Eat People?
Occasionally I'll hear people speculate that it's a waste that we bury dead people when they have so much usable protein. Leaving aside the cultural taboos, medical risks, and squick, is this an...
View ArticleCan You Copyright A Contra Dance?
With people posting the calls to contra dances online the question sometimes comes up: is that copyright infringement? Which reduces to, can you copyright a contra dance? In general, dance...
View ArticleSpending Money and Housing Aesthetics
For money that we spend on ourselves [1] we budget joint spending, Jeff spending, and Julia spending. Joint money we decide together how to spend, and involves questions like what groceries to buy,...
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Initial Baby Picture
Expected for some time in late March. Comment via: google plus, facebook
View ArticleNJ Gay Marriage Ruling
A New Jersey judge just ruled that: Same-sex couples must be allowed to marry in order to obtain equal protection of the law under the New Jersey Constitution. This is good news, but the logic of the...
View ArticleCaffine for Late Night Driving?
I've had a policy of not consuming things to change how my brain works for most of my life, but perhaps I should relax it? Specifically, I'm worried about driving while I'm sleepy. Playing for contra...
View ArticleAsking dancers their preferred role
When dancing with people I don't know, I usually ask whether they have a role preference instead of just going by their appearance. "Do you have a preferred dancing gender?" Ways this can go: "I like...
View ArticlePrivate Schools
If you want your kids to go to good schools there are roughly two options: you can choose your town for its schools or send your kids to private school. I went to a public elementary school [1] in...
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Boston is a September 1st town
I've heard various people say that Boston's rental market turns over on September 1st, but it wasn't until I compared today's apartment map to last months that I really saw the difference:...
View ArticleRepertoire Size
When I go to call I bring 29 contra dances. I usually call around 12 slots at a night, and 15 of these 29 are almost all I ever call. This means that at a given night I'm going to be calling mostly...
View ArticleContra Figure Frequencies
What are the most common figures in contra dance? How common are they? I have a rough sense of this from dancing, but can we get a better idea? The ideal thing would be to have people go to every...
View ArticlePort and Starboard
Given that: In contra dance anyone can dance either role. The current role names suggest men should dance one role and women should dance the other. To many dancers the traditionally male and female...
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Streetcars get better routes
I'm generally sympathetic to the arguments favoring buses over streetcars. When you run light rail down the middle of the street you're stuck in the same traffic as everyone else and buses can be more...
View ArticleProxy Bidding Leaks Information
A friend comes to me and complains about getting sniped in an online auction. Perhaps it went something like: timeactionmax bidcurrent winner0auction starts$1auctioneer200friend sets max-bid to...
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Contra Dance Handshakes
In contra dance you'll sometimes hear people talking about a handshake grip. Perhaps the caller says "shake hands with your neighbor, and pull on by" or "take right hands, you balance and box the...
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The Date Link Convention
Lots of people know this already, but for the people that don't: the dates and times you see on posts are clickable links. They take you to a page just for that thing: This isn't an obvious...
View ArticleAltruism isn't about sacrifice
I understand altruism to be about helping people, trying to make people's lives better in whatever way I can. This does tend to involve some amount of sacrifice, but if I could have a larger impact...
View ArticleFlow Through Effects Conversation
On August 19th Holden Karnofsky, Carl Shulman, Robert Wiblin, Paul Christiano, and Nick Beckstead had a phone discussion about prioritization and flow-through effects. They recorded it and posted the...
View ArticleDecrypt All Https Traffic?
With the recent increased interest in internet surveillance, people sometimes say things like "the NSA is snooping on everything, even encrypted traffic". Could they really do that? How hard would it...
View ArticleHistory of Earning to Give II
Sometimes in talking to people about earning to give they say the idea is obvious: it's so simple! The thing is, no one seems to have been advocating it until the last decade or so. [1] Why not...
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