Random links
- Try to Remember
- An New Yorker article on the different ways of learning the digits of pi. If only my high school had offered an iPod touch as the prize the student who'd memorized the most decimals as did at one of the schools mentioned in the article. That said, I didn't bother going further after the first 45 or 50 decimals back when I bothered with that sort of thing to pass the time in high school.
- The Horse Manure problem
- Public transit systems and other approaches that might lead to urban densification are where I tend to diverge a little bit from a relatively libertarian view of life. This article looks at some of the problems that arise if we take a "back in the good old days" approach to resolving our problems, although it wasn't enough to convince me a no-limits-on-cars policy is a good idea.
- PETA: Don't call animals 'it' in the Bible
- Sometimes PETA amuses me. From the actual press release, via CNN: "PETA has written to the Committee on Bible Translation to suggest that its next translation also remove speciesist language by referring to animals as 'he or she' instead of 'it.'" Here I had been expecting to hear something in opposition, e.g., to animal slaughter and that sort of thing.
- Arriving as Pregnant Tourists, Leaving With American Babies
- Interestingly the practice seems as though it might be legal, and tourist visas can't be denied on the basis of pregnancy. Other than for things like building code violations, I'm not sure that anything is likely to change in the near future. As the article points out, these kids seem less likely to be integrated into American society than the children of illegal immigrants from Latin America (and possibly even those illegal immigrants themselves may be better integrated).