Today is my first attempt ever baking bread from scratch. I decided on this recipe because it looked easy, and because:

If I've got a day where I've really got to get some uni work done - I'll make bread. Because it adds structure to my day, without taking much effort. I make the bread, and while it proofs, get some work done. Take it out, punch down the yeast. And as it rises again, more uni work. While the oven heats up, more uni work. While it bakes, I dot my 'i's and cross my 't's. Then, as a reward for a solid few hours work, I get freshly baked bread.

seems just so trustworthy.

Slate has a pretty good piece up on Wolfram Language, which links to this fantastic piece by Cosma Shalizi on Wolfram's big book from a few years ago. I knew Wolfram was a raving egomaniac, but didn't realize he was such a litigious jerk. Shalizi's piece is slightly technical, but so clear that it was easy (and entertaining) to read the whole thing.

There's a thing called "Baby Metal":

Things of note: 1) The chorus on this song is nefariously catchy; 2) This may be the best metal song ever written about how awesome it is to eat chocolate; 3) The people playing their backing music are dressed as skeletons; 4) If you show this to an actual metalhead, he or she will never forgive you.

Enjoy.

I think the study linked below, showing no significant health benefits from breastfeeding by using sibling pairs as controls, may have been misinterpreted here -- reading it as some kind of proof that the "perfect parenting crowd" is off-base seems to me to be exactly the wrong message to take away. Let's think about this systematically:

1) Prior studies of breastfeeding, many of which attempted to control for socioeconomic factors, showed significant benefits in health and IQ for breastfed children.

2) This study, comparing breastfed children to their non-breastfed siblings showed no benefit. Which means that

3) There are significant health and IQ benefits related to being a child brought up by the particular kind of parents who would breastfeed, even when you try to control for socioeconomic factors.

4) Another way to describe "the particular kind of parents who would breastfeed" is "the perfect-parenting crowd."

Therefore

5) The perfect-parenting crowd, despicable as they may be, are actually doing their children measurable, substantial good through some part of the perfect-parenting behavior. It might not be the breastfeeding, but it's something associated with how they parent, and it's fairly consequential. Better start home-baking those organic snacks and forbidding screentime, everyone!

Prove me wrong.

We're taking our first major family road trip (to Florida) right after I get back from my glamorous HOLLYWOOD va-cay-cay. On the plus side, ipads exist, and our minivan has a built-in TV, and two of the kids are stably potty-trained. On the cons side, we'll be very strapped for time in properly preparing for a road trip and planning for snacks on hand, etc.

To be honest, I'm dreading this, but like I said elsewhere: jesus christ, travelling to visit friends and family is breaking our budget. At least the crazy I-10 swamp-bridge through Louisiana is awesome.

What I thought about on my commute today: Normally, if opposite cars are both turning left, they can turn left simultaneously, and their paths do not intersect. There is an intersection outside of Heebie U, however, where left turners quite often choose paths that pass in back of each other - they do-si-do, so to speak. This is a two-way stop. The cross street is relatively busy and wide - four lanes plus a turn land. The two stopped directions are both wide, unpainted country roads. Everything is big and roomy enough that inevitably, when there is a break in traffic of the cross street, simultaneous left-turners choose to do-si-do.

I like to wonder what kind of intersection is most likely to produce head-on collisions of simultaneous left-turners. A contender: two way stop, narrow-ish roads, and the two directions with stop signs are slightly offset from each other, such that the oncoming stopped traffic is slightly to your left. I think then you could get two drivers who make opposite choices and crash into each other.

Please, for the love of god, tell me about your love life. Or your bodily ailments. How's it going? Which one is worse?

Programmers of Blog, the last programming thread was very helpful, and I've been reading stuff that gives me a better sense of programming as such. Now, a more practical question: my long-term plan (about a year out) is to get a regular paying gig as a programmer. I've been doing stuff with Objective C, and could keep doing that, but my question is this: is there a class of programming jobs that are reasonably interesting but still have family-friendly hours? And what's the smartest way for someone to prepare himself for that kind of job--in terms either of knowledge, or demonstrated experience, or a particular language...whatever. I thank you!

This amused me.

a new study suggests that many of the long-term benefits attributed to breast-feeding may be an effect not of breast-feeding or breast milk itself but of the general good health and prosperity of women who choose to breast-feed ... The researchers recorded various health and behavioral outcomes in the sibling pairs, including body mass index, obesity, asthma, hyperactivity, reading comprehension, math ability and memory-based intelligence. The study, published online in Social Science & Medicine, found no statistically significant differences between the breast-fed and bottle-fed siblings on any of these measures.

I wish the corporate poisoners poison people again angle weren't salient here, because I really want to tell the sanctimonious perfect-parenting crowd to go fuck themselves. That's on a personal level (not that we've had any bad experiences ourselves), but more generally, one would hope that puncturing this ur-truth of aspirational overparenting would get people to chill out a little bit about what their kids eat/when they go to bed/what they read/see/hear, etc. etc. etc.

On the other hand! I shouldn't blame parents so much, who are themselves victims of the economic insecurity that makes people freak out about their kids' "opportunities." But a little self-awareness and two minutes thought about the importance of any given dictum wouldn't hurt.

Belle Knox is paying for Duke by doing porn, and it's a big scandal.

[S]ince a frat boy at Duke outed Knox, 18, to his bros from the school's notoriously sexist Greek scene and the campus drama escalated into full-blown internet scandal, Knox's story has shed light, once more, on a double-standard--the person we jerk off to is not supposed to be the same person we take exams with. (Or do anything else with for that matter.)

...

Knox, who has been commuting to L.A. from North Carolina on school breaks to shoot a couple dozen videos since starting her career in November, insists that her work is a political act in line with a sex-positive feminist perspective. And with the reveal that Knox is a Republican, it turns out that doing porn is also in line with another ideology: Her libertarianism. Knox has used the publicity to draw attention to feminist libertarianism--marginalized within the pearl-clutching, religious, anti-sex and often anti-woman confines of Tea Party fundamentalism and the Christian right. In other words: If you believe in personal freedom, you shouldn't judge anyone for what they do with their bodies. And if you believe in personal responsibility, perhaps it's the right thing to do.

I have an almost nauseated feeling while reading this story, and I think it's the sheer intensity of the judgment, degradation, and misogyny that must be focused on Knox right now.

She sounds decently balanced about the whole thing, and not-exploited. I'm not concerned for her mental health in the making of the movies. It's hard for me to get a handle on what aspect of it bothers me - that a few rogue viewers will use it as an outlet for their anger towards women? That college kids can be assholes even if they're not harboring deep anger towards women? If she says she's fine, I'm not sure why I have such an awful reaction.

President Richard Nixon writes: Schroedinger's rat has some excellent rants about science. Most of it is about how the scientific community doesn't recognize good research: some papers get over-hyped, while others never receive the attention they deserve. Some of it is a bit technical, but that is also what makes it glorious... he is calling out specific papers and researchers, and a lot of them really do deserve to be dinged.

For folks who aren't in the Rat's particular area of theoretical physics, it's still a good rant about how science can turn into a popularity contest, and all the ways you can create the appearance of having made a major discovery, without actually having to make one. Plus there is bonus hate for the editors of Nature and Science!

Heebie: I am indeed enjoying browsing the site.

1. Peepster peeps this with his peepers: this looked something you perfessors might enjoy discussing

Heebie's take: yes, yes, I should have posted this last week when Peepie sent it in. It's still funny except real.

2. Turgey-J has a theory:
Temperature ranges:
<20: No. This should be the temperature where I am *not* but where I
will visit for HUGE snow and/or awesome frozen lakes,
20-32: Snow is a distinctly likely possibility: hell yes.
33-40: Unpleasant and insipid,
40-59: Bracing; only I would not want tooooo much rain and wind;
proper temperature for sleeping outdoors, bonfires.
60s: This is the proper temperature for so much of the year.
70-75: Boooorrring; if I can't feel the temperature difference on my
skin I worry I might be dead.
76-84: Insipid, but nice.
85-90: Good! Warm enough to swim outside, not so hot I hate myself for
having skin.
91+: Only acceptable in the vicinity of pools and/or beers.

Heebie's take: we are currently in unpleasant and insipid, and the kids' daycare is delayed YET AGAIN - Dahlia Lithwick gets it right.