Links for Later 7-28-14

1. The daily routines of Vladimir Putin. Very weird and very sad.
2. "Is Russia Pregnant with Ukraine?" "Like a play we cannot leave."
3. The New York Times calls for legalizing marijuana. Considering how retro their trend pieces usually are, legalization may have already happened several years ago.
4. George RR Martin really feels like he should finish that book now.

Links for Later 7-22-14

1. What Fourier tranforms can do for you.
2. Andrew Gelman: "Bayesian methods are presented as an automatic inference engine, and this raises suspicion in anyone with applied experience, who realizes that different methods work well in different settings" as quoted in this critique of Bayesian stats.

Five for Dinner

Look at this from 10 years ago: Jon Favreau, Colin Farrell, Jennifer Garner, Ben Affleck and Kevin Smith. None of them have any idea where they'll be in 2014.

You've been Wrong about Every Prediction in the Last Five Years

Steve Liesman points out Rick Santelli's forecasting record. Paul Krugman points out why the traders (who lost money listening to Santelli) still applaud him

Why You Should Use Tor

The EFF's brief on why and how you should use Tor, the anonymizing & encrypting software for browing securely.

Links for Later 7-13-14

1. The Baroque theater designs of C. Howard Crane.
2. Documentary budgets
3. Terraforming the moon. The surprising thing is that the Moon is not terribly reflective right now, with an albedo of something like 0.1 or less. With terraforming, it would be substantially (>5x) brighter due to the reflectivity of water and clouds, just like the Earth.

Harry Potter Visits Quidditch World Cup

JK Rowling has posted a brief gossip column by Rita Skeeter, giving us an update on 35-year-old Harry Potter and his friends as they visit the 2014 Quidditch World Cup.

Emo Philips on Religion

I've been talking a lot about heresy lately, and repeated this joke without remembering where it came from. Turns out, it was Emo Philips all along.