For all the millennia of history before modern times, humans had very few options for entertainment and recreation. Food was bland, drugs were scarce, more time was spent making music than listening to it, and most social interaction was done…
Blog Archives
When is the middle of winter according to heating degree days? January 18.
I mostly heat by burning firewood and my wood pile has shrunken quite seriously already this year. I was wondering when the middle of the winter is from an HVAC perspective and I was surprised that I couldn’t find the…
Posted in statistics
Ikigai
In 2017-18 there was an ikigai fad in the West. Several new books were simultaneously published and numerous news articles were written. Even the World Economic Forum got caught up in the fad and published an article about it. They…
Posted in Labor
Why is health care so expensive in the United States
The International Federation of Health Plans publishes an international cost comparison of common medical services and its most recent compilation looked at prices in 2017. The result answers the question asked by the NYT: Why does health care cost so…
Posted in Health
Median American wealth still lags many peers
Credit Suisse does an annual analysis of global wealth that I have written about in the past. Today, Paul Neufeld Weaver sent me an infographic showing the distribution produced by HowMuch.net, a financial literacy website: (In case the html for…
Posted in Medianism
Abolish Daylight Wasting Time
Updated 11.01.2019 This Sunday begins the season of Daylight Wasting Time which wastes daylight for most Americans. The median American gets out of bed a little after 6:30AM and goes to bed around 11PM according to Jawbone’s sleep sensors and…
Posted in Culture
Stuart Russell says to give up on deontologies
Stuart Russell wrote a new book about managing the coming artificial intelligence revolution called Human Compatible. He believes that the main danger of AI is not that it will become conscious and decide to maximize its own well-being at the…
Posted in Philosophy and ethics
