this week i

posted code to analyze the major brazilian labor market survey.

visited an afternoon concert at ipanema..

..and, more importantly, a rehearsal for brazil's official take on the beatles.

accommodated the bureau of labor statistics' shift from a microdata to their http site (atus and ces).  gotta keep the code up-to-date.

pay $95 a year for two cents back instead of 1.25 on my credit card.  ( 0.02 x ) - ( 0.0125 x ) = 95.  a good deal only for years that i average $1,056 per month.

bet that where health information technology peddlers have failed, this project will succeed.

read..

(1) hot air balloons

he lowered a bengal light on a rope until its dazzling flare was skimming over the workers' heads.  then he urged one of his companions to shout in french and german through a speaking trumpet 'as if some supernatural power was visiting them from on high.'  he imagined the 'honest artizans' trembling like a primitive tribe, 'looking up at the object of their terrors.'  to complete the effect, he poured half a bag of ballast sand onto the upturned faces

it became possible..to see the sun set twice on the same day

(2) the population clock

luxury taxes on cribs, diapers, baby bottles, and baby foods

what do you call people who use the rhythm method?  parents

(3) the limits of prehistoric conjecture

the 'nine giants' (mandarin, spanish, english, arabic, hindi, bengali, portuguese, russian, and japanese), each with more than a hundred million speakers

each heartland of a 'giant' language is the graveyard of the languages it has overwhelmed

a fundamental problem of virtually all small-scale societies is that, because they lack a central political authority exerting a monopoly of retaliatory force, they are unable to prevent recalcitrant members from injuring other members

hunter-gatherers, even when relegated to the most undesirable environments, 'the original affluent society'

most south-east asian early state chronicles gauge the success of a war by the number of captives marched back to the capital and resettled there

we have virtually no credible evidence about the world until yesterday and, until we do, the only defensible intellectual position is to shut up

(4) joe and rose

rich people awakening to their responsibility for promoting the public good

the orchestration of jack's reputation

stoicism had its limits

(5) the influences of charles manson

nobody in the family was ever good at not getting caught

universal was considering making a film about christ coming back to america, and he discussed it with manson, who said jesus should be black and the romans southern rednecks

captive to his own bullshit

(6) mandelbrot

what are fractals?..mathematical models of self-similarity and self-resemblance: objects whose parts mimic the whole

(7) how to sentence a nation

churchill argued that the nazis had forfeited any right to due process and should be summarily shot

the concept of crimes against humanity was first formulated in 1890 by george washington williams - a lawyer, baptist minister and the first black member of the ohio state legislature - to describe the atrocities committed by king leopold's regime in congo free state

the south african transition began as a pragmatic search for a second-best solution: a way out of a cul-de-sac where military victory had evaded both sides, and criminal trials were out of the question

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