Octopodial Chrome

Forthwith, a rogues’ gallery of unjust beer laws. Florida bans bottles larger than 32 ounces; Iowa beers stronger than 5% ABV; Utah beer over 4%; New York bans beer an liquor in the same business.

When will the madness end?

Here’s an interesting theory from Roger Unger, M.D.: obesity is not the cause of metabolic syndrome but rather a defense against it. Metabolic syndrome is a fancy new name for belly fat and increased risk for heart disease, strokes and diabetes—it’s afflicting more and more Americans these days.

Dr. Unger’s theory is is intriguing, and he may be on to something. I’m not certain, though, what the prognosis is: okay, so fat doesn’t cause the problem but what does? Is it simple lack of exercise? In that case, the answer is simple: raise the gasoline tax to $4/gallon, all proceeds to go toward bicycles for the poor and new bike-only roads. Is it the wrong sort of food? Then start subsidising the right stuff and stop subsidising the wrong stuff (although—what if certain key political states like Iowa can’t meet the nation’s needs for healthy food as they can for maize?). More research is clearly needed.

Little-known fact: during Prohibition the US government poisoned alcohol. Roughly 10,000 people died as a result.

Chris Dixon has a great post examining the perverse incentives which reward executives for mismanagement. Well worth the read.

Cracked.com states that babies lie, racially discriminate, defy authority, get high off of masochism, steal and even murder in the womb. I think we should require registration of all babies and institute a mandatory one-week waiting period before procreation…

Roger Clegg offers up an illuminating parable. It starts:

Suppose you are a lifeguard, and you are presented with studies showing that boys are more likely to drown than girls, probably because they engage in riskier behavior. Now, how does this affect the job you do as a lifeguard?

Well, I hope that one thing you do not do is shrug if you see a girl drowning. You also should not try to rescue boys who are not drowning.

In fact, if this datum doesn’t help you spot drowning people, and it probably doesn’t, then it won’t affect the way you do your job as lifeguard at all. You look for people flailing and screaming, and knowing that most of them will be boys is really irrelevant to you.

Would it prompt you to support “Safety First” swim programs for boys only? Well, so long as there is some percentage of girls who would benefit from such programs, it’s not clear why you would want to exclude girls from them. Maybe the “Safety First” videos you show in the programs would be more likely to depict boys doing typically boy-things, but that’s about it.

And, of course, if further studies showed that it’s not so much sex that matters, but some other factor, then you would care even less about gender, and would be even less supportive of a program for boys and boys alone. For example, if there were some way instead to target risk-seekers for the program—thereby excluding cautious boys (and girls), and including risk-seeking girls (and boys)—then you would be all for it.

Read the whole thing—it’s good.

Chris Illuminati shares some notes his wife has left in his lunch. Very cool, and very sweet too.

Colonel James Moschgat, USAF, relates the story of a janitor and the lessons he learnt from his example. There’s some good stuff here.

Gunnar Ritter, maintainer of the commonly-used mailx program, explains why it’s not available on Windows. It’s an interesting tale of how the kluges deep within that semi-operating psuedo-system mean that even in 2010 design decisions made in the Seventies afflict Windows.

They afflict Unix too, of course, but generally our design mistakes were smarter than Windows’s design mistakes. Even in error we’re better.

Now here’s an excellent idea for young men wanting to serve their communities: start a pallbearer society. The idea is to carry the caskets of those without friends or relatives to do the task. I should talk to my old Scoutmaster—this would be a good thing for my old troop to do.

H/t to John Derbyshire