How to be an Indie-cool rock band

Be like Franz Ferdinand.

The Perils of Linking without Permission

http://www.ftrain.com/gooooooglebase.html

Stoat Riot!

Mike Foster's Subdivision Name Generator

Name That Subdivision.

I could rename Fulton St to "Acorn Shire Marina".

Capitalism versus Family Size

I've been thinking about how difficult it is to have two parents working and more than two kids. So here's an article from Foreign Policy on how societies tend to patriarchies since they produce more kids.

Blame Herman Miller for Cubes

Since they invented them. Also check out the How I Work sidebar.

Sabado Gigante

No other television show is like it.

Is there a Cultural Difference?

I feel there's a trend where I read property articles in The Seattle Times and they talk about finding a home to live is, and I read property The Sydney Morning Herald and they talk about where the boom is so you can make money off of housing.

Is this all from the different tax structures? In the US an owner-occupied home is tax deductible, in Australia the investment home is tax deductible.

This is not exciting

In an article in the Seattle Times we read about how a schoolkid at Ranier Beach High fired a shot from a handgun at school.

My favourite line:

"It's not nearly as exciting as it was reported," said Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb. "The kid showed up, waved a gun and fired a shot in the air."

Oh, that's ok then.

Just as I gave up Caffeine

There's a study which says that for half of the population, 2-3 cups of coffee increase your risk of heart attack.

Is the housing market fundamentally different from 1650?

NYT reporting on a study of the price of a specific house in Amsterdam over a number of centuries.

Then two things happened almost simultaneously: tulip mania and the plague.

Crossroads is my favourite Mall

It has geeks playing on a giant chess set. And more geeks playing games on lines of tables. The shops are feebe, but that's because the mall revolves aroung the large and varied food court.

Then there are the performers you see on the stage - often unusual, usually talented. Among my favourites were the trombone group (all playing trombone) and the soloist playing the chapman stick who must have spent a lot of lonely evenings alone.

It turns out the mall is owned by the Third Place Books guy.

Missile Command - it's an investment!

An Australian article on how old arcade games are climbing in value. Just like old Volkswagen Beetles in 1992, before people realised what a dumb idea that was.

The Belgian Chocolate theory of the Dollar

Selling chocolates at the Brussels food fair to explain dollar movements.

From Paul de Grauwe in the Financial Times.

The first day the price was set at €9 for each box. Sales went well. The next day the price was raised to €15 per box. Steeped in economic theory, you might think that demand now declined. Wrong. Demand doubled. On the third day the price was lowered to €2 for each box. Demand for chocolates collapsed. What went wrong with the law of demand?