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7 Quick Takes (4/5/13)

7 Quick Takes (4/5/13)

Last updated on: April 6, 2013 at 6:17 pm by Leah Libresco

7 Quick Takes (4/5/13) 2013-04-06T18:17:41-04:00 Leah Libresco

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While we’ve been discussing ways to tweak the comment sections chez moi, regular commenter Gilbert has put together a hacky fix to make comments a little easier to read (new comments are highlighted, comments are collapsible, etc). You can read how to install it yourself at his blog.

— 2 —

Via TYWKIWDBI, a video on how marbles are made. (The second method is the one I learned in college!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAUAy8rlwHY

— 3 —

This is the best solution I’ve heard in a while for the tendency of journalists to overreport women’s clothing choices:

I think we need a variant of the comic-book Hawkeye Initiative. How about the McCain rule? If you wouldn’t say it about John McCain — don’t say it about Hillary or Michele or Michelle or Kamala. “And before we finish introducing war hero and veteran public servant Senator McCain, allow me a moment to comment on his raw physical magnetism. Hottie with a legislative body, right there!” “Senator McCain, looking especially fetching in a variant on his usual two-piece suit ensemble, bestowed smiles on all around him.” “Senator McCain’s Haircut: Three Tips To Achieve The Look.”

…I admit it’s hard. We have a self-imposed “Reverse Mallard” problem. If you’ve looked at the ducks for any period of time, you notice that the males are awash in color and the females all sport a conservative dun. In public fashion life, the opposite is true. Men’s attire looks, broadly speaking, the same. Women’s attire is colorful and tailored and has all kinds of bells and whistles on it that make for much more colorful commentary. Even efforts to evade this natural discrepancy by wearing the blandest thing possible don’t always get you out of the weeds. Hillary’s pantsuits became a discussion all their own. (“I thought this was what you wore to indicate you didn’t want people to discuss what you wore,” the staid ensembles grumbled.) But that doesn’t make it right. My usual answer is that men need to start wearing colorful, pointed shoes and knee-breeches again, in the simple interest of equity of color commentary. Dress everyone as 18th-century pirates! Bring back broadcloth and brocade! I think they would look very fetching on Senator McCain.

— 4 —

From the annals of strange appropriations of religion by popular culture:

The European Commission has ruled that membership of chess clubs and national chess federations can be classed as religious worship under the currently applicable laws covering member countries of the European Union (EU).
The test case was brought by the Latvian Chess Federation, home of former world chess champion Mikhail Tal. Local chess clubs in the country had failed to qualify for EU grants, since the EU does not classify chess as a sport.

Turns out this one was an April Fools’ joke and I am easily deceived!

— 5 —

From the annals of strange appropriations of popular culture by religion:

A new play written by a Russian Orthodox priest depicts Harry Potter discovering he has been baptized and then battling Voldemort with the help of Saint Cyprianus

— 6 —

Two new posts up at the CFAR blog this week (one of them has an assassination attempt):

Warm, Fuzzy Rationality

It’s easy to imagine that a perfect rationalist would have learned nothing from the meeting that Grant set up. After all, a good rationalist wouldn’t need an emotional prod to internalize information. This sounds a lot like the trope of the Straw Vulcanwho distrusts emotional cues as illogical.

Sometimes, people are surprised to look over our sample schedule and see that CFAR offers some ‘soft’ classes about emotional awareness and social dynamics. But we see those domains as just as relevant as decision theory and Bayes theorem. It’s all about understanding the world you live in (which includes you-as-you-are!) and how to act effectively with the tools you’ve got.

Elementary Skills, My Dear Rationalist

It’s the ability to notice her confusion that saves our detective and lets her live to sleuth another day. But for most of us, our slip ups as a rationalist are a lot less dramatic. And that can be worse.

At least a mysterious assassin has the manners to concuss you in a clear, noticeable way. A false belief that slips beneath your notice will keep influencing you and leading you astray without you even noticing you’re under attack. So your confusion-detector needs to be even subtler than that of our brave protagonist.

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A dear friend of the family passed away this week, and I’d like to share the obit with your guys because Stan Isaacs was such a mensch.

Isaacs was born in Brooklyn in 1929, when the borough was already haunted by Howard Cosell, Marty Glickman, and Roger Kahn. It would be important later that young Isaacs was a Giants — not a Yankees — fan. At first, Isaacs had trouble finding a paper that would stay open. He worked at the New York Star, then The Daily Compass, a liberal paper that put him the same newsroom as I.F. Stone. The Compass didn’t have enough sportswriters to make for a respectable-looking page, so Isaacs filed both under his own name and the byline “Gary Fiske.” When City College of New York won 1950 NCAA and NIT titles, the Garden sent “Fiske” an inscribed cigarette lighter.

Also he stole the Brooklyn Dodgers pennant from the LA stadium since he thought California had no right to what Brooklyn had won.

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