The Pretense of Knowledge

A Few Random Morning Links …

admin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:00:02 +0000

I’m going to take a week to ten days off. In the meantime, enjoy these links.

“The Most Amazing Highest Resolution Image of Earth Ever,” Says NASA

11 things Obama didn’t tell you about tax fairness last night

Best Cars From James Bond Movies

Why must the Captain go down with the ship?

Italian Wedding Soup

Private House by Rui Grazina

Clothing sizes getting bigger: Why our sizing system makes no sense. – Slate Magazine

The Ice Balloon: The Story of the Disastrous 1897 Expedition to the North Pole by Air

50 new tech tools you should know about – CNN.com

Spending other people’s money – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Cliff House by Scott Allen Architecture

Thoughts On The New Omega Speedmaster Co-Axial Chronograph

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:30:49 +0000

Ben Clymer over at Hodinkee gives us a full review of the new Omega Speedmaster Co-Axial Chronograph. Oh, and thanks to Ben for the pics here!

The review is fantastic and a must-read, he summarizes with this:

“The Speedmaster Co-Axial Chronograph is a very good watch. It might even be a great one. Aesthetically, it hits all the right notes and respects its manually wound, space-bound forefathers without crossing the line into a tribute within the same family. The Omega caliber 9300/9301 is a fantastic automatic movement, and the use of the co-axial escapement and sillicon balance spring (plus a column wheel with vertical clutch!) means you are getting some serious mechanical goodness here. The case is larger at 44.25mm X 16mm, but it’s not too large by any means and actually found it wears smaller than it measures. Functionally, you’ve got an incredibly accurate automatic watch with a considerable, 60-hour power reserve, plus a 12-hour chronograph with date window. The lack of a quick-set date is strange for a watch with a brand new movement, but at least it has a date at all (the Rolex Daytona does not). So, the Co-Axial Speedmaster is an excellent watch, and in our opinion worth the $8,200 for which it sells. The thing is, will other people even spend enough time looking into it to come to that conclusion? Until this watch, the average automatic Omega sold for about half this price. Half, people.”

In a vacuum, if I had never seen a Speedmaster Pro before, I would absolutely love this watch. I might wish it was a tad smaller at 42mm, but that’s about it. Ok, I also wish it was cheaper, I think Omega thinks it’s selling Rolexes at these prices in the last few years. But they’re trying to move their image upscale and I appreciate that.

[ Chuck Maddox - Fratellowatches.com ]

But … I have seen a Speedmaster Pro before, I’ve worn one daily for the last 10-11 years. And as much as I love this watch I still have trouble reconciling a Speedmaster with an automatic movement, a date window, and one with only two chronograph registers. At least they didn’t call it “professional.” I realize there have been sever popular non-Professional Speedmasters over the years. In fact, the Legendary Chuck Maddox personally considered the 376.0822 his ‘grail’ Speedmaster, it used the Lemania 5100 automatic movement.

Anyway, enjoy the review and pics, and consider this new model. it looks beautiful, and movement is absolutely first-rate.

Underground Battles for Prosperity, China Edition

speedmaster — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:19 +0000

Great story. Mark Perry comments as well.

The Secret Document That Transformed China : Planet Money : NPR: In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret contract. They thought it might get them executed. Instead, it wound up transforming China’s economy in ways that are still reverberating today.

The contract was so risky — and such a big deal — because it was created at the height of communism in China. Everyone worked on the village’s collective farm; there was no personal property.

“Back then, even one straw belonged to the group,” says Yen Jingchang, who was a farmer in Xiaogang in 1978. “No one owned anything.”

At one meeting with communist party officials, a farmer asked: “What about the teeth in my head? Do I own those?” Answer: No. Your teeth belong to the collective.

In theory, the government would take what the collective grew, and would also distribute food to each family. There was no incentive to work hard — to go out to the fields early, to put in extra effort, Yen Jingchang says.

“Work hard, don’t work hard — everyone gets the same,” he says. “So people don’t want to work.”

A Few Random Morning Links …

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:30:31 +0000

Portlandia: Don’t Forget to Bring Bags to the Market

Tim Elliott meets the people who are defined by what they will – and won’t – eat:

“Now everybody with a cardigan and crocheted beanie has to have their own special food-limited diet. Not content with mere veganism, we have freeganism (people who only eat free stuff), flexitarianism (a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat) and pollotarians (those who eat chicken or other poultry but not red meat). The other day a friend declared that he was a pescetarian (he eats only fish or other seafood). Pollo-pescetarians, meanwhile, eat poultry and fish but not red meat.“

How Helvetica Conquered The World With Its Cool, Comforting Logic

“I don’t plan on dying, because I don’t want to give up a rent-controlled apartment,” said Arnold Warwick, 80, in his home in the West Village.

Daily dream home – Static House

9 Great iPhone Camera Apps – PCMag.com

Yikes! Not so good, a wake-up-call for Apple’s App Store?

Authentic Italian Home Added Modern Features

The 25 (Essential) Books for the Well-Read Explorer

Salvaging the TK Bremen – In Focus – The Atlantic

Beautiful vintage Omega Seamaster

Are Expensive Batteries Worth the Extra Cost?

Ditch Mobile Web And Load Pages In Their Entirety Using Dolphin For iPhone [iOS Tip]

Hands-On With The Jaeger-LeCoultre Duomètre à Quantième Lunaire 40.5 (Live Pics + Video)

Why McDonald’s In France Doesn’t Feel Like Fast Food : The Salt : NPR

Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Peanut Butter and Dulce de Leche Buttercream

Is ‘Buy American’ A Redneck Refrain? What of Cash-Mobs?

speedmaster — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:30:11 +0000

It seems that we often snicker at the uneducated or ill-informed who refuse to buy a Japanese car, Korean appliance, or Chinese widget.

But consider the “buy local” movement. Isn’t that the exact same concept on steroids? If “buy American” is an error-filled notion, “buy local” seems much much worse.

I was considering this after reading about some recent stories about so-called “cash mobs.” Apparently the idea is to get everyone whipped into a “buy local” frenzy spending money locally (define ‘local’ as you wish) in one day that they might otherwise have not.

My first thought is that this is somewhat like the cash-for-clunkers program that really just moved many purchasing decisions from the future to the near future. But after more consideration it seems more like a natural outgrowth of the mindset of ‘buying local.’ And I suspect that some people are over-spending/consuming out of some belief that it’s good intrinsically. That we can somehow spend or consume our way into prosperity, locally or otherwise.

‘Cash Mob’ Events Seek to Help Small Businesses – WSJ.com: At 6:30 p.m. last Tuesday, Michelle Murrain showed up at a downtown Oakland, Calif., street corner to meet with 15 strangers who had organized themselves over Facebook. Many showed up with $20 bills. Their mission was to descend on Marion & Rose’s Workshop, a gifts boutique, to spend money. Ms. Murrain and her compatriots are among hundreds of devotees of the “cash mob,” a new social-networking-and-shopping movement aimed at increasing sales at selected small businesses. Similar cash mobs have materialized in more than 20 cities from Norman, Okla., to Muskegon, Mich., most arranged by individuals who establish followings on Facebook and Twitter. The cash-mob organizers don’t get any benefit in return.

Did Bees Solve the Travelling Salesman Problem?

speedmaster — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:16 +0000

The travelling salesman problem is one of the legendary problems in computer science.

And it looks like bees may have solved it on their own.

Tiny brained bees solve a complex mathematical problem, Queen Mary, University of London: Bumblebees can find the solution to a complex mathematical problem which keeps computers busy for days. Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London and Royal Holloway, University of London have discovered that bees learn to fly the shortest possible route between flowers even if they discover the flowers in a different order. Bees are effectively solving the ‘Travelling Salesman Problem’, and these are the first animals found to do this. The Travelling Salesman must find the shortest route that allows him to visit all locations on his route. Computers solve it by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the shortest. However, bees solve it without computer assistance using a brain the size of grass seed.

A recent item in National Geographic shows their amazing progress.

A Few Random Morning Links …

speedmaster — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:00:10 +0000

Toasted Marshmallow Ice Cream S’morewiches

What Is War Good For? by David R. Henderson

The Three Coolest Things We Saw Inside The MB&F M.A.D. Gallery (Plus One We Saw Outside)

Target Sends Letter Vendors Asking for Help to Combat ‘Showrooming’ Comparison Shopping – WSJ.com

The 75 Best Android Apps – PCMag.com

Penny the Labrador Retriever

Nice Edison pen and pics

The Awesome Ski House of Jon Huntsman’s Billionaire Father

Anatomy of a Dopp Kit

Man on the Move Goes To Portugal – Sights & Sounds

Some Chevy dealers rejecting further Volt allocations

Original Architecture and Tasteful Interiors: House R in Israel

Government Employees Have Unpaid Taxes

Niagara Falls in Motion

Video optical illusion wins by a head – Yahoo! Games

Chocolate Cherry Coconut Granola

TimeLapse Video of Yosemite National Park

The Perfect Storm of Vegans, Hipsters, and Abattoirs

speedmaster — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:00:42 +0000

Fun story.

How One Former Vegan Learned To Embrace Butchering : The Salt : NPR: The farm-to-table philosophy has been mostly about knowing where food was grown. For meat, that meant knowing if your chickens were caged and if your beef was grass fed. But with the revival of the butcher shop, some young people are undertaking the largely lost art of butchering as a stronger way to connect with their food.

For 24-year-old Andrew Plotsky of Washington, D.C., that meant leaving his job as a barista in a snobby coffee shop to learn the process of raising an animal, slaughtering it and butchering it for a meal. “I had a romantic idea of the way I thought animals should and could be processed,” he tells The Salt. He says he was attracted to the small scale tradition of a whole community having its hands involved in the raising of animals for food. “I wanted to be a part of that process,” he says. “Somehow, that manifested in pig slaughter.”

Why My Lai and Not Hiroshima?

speedmaster — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:00:51 +0000

Dr. Bryan Caplan makes a compelling argument, by asking some very uncomfortable questions. A good (and brief) read worth your time.

Tell Me the Difference Between My Lai and Hiroshima, Bryan Caplan – Library of Economics and Liberty: In the My Lai Massacre, a company of American ground troops killed between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in a village suspected of harboring Communist guerrillas (the VC). After the massacre became public knowledge, Captain Ernest Medina denied giving orders to kill women and children. But some platoon leaders testified (without plea bargains, as far as I can tell) that Medina had explicitly ordered them to kill every living thing in the village.

In Hiroshima, the American crew of the Enola Gay killed 90,000 to 166,000 people in a mid-size Japanese city with an atomic bomb. According to the best estimate I could find, about 12,000 of the dead were Japanese soldiers. The rest were unarmed civilians. No one disputes that the Enola Gay’s crew was following orders.

The My Lai Massacre is now almost universally considered a heinous war crime. The Hiroshima bombing, in contrast, enjoys bipartisan admiration. What moral distinctions might you draw between the two?