There's a new "scientific" study of the harmfulness of different drugs out. It looks pretty suspect with tobacco being ranked more harmful than ecstasy and marijuana more harmful than LSD.

I tried generating graphs of drug harmfulness using random numbers for experts. As you can see below, I got some with about the same shape as the study's graph.

[73, 71, 69, 67, 64, 63, 63, 62, 62, 61, 59, 59, 58, 57, 57, 52, 50, 49, 47, 47]

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[78, 74, 69, 66, 64, 63, 63, 63, 62, 62, 61, 61, 61, 60, 60, 60, 57, 54, 51, 42]

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And people, there is no way for a nuturer to win an argument with a nature-er and vice-versa, because the base position of each argument is so fundamentally different that it"™s like two people trying to have a conversation while one is speaking English and one is speaking Mandarin.

source

Here the (myth of the) framework argument is invoked, which says if people have different frameworks or foundations then discussion won't get anywhere. They won't be able to reconcile their different starting points.

What's amusing is that many of the analogies intending to prove the framework argument do a good job of proving it's a myth. This analogy says that people who speak different languages won't be able to make progress and come to understand each other and agree. But it's common knowledge that if you go to a country where you don't speak the language, that is a good way to learn the language. If you try a lot you can figure out what words mean and make progress, and eventually become completely fluent in the foreign language. So, by analogy, the nature/nurture people *could* solve their dispute.

Sleeping when not tired is like eating when not hungry.

I wore my Israeli flag yesterday (context). I walked a short ways through downtown Berkeley in public (and went to Jamba Juice), went to a TCS speech by Sarah Fitz-Claridge, and went into two restaurants in Fremont.

Nothing bad happened.

In Berkeley people said something from their car, but I couldn't hear what. They didn't look angry and I waved to them. However it was 9am on Sunday and not many people were around.

At the speech, someone asked why I was wearing a flag. I said that I support Israel, and that if I don't wear a flag no one will ask about it. She didn't say anything so I added that on Saturday Hezbollah was smuggling weapons into Lebanon and Israel sent commandos to stop this, so the UN said Israel broke the cease fire. She thought that was dumb :)

200 years ago, William Godwin wrote an essay telling parents that they should not restrict which books their children can read. For example, they shouldn't ban their daughters from reading any novels.

Why did parents hate books? Because their kids might get ideas, or be influenced. Kids are gullible, you know? But far too stubborn and resistant to new ideas for parents to control or advise them.

Now that there is an even larger threat than books (TV), parents have given up on keeping kids away from books, and actually encourage it so as to distract them from the TV. Television is a medium capable of expressing text just like a book, but also capable of conveying pictures and sounds, so it's quite a bit more powerful than books. And people like TV better, and want to spend a lot of time using it. When people really like something, that's called addiction, and it must be stopped.

I'm not joking. There's even "email addiction", and it's just like cocaine.

Here's Godwin's book, which is out of copyright and free.

I was interviewed about Ruby.

If Israel loses, the penalty is death. If Lebanon loses, the penalty is "humiliation".

Kofi says the blockade is also:

I see two possibilities:

One: Hezbollah is *not* an agent of Lebanon (despite being part of the government). In that case, in what sense is Lebanon sovereign if it can't control enemy militias within its borders? And shouldn't its primary complaint be about the huge threat to sovereign control over its own territory that Hezbollah poses?

Two: Hezbollah *is* an agent of Lebanon, in which case Lebanon has forfeited any right to sovereignty by murdering Israelis with rockets, abducting Israeli citizens, and so on.

I have started writing philosophical dialogs. The topics so far are mostly parenting, epistemology, and some political stuff like free trade and war. There are 12 so far. I'm updating them a lot more than my blog. You can find them at:

http://curi.us/dialogs/

They are currently in the order they were written, from top to bottom, but they will probably be reorganized later.

http://bitingbeaver.blogspot.com/2006/09/morality-clauses-ec-and-broken-condoms.html

Know what the problem with hospitals in Ohio is? They wouldn't prescribe emergency contraception (EC) pills to this girl unless she was raped or married (the condom broke). She does not want a fourth kid. There is no help within a hundred miles.

At the hospitals that prescribe EC at all, they have "morality clauses" where the doctor interviews you and you have to meet certain criteria (married or raped). She's been completely unable to get EC. (And is now considering taking large quantities of other pills that might work, but she isn't sure if it's safe or effective.)

EC is over-the-counter now, not prescription, but not at a pharmacy within 100 miles for her. Her local pharmacy says they'll sell it next January.

Know what would solve this? Well, you may be thinking less religion. That would indeed work for this particular breed of insanity, but it would only avoid religious problems. There is a more universal solution: greed.

If people were more greedy, they'd sell her the damn pills to make a buck. No matter what crazy ideas they have, religious or otherwise, if they were greedy enough they would engage in free trade with anyone who isn't dangerous.

This is absolutely a must read. It's about giving computer access to slum kids in India, with no training to use it. Note the parts about physics problems, MP3s, gender roles, his opinion of teachers, adults, that the kids have very little English comprehension, and the comments about "functional literacy".

The best part is that the mothers think this is good for their children. Just go read it.