The BBC published a crowdsourced list of Desert Island Discs.
If I were truly lost on a desert island, I’d probably learn to hate every song on a playlist less than a few hundred songs long. But with that said, I’d agree with this list of “top tracks.” I don’t recall ever hearing the #1 and #2 choices, or #6. But five out of eight’s not bad.
H/T: Dan the Man.
Here’s some happy news from Walter Russell Mead:
Today some 86 million Americans live in homes that are ‘under water’ where the amount owed on the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. Since the financial crisis began in 2008, over one million consumer mortgages have gone into foreclosure. Sales of bank-owned properties are now 34.5 percent of the housing market; homes in foreclosure waiting for resale now account for a three years-supply on the sluggish housing market.
It’s a fairly bleak assessment of our current situation, but with a deeper foundation of hope in the American people: “Slowly and reluctantly, the country will have to move on. … it’s going to hurt, and it’s going to deepen the sense among many Americans that something has gone terribly wrong.” We won’t like it, but we’ll do it.
The broader question about the end of the American Dream (or Dream 2.0) is the same sort of gloomy analysis that I found in Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation, which I read because of the Business Week profile (and because I wanted to try reading an e-book).
I don’t know what to think. I lived through the 70’s, when everything was rotten, but it eventually got better. I grew up reading science fiction and watching Star Trek. My first career was in computers, where everything is twice as fast as last year’s model. I can go along with the bitter-medicine thinking of Mead, but I’m not ready (yet) to swallow Cowen’s low-hanging fruit.
That controversy about arsenic-based life that I blogged (on my other blog) back in December is still cooking. I don’t read Science so I had to learn about it in Ars Technia:
The authors have stuck to their guns, but have reiterated arguments that their critics are likely to find unconvincing. And that’s somewhat surprising; it should have been possible for them to accept at least a few of the criticisms and indicate further work was under way that would handle them.
I am curious to find out what the facts are, here. I’d be stunned to learn that DNA’s chemistry works with arsenic as well as phosphorus, or that both forms can code for the same amino acids. But stunning me is what science is all about.
Here’s a funny song. Strong (NSFW) language warning, though:
Kudus: Megan McArdle.
Apparently we get to choose whether we’ll die from cancer or heart attack:
The largest study ever to examine the association of dietary fats and prostate cancer risk has found what’s good for the heart may not be good for the prostate.
(Kudus: Instapundit)
I ran across this nice reflection on the vim editor by someone who switched 18 months ago. In my own case, it was about 18 years. I’d been an emacs user forever, and it was just killing me (carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, and who-knows-what). So I made the switch to vi (and, soon enough, vim). It took awhile to get used to modes, but the alternative is playing Twister with my ring and pinky fingers.
I’d love to be able to get “The Dark Side” from iTunes or Amazon. But right now, it’s only available at the composer’s site.
Every night (almost) I exercise while watching a video. Here’s how things shaped up during 1Q11:
days 90 exercised 86 (96%) skipped 4 total exercise: 2 days, 19 hrs, 25 min avg daily exercise: 44.9 min/day avg. wt. recorded: 214.23, 13 records
It’s kind of amazing to think I’ve spent almost three days exercising. Notice too that, out of 86 days in which I recorded my exercise, I chose to record my weight only 13 times. If you think that speaks volumes, well, shut up.
