More on the five-second rule.

For all my many readers in the San Francisco area, I'm giving a talk at the 9th US National Conference on Computational Mechanics on Monday, titled "An implicitly coupled parallel fluid-structure interaction algorithm for blood flow in arteries." (Isn't advertising their public appearances something that bloggers do?)

I'll be at the conference most of next week and probably not posting. While I'm gone, you can read this very long but very good article about malaria, which Bill Gates calls "the worst thing on the planet."

Gregory Mankiw asks if the rich pay enough taxes:

If your image of the typical rich person is someone who collects interest and dividend checks and spends long afternoons relaxing on his yacht, you are decades out of date. The leisure class has been replaced by the working rich.

"Stop trying to 'save' Africa."

How to beat drug-resistant bacteria, including a look at recruiting other bacteria and viruses to do the work for us.

No comment:

We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.

It's environment day on Evil Line. Bjorn Lomborg says what he always says, and since I still agree with him, I'm still linking:

My point is that cutting carbon emissions costs a lot and it provides only a small benefit 100 years from now; handing out condoms and information, however, is very cheap and it works for people suffering from HIV-AIDS right now.

And William Saletan says biofuel is a good idea that won't make poor people starve:

If you want to help poor people, biofuel beats the heck out of oil. In a biofuel economy, the chief asset is open land. Who has open land? Poor countries. Latin America has sugar cane. Africa and Asia have cassava. Switchgrass, which grows in dry regions, will level the playing field further.

I really like Saletan's piece, in its quirky tone, in its Bush as good guy, Castro as bad guy attitude, and in its content.

One of the problems with Sarkozy is that he jogs. It's undignified:

Mr Sarkozy has rekindled a French suspicion that the habit is for self-centred individualists such as the Americans who popularised it. “Jogging is of course about performance and individualism, values that are traditionally ascribed to the Right.”

But if Sarko wants to stay in shape, dieting isn't an option. Because the best evidence suggests that dieting doesn't work at all.

Two blog posts about how what we celebrate today has global, not just national, significance. First, from Thomas Jefferson's last letter:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

But perhaps more interesting, from a blogger in Spain:

Sostenemos como evidentes estas verdades: que todos los hombres son creados iguales; que son dotados por su Creador de ciertos derechos inalienables; que entre éstos están la vida, la libertad y la búsqueda de la felicidad.

Only economists should be allowed to vote.