Given that I drink about five cups of coffee per day, I welcome this news: Numerous studies in recent years have reported that drinking coffee may be good for the cardiovascular system and might even help prevent strokes. Just last month, Swedish researchers announced results of a large study showing that coffee seemed to reduce the risk of stroke in women by up to 25%. But what about men?
I previously mentioned that I probably wouldn’t be subscribing to the NYT, as the prices are fairly inflated compared with other digital subscriptions. A couple additional thoughts: I’m surprisingly satisfied with the BBC iPhone app. It’s completely replaced the NYT as my mobile news source, and with a few exceptions (mostly the op-eds), it’s been just a good. I’m a little annoyed that individual blog posts count as articles on the NYT site. Some of the blogs I follow have as many as ten posts a day. If I read them all, I hit the maximum number of 20 articles/month within two days. This is causing me to (grudgingly) rethink my decision about whether or not to subscribe. I’m well aware that
From Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things: Looking at linen. Looking at fish. Looking at a lab worker. Looking at a truck. Looking at soy sauce. Much more here.
Via The Big Picture:
Via xkcd:
My guitar teacher can really pick:
Via The Big Picture:
For a while now I’ve been curious to see a time-series chart of global stock market capitalization by region. I’ve looked, and have been unable to find one. So I downloaded some data from the World Federation of Exchanges, and made my own. Whenever someone says “the world stock market,” this is what they’re talking about: And in real 2010 dollars:
Pretty Things has just released their first Spring seasonal. They call it a hoppy tripel. It’s strong, smooth, and is loaded with aroma hops. It’s absolutely delicious. From their website: Our first Spring, we brought you a magical tree full of waving babies… and the Baby Tree has stuck around, we’re happy to say. So the past two years we’ve made a pale gold, hoppy triple called Fluffy White Rabbits. We say White Rabbits in Yorkshire for luck, so here’s a good way to drink some lucky beer and here’s to a fabulous warm season for all of us! The beer is 8.5% abv, with Saaz, Styrian Goldings and Amarillo hops added aplenty. Look for a fluffy mouthfeel, faint sweetness with
Via Ezra Klein, a proposal to provide taxpayers with itemized receipts: I’m glad to see the Taxpayer Receipt gaining some momentum. The center-left think tank Third Way and the liberal journal Democracy have both joined up to promote it (and here), there’s an online tax-receipt calculator that you can test-drive right now, and Sens. Bill Nelson, Scott Brown and Lisa Murkowski have teamed up to introduce the idea in the Senate. So, hopefully, this dead-obvious reform — your grocery store has been hip to it for quite some time — is close to happening. For those in need of a quick refresher on the Taxpayer Receipt, the basic idea is laughably simple to implement but perhaps quite profound once it’s being done. As things