A cup has approximately 98.75 percent water, the rest is soluble plant matter. Wired Magazine has the complete list. Here are a few ingredients that bring back memories of my chemistry classes as well as help rationalize occasional excessive coffee drinking on my part.
3,5 Dicaffeoylquinic acid
When scientists pretreat neurons with this acid in the lab, the cells are significantly (though not completely) protected from free-radical damage. Yup: Coffee is a good source of antioxidants.
Trigonelline
Chemically, it’s a molecule of niacin with a methyl group attached. It breaks down into pyridines, which give coffee its sweet, earthy taste and also prevent the tooth-eating bacterium Streptococcus mutans from attaching to your teeth. Coffee fights the Cavity Creeps.
On a somewhat relevant note, if you need a favor from me it is generally a good idea to ask for it over a cup of joe.
Petya kindly invited me to join a chain of posts. I put down my list in google docs about a month ago and then forgot about it. So, here they are.
1. Coffee. Does not matter if the source is an espresso machine, french press or filter coffee maker. I crave the substance and I drink at least a few cups every day.
2. The return of Fake Steve Jobs. The funniest blogger on my side of the internet is back with the familiar tagline “Dude, I invented the friggin iPhone. Have you heard of it?”
3. House MD. I count the days (42) to the premiere of season 6. I used to wake up at 4 in the morning to grab the latest episode from the torrent sites.
4. Stumbling upon a film I should have seen a long time ago but did not. The freshest one in this category is Martin Scorsese’s American Boy. The movie was actually never released to the broad public but this did not stop movie buffs to seek, watch and directly lift ideas from it. Certainly everyone reading this can recall Uma Turman snorting heroin and OD-ing in Pulp Fiction. The scene below has almost a one to one correspondence with a story told in American Boy.
I have no problem with the good directors borrow, great directors steal approach.
On another note, if you, for some freakish reason, have not seen Pulp Fiction - Get out of here right now! I will quote Marsellus Wallace about the situation your lack of curiosity for quality cinema entertainment has created.
Yeah, we cool. Two things. Don’t tell nobody about this. This shit is between me, you, and Mr. Soon-To-Be-Living-The-Rest-of-His-Short-Ass-Life-In-Agonizing-Pain Rapist here. It ain’t nobody else’s business. Two: you leave town tonight, right now. And when you’re gone, you stay gone, or you be gone. You lost all your L.A. privileges. Deal?
5. Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself. I find it extremely useful in making sense of web content. Check it out.
6. Not playing WoW any more. It is nothing less than triumph of my will power. Let’s see how long it will last…
Trying to suggest that a lack of explanation is evidence that supernatural powers are at work is actually a contradiction. In effect what it’s saying is, “I can’t explain something, therefore I can explain it.”
Humanity has never been smarter and wealthier. The good ol’ times were not as good as now. We live at (the beginning of) The Age of Mass Intelligence
Third, what does all this say about the widespread view that societies are dumbing down, educational standards are crumbling and people’s ability to concentrate is collapsing? The reply must be that it cannot be true across the board and that for a significant number, the opposite is the case: people want more intellectually demanding things to see and hear, not fewer. Surely both things are happening at once: part of the population is dumbing down, part is wising up. But something has changed. H.L. Mencken, the so-called sage of Baltimore, said: “No one in this world…has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” A growing number of people are proving him wrong.
I have had plenty of arguments about this issue. Let’s hope the next one will be soon while the data from the article is still fresh in my mind. I pity the fool who will dare question the statement.
There is no secret ingredient. Genes help to get you in the top percentiles but after that you are on your own. And it seems it is all about work, work, work and a bit of luck. Malcolm Gladwell takes a book and a media blitz to say that. I managed it in one line. This New York Times review sums up most of my concerns about his arguments.
Scientists claim to have found the thin line between love and hate. Although I feel a bit uneasy about some of their techniques (see this), the study observations ring true.
However, there was also an important difference. The areas of the frontal cortex associated with judgement and reasoning are typically less active when viewing a lover compared to someone more neutral, meaning they are less likely to feel critical of their partner.
The hate-filled subjects, though, only showed a reduction in one small part of this area, while the rest was still active.
So, hate - rationality = love. Cool.
Ma’am, I got a question. If I used to rationalize my actions all the time when I was younger, does that mean that I hated myself? And do I love myself now?
As of this writing, only the Nobel Prize in economics has not been announced. The award ceremony is on Monday.
Winning brings not just fame but also a small fortune. Turning on the narcissist in me I cannot help but wonder what it would be like to win the prize. Would I accept Alfred Nobel’s blood money? In a politically correct world getting a peace prize by the creator of dynamite seems more puzzling than reconciling general relativity with quantum theory. Then again, things like this make life interesting.
A businessman, baseball team owner, governor and two term president - there is little George W. Bush has not accomplished. So what should he do after leaving the White House? Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review suggests:
A totally crazy Saturday-morning thought: Wouldn’t George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher?
Indeed, it is crazy. For one thing, the US should not waste all the talent and experience that Bush has on merely educating kids. For another, talk show hosts would rip him with those who can’t, teach. And those who can’t teach, teach government derivatives. The best way to utilize the “I am the decision maker” would be to let him see through some of his decisions. The new US president should appoint Bush an ambassador to Iraq. It is a no-brainer. Just get W. to Baghdad and then wait for him to come up with an exit strategy.
About Monevnomics
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