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Slap-Stomping
Stomping as loud as possible isn't usually the goal at contra dances, but occasionally you want to make a lot of noise briefly. How can you do this without hurting your knees? Normally to stomp you...
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Equal Corners
The 'contra corners' figure is no longer called very often at contra dances, and I think the biggest reason for this change is that it isn't equal-turn. In the 1980s contra dance moved from mostly...
View ArticleAgainst Singular 'Ye'
The perversions the youth wreak upon our our shared language grate on the ear and distract from semantic content. While most of their petty acts of verbal vandalism are limited to the realm of...
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Consumption Smoothing and Hedonic Adaptation
Because earning capacity increases with age but enjoyment of spending decreases with additional money, standard economic theory predicts people will smooth their spending by borrowing to live beyond...
View ArticleObama Demands Free Raisins
I have an alert set up for "free raisins", which means that if anyone posts about us online I can read about it. Lately, however, I've been getting some unusual alerts: Obama Feds Shake Down Farmer...
View ArticleStart a Railroad
Is it 1870? Because you could make money starting a passenger rail company. How? By contracting with Amtrak to move your cars. If you're rich enough to have your own private rail car, Amtrak has the...
View ArticleOld-time music for contras?
In the Northeast, contra dance and music have grown and changed together over time. Among contra musicians there's a strong tradition of playing for the dancers, tailoring the music to the specific...
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Text-Only Fallback Browsing
When you download a webpage you go through several steps [1], but your web browser usually has the text you're looking for early in the process. If you're on your phone and a page gets stuck with the...
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Free Raisins Summer Tour 2013
The Free Raisins are going on tour again! Seven dances in seven nights, 1,975 miles along the fall line: Sunday July 14th in Glen Echo MD with Tom Hinds Monday July 15th in Asheville NC with Kristin...
View ArticleUpcoming Studies on Veg Advocacy
If you care about animals you probably want other people to value them too. What's the most effective way to convince people to go veg? How effective is it? Existing studies of leafletting and online...
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Citric Acid on Watermelon
About a month ago I got some citric acid. Since then I've tried putting it on and in various things. Chocolate was strange, Strawberries were good, but my favorite has definitely been watermelon: (If...
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BIDA Signs
This post is about our first round of signs. Our current signs are here At the BIDA contra dance we put up colorful signs: Reading these signs, you can see what kind of dance community BIDA wants to...
View ArticlePrioritizing By Happiness
When the limiting resource is money it's quite clear that we should prioritize the uses where it goes the farthest. If there are three organizations that can distribute antimalarial nets for $5/each,...
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Fun With Multitracking
With a rare day completely free I decided to figure out how to make layered multitrack recordings. I think the right way to do this involves fancy software like Reaper, but I used Audacity because I...
View ArticleAccepting Betting
Growing up Quaker meant not betting. When people would try to turn a disagreement into a bet I would just say "I don't bet". Should I still do that? The argument that a bet is a tax on BS is strong:...
View ArticleKeeping websites up to date
The web is full of stale websites and outdated information. No one intended this, it just happened. When you write up a page on your organization, product, self, or idea you're making a snapshot. But...
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Mandolin Straps
I've tried mandolin straps in many different ways: over the right shoulder, around the back, attached to the end of the neck, attached to the body. None of them worked well: to hold the instrument in...
View ArticleIs Pandora Really Exploiting Artists?
In 1993 David Lowry helped write the song Low. Whenever it's played on the radio he gets 40% of the writer's royalty, and he's angry at Pandora for ripping him off. But are they? Pandora is an...
View ArticleContra Flourish Workshops
A: Dance? B: Yes! Do you have a preferred gender? A: Can I be the lady? I don't know how to lead. The response from 'A' is typical among people who think of contra as something where a major part of...
View ArticleHypotheticals and Certainty
Consider two questions: If I push something off of a five foot ledge, will it take longer to fall than if I push something off of a one foot ledge? If a doctor could save five lives by killing one...
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