Ethan Siegel confirms something I'd long suspected about microwaving frozen food.

Check out his series about Hubble in the last few days, too. I like his blog, despite his photo.

In my experience, it's much better to run the unopened pot or packet under the hot tap to get the defrosting going than to microwave directly. (Getting the frozen food out hours before is in theory good, too, but that involves planning, which defeats the whole idea of freezer + microwave, let alone the rest of life today.)

...the world starts pointing the finger:

"It's those dirty pigs!"

"No, no, it's those dirty Mexicans!"

Looks like we should call it 'Smithfield flu'.

Though given that it must have formed in a creature part-man, part-pig, and part-chicken, a number of prominent personalities around the world spring to mind as possible donors of the eponym...

ETA: I overheard colleagues this afternoon talking about how someone wasn't too pleased at being sent home. I asked why he'd been sent home: because he'd just got back from holiday in Mexico and had been merrily showing people his holiday snaps. Heigh ho.

Nice summaries of some recent developments available from the DPS. I find that press releases of the latest discoveries give little sense of perspective: you can't tell what's generally accepted or what counts as a significant advance if it is accepted.

H/t The Martian Chronicles.

I find this intriguing.

Yes, these people are dingbats and know-nothings, but I'm inclined to blame the system, because they have no incentive to be sane: quite how it is that 'Government of the people, by the people, for the people' reduces to Ben Nelson micro-managing the country is a mystery to me, but that seems to be how it is. Nobody else matters, so they might as well fiddle while the world burns.

Not a lot to say (I mean, how hard can it be?), so I'll leave it to Fred, Paul, Michael (background), and Samantha.

It really is tobacco all over again.

Conservatives discover slash fiction:

"That there is considerable uncomfortability, at least on the right, with the handshake. With I think the warm embrace between Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez, getting more disturbing than just shaking hands. He seemed to actually be enjoying it."

There's a bit of awkwardness in the language there, but with practice they'll have no trouble making stuff up fluently- oh, wait a minute...

ETA: Jon Stewart (or his scriptwriters) had the same idea.

Teabags. Yawn- wha...? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Nice idea by Ezra Klein.

But, was anyone ever influenced by The End of History?

Interesting review of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Michael Bérubé. As an academic, his union rules insist that he say either "Here's why you are all wrong" or "here's the real reason why you all happen to be right" (he goes for option B, and acknowledges it obliquely), but within that frame it's pretty good.

I have had this book for a couple of months now, and have been meaning to write a review.

A good review helps you understand whether you’d want to read the book, rather than forcing the reviewer’s likes and dislikes upon you. Instead of a good review, however, you’ll get my random thoughts.

( Review )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw

h/t In The Dark

Anyone know anything about it?

Description here sounds intriguing.

And with one "WTF...?" look, Timothy Geithner gets the sympathy of the world.

And don't Geithner and Bernanke look like characters from The Wind in the Willows? Once Ratty has given up, wise old Badger tries to make the weasels see sense. Barney Frank makes quite a good Toad, too.

This will probably turn out to be the best thing I read all week.

Sorry to sound like a cracked record (but what else is there to talk about?), but here's a manifesto for America (and the rest of us).

BTW, see what I mean about Geithner and Obama? Galbraith weighs all these emanations of Rubin in the balance and finds them wanting, but it depends on Obama, not them.

Jonah now in Nineveh

I doubt we'll respond as well as the Ninevites did, though.

John Quiggin has found the perfect metaphor for the US banking system.

As a matter of interest, has anyone ever found choosing 'Retry' to work?

ETA: so far pretty much everything I've read on this has been blaming Geithner, Summers and Bernanke. At some point, someone ought to point out that this is the Obama administration.

OK, so the nerdosphere is all excited that Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (a bit of the American government, for those at the back) has a blog. A pity, then, that the title to his first entry reminds me of Dr Strangelove, all the more so as he makes quite a decent job of explaining why deficits sometimes are and sometimes aren't bad. But I won't be able to think of him without imagining him trying to get control of his extremities.

OK, what people are missing here is that volcanoes are our allies. Go look at a map: most of them are in areas that vote blue. What could be more American than some good ol' lava turning those places a patriotic red? Monitoring volcanoes is a creepy violation of their constitutional right to privacy.