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Great article on the dark energy debate. Good primer on the ideas here.

A few things strike me about this debate. One, relativity is mega-weird. Two, it’s interesting how whenever I read articles on some of the more esoteric hard sciences, they less frequently feature academics from the big, famous American Universities (Harvard, etc) than the softer sciences. Is this because the signaling value of being known as a “smart guy” is lessened in more meritocratic fields?

Lastly, we have people betting on the outcome!

Wiltshire made a wager with Thanu Padmanabhan, a physicist at the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India. Padmanabhan wagered that within 10 years dark energy would be revealed as a true cosmological constant and not as an artefact of matter distribution.

Robin Hanson and Bryan Caplan would be pleased.

Earth has been, periodically, an extremely unfriendly place.

Via Barker we learn that parents “invest” more in adopted kids than their genetic spawn.

The headline comes from an unconfirmed report that “Angie” (!) said she resents her spawn because they haven’t had a tough life like her adoptees.

that’s what she said.

Tkacik on Wall Street. I haven’t even read it yet and I’m recommending it.

Everyone is all fired up about Megan McArdle’s recent contributions to the health care debate. (two links there).

I mostly ignore this stuff (and haven’t read her articles, actually) because I don’t think there are many interesting or constructive conversations going on about healthcare. Robin Hanson is talking some sense, as usual, and is homing in on my own instinctive aversion to this debate.

First, the bottom line:

For many decades health economists have known that the best available evidence shows little or no relation at the margin between med and health. 

So, uh… huh?

neither side wants to contradict the US public, which has a religious-style faith in the healing powers of medicine. 

This strikes a chord with me. In the past, have I been more likely to be impressed by a doctor’s knowledge or surprised by his/her ignorance? Definitely the latter. I’ve walked in assuming they know everything. It’s the highest status profession on earth. Maybe that’s a problem.

Remarkable

I at first liked MR’s commenter’s Andrew:

“The median voter is a dumbass.”

But then commenter Wagster had to ruin the fun:

Andrew – not dumbass, just too damn nice.

It’s important to understand why the response changes. The respondent doesn’t like gay men and lesbians more than homosexuals, but he/she is speaking to a stranger over the phone about a volatile subject. If the interviewer uses words gay people use to self-identify, then the respondent — in order to not offend — will respond favorably. If the interviewer uses the words that gay rights opponents use, again the respondent will attempt to not offend, and bend with the direction the interviewer is signaling.

It’s true, folks, MR’s comments are the best

via Felix Salmon’s twitter feed:

If you’re doing a PhD in Applied Statistics, specialising in sampling theory, how many times do they make you write your dissertation?

And it goes on:

(This was the basis of an actual conversation between me and a colleague, where we were arguing over what I believed to be an entirely sensible generalisation from a single case. He pointed out that he had a degree in statistics and thus could be assumed to have expertise in the area; I countered that he only had a single degree in statistics and would have to take his finals at least 30 times before I could be confident he hadn’t passed them by luck).

James Kwak‘s basic idea is that applying engineering concepts of efficiency (better designed layouts – shorter walking distances to places in the office, etc) are useless in a knowledge worker environment. The real constraints on efficiency are human.

South Koreans are creative technophiles

Fire Your Relatives. Scare Your Employees. And Stop Whining.