Why I love actors

Especially those who are spontaneous...

If a rising tide lifts all boats, what happens when the tide goes out?

I thought this was an interesting article on the downward drift of American labor which I picked up on Wonkblog out of the Washington Post. It's called "This is what a job in the U.S.'s new manufacturing industry looks like" and was written by Lydia Depillis. For some reason I'm always fascinated to read about what things are like in the contemporary American workplace, especially for those without Union protection. There's a familiar depressing feeling about them, even if it's an industry you've never worked in.

Ancient Lives

Sure, you've got time on your hands--even in California, it's still winter. Or, more accurately, suddenly winter. So what better thing to do than to head over to Ancient Lives and help transcribe a few papyri? When you get to the sight you can click explore or above where it says transcribe. You don't have to know any ancient languages either. I believe that it is sort of a crowd sourcing model, where a lot of people make their best guess and this helps them with the answer. A fascinating idea, and probably at least as entertaining as solitaire. 

Duolingo

I've been amusing myself for the past few days over at Duolingo, where language learning becomes fun. Well, that's the theory anyway...


I linked to the Slate article that got me interested, but if you want to just cut to the chase, you can use your search engine of choice and just type in "Duolingo".


If I could say all of the above in Spanish, I would.

Brian Lehrer's NSA list

As we all put our minds to contemplate what effect a powerful security organization might have on our society (I know--you're not really thinking about it all that much, and I'm not either) I thought the list of what the NSA can currently do, compiled by Brian Lehrer and reposted on Slate, was an interesting way to make our thinking about these things a little less vague. You can find it HERE. It is almost certainly a partial list, but a good place to start. 

A thoughtful list by Ben Branstetter

I don't even know exactly how I stumbled on this short article listing Thirty Things You Should Do Right Now,  but I thought it was pretty good. Some of it will apply to you, some of it will not, but I think it has a little something for everyone. It's first precept seems pretty universal, at least if you still have your own teeth.


I don't know how he gets away with being twenty-five years old, but nobody's perfect. 

Wonkblog's graphs of the year

For some reason I've really been letting this blog languish. I suspect that it's because in the age of Twitter, it is largely redundant. But I still find many interesting things out there on the web, and I guess I will continue to link to them. In any case, I've been finding the Washington Post's Wonkblog's "Graphs of the Yea.r" accessible and sometimes eye-opening. Believe me when I tell you that I am no expert when it comes to graph reading, but these are interesting even to me. The first one that caught my eye was Jonathan Franzen's graph of Causes of Annual Bird Mortality, but there are many by other famous people in all fields. The latest update as of this writing is from Vaclav Smil, graphing the prices of oil vs. natural gas. It has links to some of the others at the end, and you can find it HERE.