Archive for August 2011
“Create your own” whole leaf teabags
Ron makes Kate teabags of ideal strength by putting loose leaf into an empty bag.
These are 64 bags for £4.45 out of the U.K. …
In Vancouver Ron found the bags imported from Japan.
By the way, have you found Twinnings tea bags to be getting weaker and weaker over the years?
economists on parenting
… What can economists possibly have to say about something as emotional, as nuanced, as humane, as parenting? Well, let me say this: because economists aren’t necessarily emotional (or, for that matter, all that nuanced or humane), maybe they’re exactly the people we need to sort this through. Maybe.
You may remember that we wrote a bit about parenting in Freakonomics; now we’ve put together an entire roundtable of economists to talk about a great many elements of child-rearing, with one essential question in mind: how much do parents really matter, and in what dimensions? …
New Freakonomics Radio Podcast: “The Economist’s Guide to Parenting”
All parents should listen to the audiocast linked above. It’s a shocker. They conclude that parents have remarkably little influence on how their children turn out.
The current research shows that parenting has little influence on a child’s educational attainment and on how much money the child will earn. Reading to your child doesn’t help, taking them to museums doesn’t help …
It does show that a parent can have a significant influence on whether your child smokes, is a heavy drinker, treats others with kindness and how happy your child is. Children with loving nurturing parents will be happier.
… But music lessons are simply a point of friction and unhappiness for both parent and child.
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The Economist’s Guide to Parenting: Full Transcript
Pink Salmon Festival, Vancouver
I really enjoyed a complimentary outdoor Salmon dinner yesterday.
… The event is organized by Robert Clark, sustainable fish advocate and chef of divine cuisine, who teamed up with Pacific Salmon Foundation to celebrate pink salmon as one of British Columbia’s most sustainable seafoods. A total of 1.5 tonnes of free, barbecued-to-perfection pinks were prepared and served by chefs to hundreds of visitors …
Rockin’ was one of the chef / evangelists.
Denzel had a booth selling their barbecue sauces. He’s attending Barbecue on the Bow next weekend.
The weather was perfect.
floating the Coeur d’Alene river
Super popular and great fun.
After gymnastics camp in Idaho on a hot day.
Bank scam – Fauxclosure Crisis
“60 Minutes” … weighed in with a thoughtful segment on the mortgage mess involving faulty or fraudulent mortgage paperwork. (Deal Journal readers previously have dubbed this the “Fauxclosure Crisis.”)
The news magazine program went in search of “Linda Green,” a woman in rural Georgia whose signature was on thousands on mortgage documents as a vice president of more than 20 banks — at the same time. Linda Green told “60 Minutes” she had never been a bank vice president, but was dubbed one by an alleged mortgage sweatshop because her name was short and easy to spell.
Click HERE to watch the “60 Minutes” segment. …
one more thing… Steve Jobs
The most astute Steve Jobs tribute I’ve read is by MG Siegler on the incredibly ugly redesigned TechCrunch:
… For years, all we’ve heard is about how when Steve Jobs was no longer head of Apple, the stock would be destroyed. The actual result? A 0.65 percent loss for the day. The broader Nasdaq index actually did much worse: a 1.95 percent loss. Had the market risen today, Apple probably would have closed up.
Think about that for a second: the day after Steve Jobs steps down as CEO of Apple, Apple’s stock could have easily risen. ..
… Apple just had its best quarter ever. The iPhone, released just four years ago, is now their most important product. The iPad, released just last year, is a bigger business than the Mac. Earlier this month, Apple pushed past Exxon as the most valuable company in the world. This is Sandy Koufax retiring. This is Barry Sanders retiring. This is John Elway hanging it up after winning two Super Bowls in a row. This is Rocky Marciano walking away undefeated.
In his resignation letter, Jobs says that he believes “Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it.” And maybe that will indeed be true. But if it is true, it will be in spite of his departure.
But those words are also why I think this resignation may be Jobs’ final masterstroke. …
worst radio music decade ever?
In Idaho I’ve been listening to Hot 96.9FM.
Their playlist is about 9 songs long. I hear those few songs played less than an hour apart.
There are no DJs. And even the songs selected don’t have many musicians. It’s vocal supplemented with computer.
Marvin’s Room by Drake is a very interesting pop song. But the music video is so awful, I don’t link it.
Lighters by Eminem, Bruno Mars & Royce da 5’9″ has a lousy video, too. But I believe the song is a prototype for the rest of the decade.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube (profane version)
“Lighters” is an alternative hip hop song with influences of pop music.
The formula is simple. Get a catchy pop song started. Add rap for edge.
I do love the urban doggerel:
… Now his career’s
Lebron’s jersey in 20 years …
I’ll predict now that this decade will be considered even duller than the 1980s.
cats that look like Hitler
Speeding by on a bike I saw a cat that looked EXACTLY like Hitler.
I doubled back with my camera, but he’d gone into a bunker or something.
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On another trip, to Iceland, I found this Kitler:
Botanic Garden, Reykavik, Iceland.
… Does your cat look like Adolf Hitler? Do you wake up in a cold sweat every night wondering if he’s going to up and invade Poland? …
check it out – CatsThatLookLikeHitler.com
obese Idaho
Hanging around an expensive ski resort in Kellogg for a week, I couldn’t help but notice that many of the redneck bubbas look like this guy.
That surprised me.
I assumed that obesity in America was still mostly southeast, in poor and ethnic populations.
Mississippi fat, Colorado and the Pacific northwest lean.
Is the map wrong?
Treehugger – You Are Where You Eat: Obesity Maps of North America
Yet the men I see here at Silver Mountain Resort, a mountain biking mecca, are affluent and white.
The men of Kellogg could certainly declare: “In your face, Springfield!”
There are old men. And fat men. But very few old, fat men.
Windows Phone 7 looks GREAT
My buddy Andy from Microsoft showed me how it works. Very cool. Much prettier than iPhone. And astonishingly different than iPhone.
Kudos.
Normally infamously slow to market, with this software, Microsoft is early.
Microsoft has locked up Nokia. The two mega-corporations will partner starting with a handset codenamed ‘Sea Ray‘.
Click PLAY or watch a Mango promo on YouTube.
… On the other hand, the Molly Rant Mango review was lukewarm, at best:
… it’s the end of my second week of life with Windows Phone 7 Mango, and it’s time to render a verdict. I should say at the outset that two weeks doesn’t sound a lot of time to live with an entirely new platform, and I might have lasted longer but for serious problems with the HTC Trophy I’ve been using (one-day record for spontaneous reboots: 15, including three in 15 minutes). …
So, what’s the verdict? It’s like, but it’s not love. This is not going to be my next smartphone. …
Read more: Cnet
I still think the phone market will shake down to 3 strong options in this order:
1) Android
2) Apple
3) Windows
Google bought Motorola mobile for $12.5 billion. This way they’ll have more control over the hardware, as Apple does.
Blackberry may hold on to some niche business market.
HP has killed their webOS Phones and TouchPad. Too bad. … That platform could a bin a contendah.
