this could very well be what saves the economy, and the planet.

This may be my very first Not Safe For Work (NSFW) link, but if this isn't an economic indicator, I don't know what is. Again, it's NSFW.