How much taxation is too much?

A good metric from Bainbridge:

Michael Kinsley tells us that "although I favor Obama’s tax increase, I could not defend [a top marginal tax rate of] 90 cents on the dollar." Why not? Once you accept the liberal view of taxes, why not go all the way to a top rate of 100%? It's the Alice Trillin tax. She argued that, over a certain level, the government gets everything.

Graffiti animation

File under OMFG: graffiti animation. Spray can + walls + objects + camera = crazy animation. Hard to describe. Just watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMoKcsN8wM8&feature=player_embedded

Mini-cannon gone wrong

Cannon - size = lolz.

http://kottke.org/10/10/mini-cannon-will-explode-your-tiny-mind

Good J Brown Vs Whitman Article at Reason

 http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/20/sacramento-ber-alles

neat: DNA day = $99 to get DNA mapped at 23andme.com

They look for disease and racial markers and other things.

They are reputable.  Sergey Brin (google co-founder) used to find that he was predisposed for parkinsons; also married their co-founder.

https://www.23andme.com/

cool edge finding trick

from: http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/general-archive/best-cheapest-edge-finder-76080/

Here is what I do when I have to pick up an edge dead "**uts" : 

Take a ring gage of known size - any size works that you can get the tip of your indicator inside of. I always grab my .5000.

Stick it down on top of your part or your vise with double sided tape, location does not matter, all you want to do is set your indicator center to that gage. When the indicator is set on zero (rotated the spindle to do this) .. you now know that the center of the spindle is exactly 1/2 of what the size of the ring gage hole is. (.500 ring gage, .2500 off center) 

Now without touching the indicator to knock it out of this position, bring the indicator and spindle over to the edge you are trying to find and sweep the edge. When you see zero on the indicator again you are within (if using the .500 ring gage) .2500 exactly from the edge. 

With a tenth indicator you should be able to pick up this edge within a tenth. This is very reliable, takes all the variables out. 

Of all the electronic center finders and even the "u" shaped finders, I find this to be the most accurate center finder of all. It never lies. 

famous filmmakers direct super bowl

Pretty damn funny:http://slatev.com/player.html?id=64790979001

hat tip: MR

evil eye

Mistaken IDs are far and away the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Nearly three out of every four prisoners who have been released after being exonerated by DNA evidence had an eyewitness identifying them.

Guy on hunting trip falsely ID'd by highschool alumni as at a nightclub 100s of miles away beating another guy to death. Since exonerated, but got lucky:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime/witnesses-to-beating-dead-wrong-about-man-charged-219392.html

More Haiti

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/haiti_three_weeks_later.html

More Richard Epstein

On what is jacked about the health care bill.  I'm not a lawyer, but this guy is a badass:

           http://fora.tv/2009/09/17/Richard_Epstein_Breaking_Down_Healthcare_Reform#fullprogram

Various quotes, but here's one: "I want decentralized engineering: that's the only thing I want because I am convinced that no one is super smart and you want a number of runs at this thing so you are much more likely to come up with one that's going to work"

More wide ranging:
             http://fora.tv/2009/03/23/Uncommon_Knowledge_Richard_Epstein


"Would you give him tenure?"
"NO!  NO!  Nono."

On the presidency:

"The fundamental mistake of his entire world view is that he treats contracts as devices for exploitation; he doesn't treat them as devices for mutual gain and he assumes that redistribution can take place without any negative impact on production.  And if you live in that kind of fairy land..."

John Yoo on his new book on youtube

Sharp guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deh05-KtKqw

"We certainly haven't gotten a lot of intelligence from operatives we have arrested and put on trial in our federal courts."

Interesting cross-exam before the above: Yoo vs Richard Epstein:                                         http://fora.tv/2006/10/29/Uncommon_Knowledge_Richard_Epstein_John_Yoo

Kasparov on computer chess

Interesting article.  On the surprising results of ubiquitous grandmaster level programs:

There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it's no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top- level opponent at home instead of need ing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn't care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn't been done that way before. It's simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.

More at:  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592

Hat tip, Marginal Revolution.