Wed 20 January 2010 | -- (permalink)

They're wildly popular, accounting for something like 40% of paperbacks sold. Ben Casnocha calls them "women's pornography." As the economy has slowed, romance novel sales have boomed.

Given their wild popularity and salacious subject matter, you'd expect there to be an outcry against romance novels similar to the one against …

Tue 19 January 2010 | tags: culture, dahlialithwick, dailylinks, dinosaurcomics, emilybazelon, evolution, gaymarriage, gender, italy, jonathanhaidt, ladygaga, language, languagelog, marthacoakley, massachusetts, morality, orinkerr, perryvschwarzenegger, philosophy, politics, psychology, religion, scottbrown, senate, slate, spain, trix, volokhconspiracy, -- (permalink)

What I've been reading lately:

• Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion: A Talk With Jonathan Haidt - If I had a list of "people who I wish had blogs," Jonathan Haidt would top it. If you like this article, read his book The Happiness Hypothesis.
• Massachusetts: Dem attacks on Coakley …

Mon 18 January 2010 | tags: butter, china, dailylinks, google, government, hack, lawenforcement, operationaurora, recipe, sauce, security, tomato, -- (permalink)

What I've been reading lately:

• McAfee® - threat_center - Operation Aurora-Consumers
  • Some glaring omissions in McAfee's report on the recent chinese hacking incident: 1) China is never mentioned, and 2) the "How do I protect myself?" page mysteriously fails to mention that Internet Explorer is *not* the only browser in the world …

Sat 16 January 2010 | tags: creditcard, dailylinks, design, economics, jj, rails, rest, -- (permalink)

What I've been reading lately:

• Plastic Flashback | The Big Money - Most economic models depend on the assumption that consumers are well-informed, rational, and self-interested. The 23914077th example of this assumption failing comes from The Big Money's pictorial history of the credit card: “People are picking out a card because they …

Fri 15 January 2010 | tags: amazon, appengine, budgets, dailylinks, haiti, immigration, marginalrevolution, politics, s3, upload, utah, -- (permalink)

What I've been reading lately:

• Marginal Revolution: How to help Haiti
  • The very best option right now for a lot of the Haitian earthquake survivors is to go somewhere else. Tyler Cowen cites a variety of bloggers arguing that the most effective way to do this would be for the …

Thu 14 January 2010 | tags: buttonwood, dailylinks, economics, gimp, kneehugging, protectionism, ubuntu, -- (permalink)

What I've been reading lately:

• How To Install GIMP With Single Window Mode In Ubuntu
  • Finally.
• More protectionism idiocy | The Economist
  • Sometimes it's refreshing to go back to basics for a minute.
• Title Censored
  • Why do "respectable" stories and ads that talk about lady parts always show pictures of women …

Thu 14 January 2010 | -- (permalink)

I was just poking around with Firebug on the front page of Wordpress.com, and the code for the big orange "Sign up now" button made me chuckle:

~~~~ {lang="html"} ... ... ... ~~~~

Wed 13 January 2010 | tags: academia, china, customers, dailylinks, earthquake, freespeech, google, gretchenrubin, hacking, haiti, happiness, journals, lists, publishing, science, secondlife, users, -- (permalink)

What I've been reading lately:

• Fourteen Tips for Getting More Sleep -- and Why It Matters.
  • Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project blog has some great insights about how to live a happier life, but personally I could do without lists like this. They just remind me of all the things I don't …

Wed 13 January 2010 | -- (permalink)

The Google App Engine documentation tells you that you can set the "Expires" header on an image like this:

~~~~ {lang="python"} class StatusImageHandler(webapp.RequestHandler): def get(self): img_data = get_status_image_for_current_user() self.response.headers["Content-Type"] = "image/png" self.response.headers.add_header("Expires", "Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:48:10 GMT") self …

Tue 12 January 2010 | tags: autocomplete, bolognese, boyfriend, dailylinks, girlfriend, google, harryreid, johnmcwhorter, mysql, obama, recipe, secondlife, -- (permalink)

What I've been reading lately:

• Reid's Three Little Words: The Log In Our Own Eye | The New Republic
  • The best-reasoned reaction I've seen yet to Harry Reid's "negro dialect" comment. But I still can't help feeling that if Reid were a Republican, most of his present apologists would be silent …