From the monthly archives:

September 2009

As we get to know some of these chemicals better, we discover that they should not be trusted. Health Canada is proposing concentration limits for two common shampoo ingredients, siloxanes D4 and D5, aka, Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane and Decamethylcyclopentasiloxane, respectively. D4 and D5 did make hair easier to dry, silky soft, and easier to work with. Also handy when making plastics and paint. Sometimes you need a little D4 or D5. Sometimes you need a lot. But Health Canada suspects that D4 and D5 are affecting fish and aquatic organisms. But, oh, how hair shines. [Salon]

Salon breaks down the toxic soup that costs the world’s consumers $40 billion every year – shampoo. Your shampoo, to be blunt, is full of crap. Crap that you pay for, crap that may well be poisoning you, and crap that certainly enters the water table and does who knows what. Hippy alarmism? Or common sense? I’m on the common sense side today – my pocket book is a shambles, and the more I look at what I spend on, the less of it I think I actually need.

“There are two types of ingredients in shampoo. One type cleans your hair. The other type strokes your emotions. I’m holding a bottle of Pantene Pro V, one of the world’s most popular shampoos. Of the 22 ingredients in this bottle of shampoo, three clean hair. The rest are in the bottle not for the hair, but for the psychology of the person using the shampoo. At least two-thirds of this bottle, by volume, was put there just to make me feel good.” [Salon]

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Dude, where’s my savings?

by Rod Edwards on September 29, 2009

Is anyone else alarmed that savings rate and economic growth have been so negatively correlated for the last 20 years? Does anyone wonder, after looking at a chart like this, if the American economy has managed to create anything “real” in the last 20 years? We like to imagine that economic growth is driven by gains in real productivity and an increasingly wealthy society, but what if the last two decades of “growth” can be attributed solely to the consumer whims of a society willing to mortgage its own future?

Here’s a perspective inducing infographic from BillShrink.com on the decline of the American household savings rate, and the mounting debt that accompanied it. On the plus side, the chart shows an increase in savings rate and dip in accumulated household debt following the ’09 credit crisis and accompanying recession.

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Music soothes & enrages the savage beast

September 28, 2009

On how iPods are changing modern warfare: What’s interesting about the work is not so much which bands soldiers are drawn to, but the extraordinary terms they use to describe the power the music has over them. Some talk about tracks turning them into monsters, making them inhuman so they can do inhuman acts. [The [...]

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Shitasmia

September 28, 2009

“It’s so terrible, it induces an entirely new emotion: a blend of vertigo, disgust, anger and embarrassment which I like to call “shitasmia”. It not only creates this emotion: it defines it. It’s the most shitasmic cultural artefact in history.” [The Guardian]

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Lost Vegas

September 24, 2009

Did you know? Hundreds of people live in the storm sewers beneath Las Vegas, driven there by legal problems, addiction, or mental disorder, and subsisting on cash and tokens forgotten in machines by casino patrons. If you’re ever in Vegas, remember what lies beneath the neon.

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In case you weren’t sure, the world is going to hell in a handbasket

September 24, 2009

Can your baby get pregnant if you have sex while pregnant?

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Eat the Rich

September 24, 2009

I know its fiscally non-conservative, but I imagine ability to pay taxes and obligation to do so should, to some degree, be matched. However, this article postulates that increasing taxes on the rich will drive them to move to less burdensome municipalities, based on some anecdotal feedback from New York state, where various billionaires have [...]

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Airplanes to get much less comfortable

September 24, 2009

You might not have thought it possible, but airplane seating is about to get worse. Intended for short flights where comfort isn’t considered important (by who?) and claiming passenger count increases of 50% and fare reductions of 30% (who profits here), this design adapts bus and commuter train seating to airlines with decidedly mixed results.

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PANIC: Inside the Soviet Apolocalyptic Doomsday Machine, “Dead Hand”

September 23, 2009

Turns out they built a machine at the depths of the Star Wars-fueled cold war nadir – a system that could nuke the States, even if the Soviet leadership had already been vaporized. From Wired: “Yarynich is talking about Russia’s doomsday machine. That’s right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, [...]

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Microsoft Courier: the uber tablet that will (hopefully) replace my laptop

September 23, 2009

This looks pretty sweet, I’m not afraid to say. I love the iPhone, but the small screen form factor becomes tiring when trying to conduct real business for an extended time. Lugging around a laptop is a pain, and a netbook just feels unsatisfactory as either a productivity machine or a communication device. A small, [...]

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