the new south africa
Seeing hundreds of chickens crammed into a truck or attached in some ingenious way to a bike or something is a reasonably common sight in poor countries. Today I saw a slightly different version of this. A shiny new polo packed with hundreds of chickens crowding the driver. It really looked very odd. I wish I could have gotten a photo.

killing orcs
In my post on Iglourious Basterds I said In a way I think we're being tempted to indulge in sick fantasies and think it's OK because it's happening to Nazi's.I think I should have left out the "in a way". That's how the film was (misleadingly) marketed.The idea of righteously slaughtering enemies does seem to appeal to us. Lot's of fiction panders to this. It always bothered me in Lord of the Rings the way killing orcs is treated. It's one thing to kill them in war when they're the aggressors, but orc slaughter is often treated as a good thing in itself even when a particular orc isn't threatening. Humans are encouraged not to show mercy or take prisoner

The first derivative of belief
I'd say the two main questions I have in mind when I blog are, "what can I as a layman do to make my beliefs more reliably true?" and, "what things are important to think about".Recently I though of a way of conceptualising trying to deal with both goals in choosing what to write and think about. Imagine a function defined by the difference between what I believe and what people in my social circle actually believe. I blog with the intention of maximising the first derivative of this function (setting the second derivative to zero). This could involve me changing my mind or people I know changing theirs, either way.So take beliefs about global warming, I agree with b

monetizing eyeballs
Was just relistening to an old Will Wilkinson podcast and one of the topics was how Facebook was going to make money. At the time of the podcast Facebook had tons of traffic but not all that much revenue. It's an issue of monetizing eyeballs you see.

wikipedia
I feel like I'm in danger of raging against an argument that nobody makes. But I've been so annoyed by Oliver Kamm's objections to wikipedia for so long that I may as well just get it out of my system a bit. Here are some of the things he's saidWikipedia deserves worse than contumely and derision, for it is pernicious in conception rather than merely flawed in execution.and I accept of course that there are many good articles alongside others that are a total disgr