Ryan Cooper

I quite liked this:

I was talking to a friend on gchat the other day and noticing my jokes, which normally trend towards subjects like debtor's prison and being flogged at the mast, were getting rather alarmingly gruesome (it was the point where I said something involving a slurpee made of human kidneys, I think). It was hard to avoid this kind of talk, even when actively trying to rein it in. Gallows humor has a long and storied history, of course, for the simple reason that it's an easy way for a person to relieve psychological pressure and reassert some control over a situation, however hopeless. Lincoln was famous for his inappropriate stories and dark jokes—those that knew him said it was a critical stress-relief tactic. Internally, the hyper-violent imagery I keep producing feels like something that needs to be vented. I've got a fairly bottomless well of bitterness and hatred, but normally it's not the artesian kind. But serious emotional turmoil can change that, and I think ...

Over at The The Crux, Julie Sedivy has an interesting breakdown of how clicks are used in both African languages and English: If clicks do sound like exotic noises to you, it might surprise you to know that there’s nothing especially difficult about making click sounds in speech—they’re easily mastered by toddlers who still struggle making truly difficult sounds like s and z. And it might really surprise you to learn, as found in a recent study by Melissa Wright at Birmingham City University, that as an English speaker, you likely riddle your own speech with click sounds, using them much more frequently and systematically than just the occasional “tsk” of disapproval. If that’s so, why on earth do the African clicks sound so strange to English speakers, to the point of being un-language-like? It's a good post, and that might be an easy thing for toddlers to learn, but as a grown adult, it is devilishly tricky to master even the three basic click sounds in Zulu and Xhosa. Especia...

SOPA supporter (the break-the-internet bill) Lamar Smith is a copyright violator : "I do not see anywhere on the screen capture that you have provided that the image was attributed to the source (me). So my conclusion would be that Lamar Smith's organization did improperly use my image. So according to the SOPA bill, should it pass, maybe I could petition the court to take action against www.texansforlamarsmith.com." He should clearly be convicted of a felony and go to prison for five years . And Arthur Laffer, famous supply-side bullshitter, is being sued : Fifty-two investors claim fund managers associated with supply-side economist Arthur Laffer took $3.1 million to prop up a Ponzi scheme, then said nothing as their money was "wasted with no reasonable expectation of recovery." Now if only Thomas Friedman's house could get ransacked by like Belgium or something.

Ok, not quite. But this is awesome:

One of the things that most bothers me about American advertising is the blatant contempt that companies have for their customers. Check out this picture. They're basically saying either a) that they don't assume that people can understand that 18 is a larger value than 12 or b) that they think people are so stupid that we'll be impressed by a slogan that says, in essence, "this box has more taco shells than a box with fewer taco shells!" I'm going with b). I mean, they didn't even make the qualification font very small!

I normally use two browsers, Chrome and Firefox, so I can have two Gmail accounts up and running, but the newest Firefox 7 has been running just incredibly slowly.  Even if it's the only program going, it regularly hangs on random websites, claiming an unresponsive script (which work fine on Chrome), crashes a lot, seems unable to handle more than 5-6 tabs, and generally runs like shit.  I have a brand-new laptop, not the most expensive (obviously), but it's got 4 gigs of RAM and a quad-core processor, so it should definitely be able to handle a single web browser .  I've tried all manner of fixes, and reinstalled several times, but nothing seems to work.  Besides, Chrome runs great, even with more than 20 tabs open. I've got an irrational aversion to Internet Explorer, so I've installed Opera.  I'll let you know how it goes.

XKCD pointed me to this gem of a Wikipedia article the other day. Here are some of my pet peeves: 1) Christopher Columbus's efforts to obtain support for his voyages were not hampered by a European belief in a flat Earth. 2) Napoleon Bonaparte was not especially short, and did not have a Napoleon complex. 3) It is commonly claimed that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the Moon. This is false. 4) Evolution is not a progression from inferior to superior organisms, and it also does not necessarily result in an increase in complexity. 5) Vaccines do not cause autism. 6) It is not true that air takes the same time to travel above and below an aircraft's wing. 7) Glass is not a high-viscosity liquid at room temperature: it is an amorphous solid, although it does have some chemical properties normally associated with liquids. 8) Eight glasses of water a day is not necessary to maintain health, nor is it specifically recommended. 9) ...

Pardon the lack of pictures recently.  My recent travels have left me utterly broke, and I had to borrow money to get enough internet to tide me over until we get paid again and I can buy my customary ridiculously-large data bundle.  Until then (next week sometime) you'll have to be satisfied with text.  For now, here a series Sullivan has been doing on psychedelic experiences (solely for your reading pleasure—of course any and all drug use is utterly wrong and will infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war). 1. Several encounters with mushrooms (psilocybin) . 2. Finding Jesus with LSD . 3. Enduring Ayahuasca .  This is an Amazonian herbal brew containing DMT (dimethoxytryptamine) and an MAOI (monoamine oxidase inhibitor).  The MAOI is necessary to make the DMT orally active—otherwise it would just be digested in the stomach.  Probably the most famous part of this experience is the mammoth puking session it involves...

Online advertising is famously ineffective.  Studies show that the "click through" rates, or how many people actually click on an advertisement out of those that see it, are minuscule.  On the other hand, this is a kind of study that was simply impossible before the advent of the internet.  Yglesias :  To those of us on the editorial side of online media this is a very frustrating dynamic. It’s hard to make money writing online because the advertising rates are pathetic compared to what was historically available in print. And the rates are pathetic because the utilization rates are pathetic. But what kind of click-throughs did those glossy magazine ads get? Something here doesn’t add up. Ezra Klein chimes in : At the beginning of Ken Auletta's " Googled ," Auletta talks with Mel Karmazin, then the CEO of Viacom. Karmazin is aghast at Google's campaign to measure the effectiveness of advertising by tallying clicks. "I want a sales person in the proces...

Atrios has an interesting thought on urban life: Walking around my urban hellhole today I'm reminded of how not owning a car really changes the way you think about the world. Obviously cars are useful things in that they let you basically go "anywhere" at relatively low perceived marginal cost (one problem with the way we pay for cars is that a lot of things which are really marginal costs are perceived as fixed costs by people). I think I've been car free for about 6 years now, and where I can go reasonably is dictated by where I can walk, where there's decent public transportation access, where is accessible by a cab ride I'm willing to pay for, or what's accessible by a carshare car that I'm willing to pay for. While there isn't a perfect mapping, carshare costs make perceived fixed costs (insurance, maintenance, car payments) into marginal costs to some degree. All that makes the accessible world quite a bit smaller. Not saying that's goo...

I report, you decide. Bonus HST quotes: "I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours." "I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed." "Morality is temporary, wisdom is permanent." "There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation."   "I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes." See here and here for context.

Some time ago I received an Amazon Kindle, and I'm working on my third book through it.  So far, I like it a lot, but this weekend I should have a full review.

Africa is real big .

Heath Ledger's Joker is a cross between Gregory House and Osama bin Laden.

"I think it is that many modern Conservatives intuitively base their analysis of the world on a philosophy is that anathema to my worldview. Their view is that if you take a responsible, measured, well-reasoned approach to the world things will work out. Failure is thus a sign that you have not done that. My sense is that this is fundamentally crap. First of all things are not going to work out. You are going to die. Your friends and family are going to die. Everything you care about and everything you ever worked for will be destroyed. This story, our story, only has one ending and it is death and destruction. If you don’t recognize that, you are living in a fantasy world. Second, even in the short term your plans almost certainly won’t work out. Most ideas are bad ideas and there are infinitely more ways to fuck something up than to get it right. To wit, clean living is not some form of salvation. Nor, is prudence assurance that that you and your loved ones will be okay. Sufferi...

This is a Brazilian military police officer in São Paulo. What do you suppose is on her mind?

1. Real America watch : large cities produce a much smaller share of professional athletes than those under a half million. 2. Paul Krugman explains why goldbugs are totally out to lunch . 3. Egg farms are gross . 4. Banks make some slight moves towards environmentalism . Color me skeptical. 5. Highly dangerous oil exploration continues apace . 6. Ah, Japan . 7. A majority of Republicans think Obama wants to impose Sharia law worldwide .