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Showing posts from June, 2011

Clicking sounds?

Yglesias directed me to this Bob Kravitz article , which contains, I surmise, what passes for humor: There were foreign players chosen late in the second round whose names are a series of clicking noises. It was as if NBA general managers were playing some sinister sort of Scrabble game, grabbing Chukwudiebere Maduabum and Targuy Ngombo instead of the likes of Ohio State's David Lighty and Butler's Matt Howard. Ater Majok! Triple word score! It somehow seemed disrespectful and frivolous to watch teams justify their overseas expense accounts by picking players whose scoring averages were lower than Lindsay Lohan's blood-alcohol level. I understand taking some fliers -- the Spurs grabbed Manu Ginobili at No. 57 in 1999 -- but Ginobili was already establishing himself as a prospect in the Italian league. Seriously, if Maduabum plays in the NBA, I will take a Rosetta Stone course to learn his language -- whatever that might be. Staggering ignorance and prejudice

Debt ceiling?

After begin away from the computer for a bit, these negotiations seem completely surreal.  I just hope Republicans don't destroy the government so badly that it can no longer afford to buy me a plane ticket home.

Programming note

I'm currently coming back from Pretoria where I got a new pair of glasses.  Not much to report, except that like the dentist here, the optometrist had equipment of greater sophistication than anything I'd ever seen back in the states.  We may have sub-par stuff, but at least the system is really expensive.

WIC cuts

My mother is a public health nurse, so the news that House Republicans are going to slash WIC's enrollment by between 200,000 and 350,000 is especially infuriating.  Yglesias brings the snark : I was thinking to myself the other day, “You know what sucks? All this wasteful government spending on improving nutrion for babies.” I mean, sure, a baby’s got to eat, but if the baby’s hungry, it should have thought of that before it was born , you know, and made sure to have richer parents. Fortunately, the House Republican caucus has approved a budget that will finally grapple with the problem of over-nourished infants and the country’s shameful coddling of poor pregnant mothers.

Peace Corps South Africa packing list

I remember when I was getting ready for departure I was surfing around reading a lot of blogs for advice on what to pack. SA24 is coming up, so I thought I'd lay down some of my nearly-infinite wisdom. For a sensible list for a guy, this is a good place to start. I'm not going to give you my exact packing list, though; I reckon I'm a bit idiosyncratic in that department. I don't even remember what I had exactly, but more than half of the weight was books and I was much lighter than most people. Instead, I'll just give some general advice about what to bring and what to worry about, in more-or-less descending order of importance.  Feel free to pick and choose what sounds good to you and ignore the rest. 1) Money . South Africa is an expensive country, quite a bit more than the average Peace Corps country. It's quite possible to make it on the stipend alone, but I only know of two people offhand who have done it and they're constantly scrimping on e

Psychedelic psychotherapy

For those that remember my post on DMT , here's some interesting news on one of its close relatives: Here's something a little offbeat for a Friday morning. A team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has recently documented a safe, long-lasting way of improving both your life and your personal feelings of well-being: shrooms. [...] Notably, 61% of volunteers considered the psilocybin experience during either or both the [highest dosage] sessions to have been the single most spiritually significant of their lives, with 83% rating it in their top five. Consistent with this, 94% and 89% of volunteers, respectively, indicated that the experiences on those same sessions increased their well-being or life satisfaction and positively changed their behavior at least moderately. ....One month after sessions at either or both the two highest dose sessions, 94% of volunteers endorsed that the experience increased their sense of well-being or life satisfaction m

Sunday chemistry blogging: catalysts

Ok, it's a day late, sorry, and it will be a bit short.  But during the camp when we were having a bit of trouble getting a fire started (meaning a guy kept throwing huge pieces of wood on before it got started), someone produced a plastic bag.  "Any of you taken chemistry?  This is called a catalyst!" he said, and cast the bag into the flames, where it burned about like you'd expect (very quickly).  I imagine this reflects the popular understanding of catalyst as something that makes a reaction go faster, like pouring gasoline on a fire. Of course, I couldn't help gleefully pointing out that I actually have a degree in chemistry, and that the guy's definition of catalyst was completely wrong.  (Why study science if you can't be an asshole about it at least once in awhile?)  Here's the real definition: a catalyst is something that changes the rate of a reaction while not being consumed by the reaction .  So the common movie trope when someone sprinkl

Programming note

I'm currently helping out with a children's camp over in Northwest Province. Regularly scheduled posting will resume sometime after Sunday, though I may pop in from time to time before that.

Lunar eclipse!

This is probably a terrible picture, but it's of the happening lunar eclipse. Too bad those of you in the Northern Hemisphere can't see it.

Warm fuzzies

Stranded out in a strange town in the dark I was rescued by a stranger who sat with me and chased down my bus. It may be a bit of a selfish country on the whole, but it's worth repeating that there are some truly top-drawer people here. I'm glad to have known some myself.

How to end the war on drugs?

Ezra Klein asks a question : The Global Commission on Drug Policy recently reported back. What it said was what most everyone who's looked into this issue already knew: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." A new approach, one based more on realistic interventions than martial metaphors, is needed. The news, however, was who was saying this: Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. Former secretary of state George P. Schultz. Former president of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardozo. Former secretary-general of the United Nations Kofi Annan. Former president of Switzerland Ruth Dreifuss. And many more important "formers." So here's my question: What alignment of political forces and events would be needed for America to seriously rethink its drug laws? Would it have to begin in the states? Is it something a law-and-order Republican needs to do? The last few years has seen a

Sunday chemistry blogging: why do hot things glow?

I got the idea for this one looking at an electric burner on a stove, but let's start with a slightly different example.  When you're looking at campfire flames, what are those flames actually made of? Via Wikimedia The answer is superheated glowing gas, mostly carbon dioxide from the burning of carbon.  But that just raises another, more interesting question: why does the hot gas glow?  Classical physics had an answer for this; basically they said that it's from the vibration of the molecules, each one emitting electromagnetic radiation (light) corresponding to the frequency of vibration.  However, if one looked closely at the physics, it turned out there were a few problems with this theory. It had been known for a long time that a black body (meaning a perfectly absorptive mass—like frictionless planes, these don't actually exist but are good for learning stuff) at thermal equilibrium would emit radiation in roughly this pattern: The problem with classica

The year anniversary of the World Cup

I find it extremely hard to believe it was actually an entire year ago that me and my friends embarked on an epic whirlwind tour around South Africa.  Now one of those friends is married, fergawdsake!  Pierre de Vos looks back : It is exactly one year ago that I bought my first Vuvuzela at my local Spar and discovered what a beautiful racket I could make with that piece of plastic, donned my Bafana Bafana shirt and joined friends in the city to watch our team take on Mexico in the opening game of the Soccer World Cup. That was the day Simphiwe Tshabalala scored the glorious opening goal of the World Cup and South Africa suddenly turned into the country we all wished we had lived in all our lives. Almost all the professional whiners – of which our nation seems to have more than its fair share – fell silent while almost all of us marveled at our ability to put on the show of our lives. Reports of corruption and nepotism disappeared from the front pages of our newspapers, po

Things I will miss about South Africa, part I

Part of my continuing series . 1) The village .  Strange as it might sound, I think I will miss this place.  Not the people as much as the land, the overgrazed washed-out rim of the Kalahari.  It's not beautiful or spectacular like Victoria Falls, but I like its quiet unassuming presence, and interesting hidden features.  Though it is terribly inefficient, I like living out of the way in a small community; I enjoy being right on the edge of the wilderness.  I've never lived anywhere I didn't love at least a little before I left; there's something worth savoring nearly everywhere. 2) My host family .  As I've said before, these folks are a preposterously inappropriate choice to host an American for two years.  But that isn't their fault—they're not bad people, and they've tried to do right by me, in their own way.  They've taught me a bit about the Tswana way of doing things.  About the only friends I have in the village are my family, and I'l

Things I won't miss about South Africa, part I

The end of my Peace Corps service is about two and a half months away, and now seems like as good a time as any to crank up some serious navel gazing.  Why have a blog if you can't be narcissistic with it?  So I've got some posts planned looking at things I'll be missing and things I won't.  Up first, some items I'll be glad to leave behind. 1) Poorly designed houses .  This one is particularly pressing sitting in my tin shack where it is colder than outside during the winter and hotter in the summer.  I can't blame people for lack of central heat—that stuff is expensive—but things could be done way, way better, even with the simple building materials used around here.  No insulation, no screen doors, no north glass, bare tin roofs, etc.  Using the same materials I could build a house that would stay cool in summer and warm in winter that would cost maybe ten percent more and last three times as long. 2) Crime .  Compared to the US, crime is apocalyptically

Quick book review: The Guarden

Tyler Cowen turned me on to this ebook by the blogger Tim Kane, called The Guarden , apparently " a bedtime story that got out of hand ."  Since it was only $3, I picked it up and blasted through it in a couple hours.  It's a gripping and surprisingly deep look at the future in a adolescent novel wrapper.  Once you get your teeth in (for me, about paragraph six), it's a fun read.  (Don't worry, it's nothing like Twilight , as proved by the fact that I got to the end.  I literally couldn't read three pages of Twilight without tasting bile . )  Check out here for a free 3-chapter sample . I'm a big fan of books like this: a definite pop feel, with a hard-charging story, some reasonable characterization, but really cool ideas lurking underneath everything.  Not so philosophical that it gets weighty or pretentious, though.  If you've got an e-reader, I recommend it highly.

So...cold...

I has been raining on and off for the last two days and it is absolutely freezing. I rarely leave my sleeping bag in my room. I don't remember it getting this cold last year, and I'm fairly sure it didn't rain between about May and October. Some sun, please?

Collected links

1. Greenwald delivers the smackdown to our idiotic press corps . 2. Against prudery . 3. Slate uses Rotten Tomatoes to generate some awesome graphs . 4. Evidence of widespread collusion amongst Wall Street firms . Color me unsurprised. 5. This horrible addiction causes "a serious adverse event every 350 exposures." Ban it!

See me hurl myself off another bridge

Unfortunately, this time there's no video, as they didn't allow recording devices so you'd have to buy their proprietary recording, but I did spring for the picture package. YA-HOO! I was going to add a couple more pictures, but given that this one took almost three hours to upload, that will have to wait until later. Maybe once this rain has stopped it'll be a better signal. Brr!

The Setswana Grammar Manual

One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer.  For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here .  If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .

Drug policy blogging

Mark Kleiman reasserts his role as the resident drug policy concern troll: The grandiloquently-named Global Commission on Drug Policy has issued its final press release report. Not a new idea to be found; just recycled legalization talking points. Not surprising, with a commission long on celebrity but short on relevant expertise and a staff of “advisers” drawn entirely from within the “drug policy reform” cocoon. I wouldn’t mention it, except an academic colleague asked me at lunch Friday about the “new United Nations report about the failure of the war on drugs,” and a Canadian network called and asked me to join in a debate on the report (invitation withdrawn after they asked me whether I was for or against decriminalization and I answered simply “No”). So it looks as if the decision to put resources into press relations rather than analysis has paid off. This is a petty and irritating misrepresentation of the report. Let's take a look at the executive summary:

Sunday chemistry blogging: phenethylamines part I

Subject of Alexander Shulgin's excellent book PIKHAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved), phenethylamines are a broad class of substances with a tremendous variety of effects.  Shulgin, a research chemist, synthesized dozens of new varieties and tried them on himself.  Some of the commonest drugs fall under this category.  Let's start with the basic skeleton (remember the structural shorthand from this post ): phenethylamine The name "phenethylamine" is not strictly correct, but fairly close. "Phen" is short for phenyl, the six-membered ring, "ethyl" refers to the two-carbon chain, and "amine" refers to the NH2, or nitrogen bonded to two hydrogens. An amine is more or less a nitrogen single-bonded to a carbon (there are some exceptions, but that's close enough for now). Phenethylamine itself is a psychoactive drug all by itself, but some of its derivatives I imagine you've heard of before: amphetamine This

Collected links

1. Jonathan Franzen gives a graduation speech . 2. Planet Earth delivers a message . 3. Some brain exercises . 4. The CDC instructs you on surviving the zombie apocalypse . 5. The antivaccine movement is killing babies .  I mean that in all seriousness.

Good Eats

I have recently become totally addicted to the show Good Eats from the Food Network, which I had never heard of before joining Peace Corps.  One would think that this would be the ideal time to learn some new delicious cooking techniques, but I've mostly reverted to bachelor mode and eaten the food equivalent of unleaded petrol: giant pots of rice and beans for 3-5 days at a time.  The incentive of delicious food simply wasn't enough to persuade me to cook interesting things. Alton Brown (the host) brings a Bill Nye-style approach to his show and explains a lot of the underlying science behind whatever he's cooking.  For me, the explanations are key.  Some time ago I took the Myers-Briggs personality test, and while I take it with a grain of salt, one result that definitely fits with my self-perception is a love of theorizing.  I do love to eat delicious meals, but what overcame my laziness is understanding what's happening when I throw the ingredients in the skille

Drug war news

From wandering Mike Powell, here's a great look at the coca leaf: The coca leaf has been an integral part of Andean culture for centuries. It’s sacred among indigenous people (consider my hot dog example, but with “communion wafers”). Coca has important medical properties, such as fighting altitude sickness, especially useful to those living in the mountains. Since pre-Incan times, the coca leaf has been used in religious ceremonies, brewed into teas, and chewed as a mild stimulant. A stimulant about on the same level as coffee. But then Europeans “discover” South America, rush in, rape the Andean nations of their natural resources, murder and enslave its indigenous people, and install themselves as kings and presidents. And then, just to further piss on an already humiliated people, they take the Andes’ most important and sacred plant, and figure out how to distill cocaine from it. After discovering that their new drug can be deadly, they freak out and declare that cocaine mus

The earth: rounder than I suspected

Wikimedia/CC Right now, the Big Dipper is just barely visible on the northern horizon.