Can the West Save Africa?

from Bill Easterly's, Can the West Save Africa

"All of the above seem to forget that technology does not implement itself. Technical knowledge needs people to implement it—people who have the right incentives to solve all of the glitches and unexpected problems that happen when you apply a new technology, people who make sure that all the right inputs get to the right places at the right time, and local people who are motivated to use the new technology. The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics."

O'Reilly Backs Government Health Care Option

Too bad he's saying this after it's already effectively been dropped from consideration.

The Secret's Inside Your Dog's Mind

Other animals are smarter than dogs, but none (except us) are more sociable. Evolution started the job--and we helped finish it. Time

National Debt as a Percentage of GDP

So much for the Republican Party's principle of fiscal responsibility.

No eyebrows = you're less recognizable

Volunteers in a study by Javid Sadr and his colleagues at MIT were asked to identify fifty famous faces, including that of former U.S. president Richard Nixon and actor Winona Ryder. The photos were digitally altered and shown either without eyebrows or without eyes. When celebrities lacked eyes, subjects could recognize them nearly 60 percent of the time. However, when celebrities lacked eyebrows, subjects recognized them only 46 percent of time. The lesson: eyebrows are crucial to your identity — they’re at least as important as your eyes, if not more so.

Thank You Glenn Beck

You are what you wear.

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, shows that randomly inducing people to choose or wear fake merchandise can make them significantly more likely to cheat on a subsequent task.

5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

1. It's all socialized medicine out there.

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

3. Foreign health-care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

A must read about health care reform

Cupid's Poisoned Arrow

Once plighted, no men would go whoring,
They'd stay with the one they adore,
If women were half as alluring
After the act as before!
- Ancient Greek Anthology

Man: My wife turns into a major bitch on occasion the morning after a night of really great sex. I'm talking multiple orgasms and a 2-3-hour session. And the next morning I am the anti-Christ!

Woman: This happens to me, too! I wake up in the morning after a great night with my dear husband and feel like the bitch from hell sometimes . . . really irritable and moody. Normally I'm a very evenkeel kind of gal. Things feel better when orgasms are more spread out. I have personally noticed a significant decrease in my attraction and warm fuzzy feelings toward my spouse when the "O" is on a constant, regular basis.

An eye-opener about sex, orgasm, and love. Really a must read for those who wonder why attraction falls after orgasm. Knowlege of the Hidden Cycle of Orgasm is a key to love, relationships, balance, better sex, and marriage. Great research from Marnia Robinson.

Politics and the English Language

A George Orwell Classic, worth re-reading from time to time.

"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes." More