From Surowiecki’s story on why people got so upset over Dick Grasso’s huge paycheck.

Take two people. Give them a hundred dollars to split. One person (the proposer) decides, on his own, what the split should be (fifty-fifty, seventy-thirty, or whatever) and makes the other person a take-it-or-leave-it offer. If he accepts the deal, both players get their share of the money. If he rejects it, both players walk away empty-handed.

The rational thing for the second person to do is to accept the offer, whatever it is, since even one dollar is better than nothing. But in practice this rarely happens. Instead, lowball offers are almost always rejected. Apparently, people would rather throw away money than let someone else walk away with too much.

Remember, fairness is not equality.

From the SCUM Manifesto:

“Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim through a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. ...”

We fucked twice before I left. It wasn't very good, the first time I came quickly, and the second time I couldn't stay in rhythm. Like when shaking hands turns into conversation and neither knows when exactly to let go.

Research shows that money may make you happier, but it won’t help your sex life. Sex, however, will make you feel like money in the bank.

Smart Genes, an open source novel. From chapter two:

“Do you wish you were smarter?” the guy in the ad asked. “MIT announces clinical trials of gene implants which enhance intelligence.”

Lennie pictured a gadget he’d slip down his jeans to make his organ look larger. But even though Eileen sometimes accused him of thinking with his dick, could something like that make you smarter? No, he decided. It must be the other genes, the ones you get from your parents.

“We are looking for men and women of modest intellect,” the man on TV said. “You will receive a stipend worth 500 dollars. If you’re interested, let us know by clicking the ‘Signup’ button on this ad, or calling the number below.”

“I knew they weren’t going to give 500 dollars cash,” Lennie said. “Eileen, what the fuck’s a stipend?”

“I thought he said ‘stripe end.’”

“So what’s a stripe end?” Lennie asked.

“Silly. It’s a zebra’s butt,” Eileen said, spitting up bits of popcorn as she laughed.

Lennie laughed too. “A zebra’s butt isn’t worth 500 dollars. A whole zebra’s not worth 500 dollars.”

“How would you know?” asked Eileen. “You could make some steaks out of it. The meat might be a little tough, but you could always use some A-1.”

Lennie made a grab at Eileen’s ass. “That’s the only butt worth 500 dollars to me.”

“You say the sweetest things.” Eileen punched Lennie on the shoulder.

Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911, by Dave Kopel.

And from New Yorker’s profile on Michael Moore:

The trouble was that the workers who had become middle class began thinking middle class. “People started to believe that the factory would always be there, that the health benefits would always be there, the four weeks’ paid vacation,” Moore says. “So when the company started taking them away people were, like, ‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ Well, when was the last union meeting you went to? ‘Never been to a union meeting.’ Do you vote in every election? ‘I try to.’ Everybody got their two cars, their house in the suburbs, their snowmobile, their cabin up north, and decided to check out from job No. 1, which is being a citizen of the United States of America.”

Bitflux’s “livesearch” uses javascript with XMLHttpRequest and a little PHP. Wow!

Based on this, Jeff Minard has created a real-time Textile-formatting preview feature.

Both scripts are licensed under the Apache license, which, as Minard explains, means you can “basically do whatever, give credit, retain the same license.”

Going to Andalucia. Leaving in two weeks. I have a one-way ticket from Stockholm to Malaga. Janne’s maybe coming, if he can find a cheap way down there. Markku’s coming in the beginning of August. The girl’s flying back on the tenth of August. Me, maybe the fifteenth, maybe later. School’s starting, but hey—the last time I was in Barcelona I was eleven.

Dan Fante, while not being much to look at, is a plenty interesting writer. See Approach December, poem of his. There’s another one in the sidebar of Lummox Journal’s interview. Hollywood Investigator has a two-part interview. 3am has another one. Notice how much mellower Fante seems in the Lummox Journal interview. Maybe the interview was done via email?

Despite being a favorite of libertarians, I rather like this George Bernard Shaw quote:

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.”

Paul Boutin recommends using both Spybot and Ad-aware. However, Download.com reviewers complain that Ad-aware installs a worm called GLB1A2B and changes the home page of Internet Explorer.

“It’s dating until one of you slips up and says ‘I love you.’ After that, it’s a Relationship. You guys haven’t slipped up have you?”

Only 119 days until the 2004 general election! And I’m an UOCAVA citizen, which means I’m going to have to figure out just how to vote.

I guess walking half a block and waiting three minutes in line while terribly hungover isn’t going to work in this election.

While this year’s Koneisto magazine is hardly subtle or restrained (I’m not liking the slumming-with-Courier look at all), it still appears to exhibit signs of what Design Observer calls the McSweeney’s phenomenon.

Friday

Jyri hands the doorman at Lost & Found a 10 euro bill in an effort to avoid the event of me and the girl being carded. This maybe works, we are not carded.

Saturday

“I am not drunk, I am in a wedding mood!” Markku contests. And he is right, we are all in a wedding mood as Anna and Pauli have been joined in matrimony, and the punch is plentiful.

Later, the line in front of Lost & Found is a quarter-block long, and Emma is receiving calls from a guy who wants her inside. Said guy soon appears behind a doorman who opens the sidedoor for us. Money seems to really work.

Sunday

People smile at us as we light the grill in the enclosed courtyard of our apartment building. We are grilling hamburgers in honor of the Fourth of July. Oh so contrarian us. Except Mikko, who brought Finnish sausages. We are joined by Mr. J., the neighbor in the next building who Markku has complained plays music too loud before—gasp—noon.

Mr. J. tells me: “I started smoking when I tried to quit drinking. Now I’m trying to quit smoking.”

New neighbor, kooky and embittered oddball that you are: thank you for the seven packs of North State. People will look at me funny when I smoke them.

There are insects that spring forth only every 13 and 17 years. Notice that these are prime numbers. Sun-spot activity, however, varies in cycles of 11 and 22 years.

There are parasites that cause crickets to commit suicide by drowning, and parasites that make ants want to climb to the tops of blades of grass so that they are more likely to end up in the stomachs of sheep.

Every summer in Lappland, the strongest reindeer males copulate so vigorously that they burn off all their excess body fat and freeze to death in the winter.