Events

...I can identify this as an example of non-price competition in an environment of monopolistic competition. It's also damned funny.

Via Bruce Schneier, a poll finds that only 21% of Americans surveyed know how big a trillion is. Possibly because some of them were taught by this clown.

Fighting bumpy air the whole way, I flew today to Rockford, Ill., 53 nautical miles from Chicago Executive. It's kind of a cop-out, of course: 50 nautical miles is the minimum distance of a flight's outbound leg in order for the flight to qualify as cross-country. Check out the KML, though: every time I flew over one of those fields, the plane jumped about 50 m straight up; every time I flew over one of those lakes, it dropped 50 m. Such is the fun of summer flying. Beautiful day, though, high thin...

Via Sullivan, I suddenly feel very old: We extracted about 75 percent of the responses on age (representing about 700 responses, taking equally from the earliest and most recent postings, which show very similar age distributions). Per John Makinson's quip at an LBF panel, over half of reporting Kindle owners are 50 or older, and 70 percent are 40 or older. So many users said they like Kindle because they suffer from some form of arthritis that multiple posters indicate that they do or do not have...

I had thought about writing a long entry on another technical aspect of the new version of Weather Now, but for the first time in weeks it's sunny and 20°C, and I just finished a final exam in economics. So, off to the dog park. All y'all waiting for the lengthy technical stuff will just have to wait until it rains again. Update: In the meantime, why not scratch your head, as I did, over meat business cards? Hmmm....

Kindle

Via Sullivan, Pew has some interesting data on the differences in opinions about torture held by religious Christians and godless atheists: More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed.... Therefore, as Sullivan points out, "Christian devotion correlates with approval for absolute evil in America. And people...