I Caught a Virus

I tend to be a party pooper and not participate in these things, but the complete absurdity and randomness of this blogging virus amused me. I'm always a sucker for the non sequitur. Plus, it's not like I've been flush with topics to write about, lately, so here goes...

Dikkii has tagged me with the following task:

- Grab the nearest book...
- Name the book and the author...

Title: Environmental Gore: A Constructive Response to Earth in the Balance
Editor: John A. Baden
Author of the page in question: Richard S. Lindzen
Year book published: 1994

- Turn to page 123...
- Go to the fifth sentence on the page...
- Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog...

Moreover, according to many studies by economists, agronomists, and hydrologists, there would be little difficulty adapting to such warming if it were to occur. Many aspects of the "catastrophe" scenario have already been largely discounted by the scientific community. For example, fears of massive sea level increases accompanied many of the early discussions of global warming, but these estimates have been steadily reduced by orders of magnitude, and now it is widely agreed that even the potential contribution of warming to sea level rise would be swamped by other more important factors.

- Tag three more folks...

Jim Lippard
Steve
Akuwa

I won't take it personally if any of you decide not to pick up the baton.

How People Die

The other day I was randomly wondering how many people die every year from slipping in the shower. Figuring that the answer must be available on the internet somewhere I went in search. Well, I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but thanks to the NCHS (.pdf) I found a bunch of equally interesting stuff.

The number one killer of the 2,442,923 Americans who died in 2003 was cardiovascular disease, which took 901,753 souls. Cancer was a distant second, at 554,643. Diabetes killed another 73,965. Those numbers, I think, are indicative of our aging population. Young people don’t generally die from those diseases, and when you’re old the likelihood that your death will be due to something else is pretty low.

In 2003, 44,059 people were killed by motor vehicles - 26,963 more than the 17,096 people who were murdered (67.8% of which - 11,599 - were killed by guns). I think the number of gun homicides is interesting in light of the number of people killed by accidental falls (all falls, not just falls in the shower) - 16,926.

And who knew that 2,766 people died from complications in surgery? Yikes!

A Steep Cliff

Normally I would post this sort of stuff up over at The Lippard Blog, but Jim's got it converted over to Blogger Beta and consequently I can't access it any longer.

I've been tracking Maricopa County's Notices of Trustee Sales for the past few months. As you can see, during that time the number has been climbing precipitously, and in an unprecendented fashion.

November's count was 1486.

It would seem, now, that the question is no longer "Is there a housing bubble?", but "How big is the pop going to be?"

No More Static Beats???

Static Beats has terminated its webcast indefinitely. This is sad news, though not entirely unexpected, given that the webcast was free and the site itself didn't seem to have any real means of revenue generation.

The site's owner has sort of feebly suggested charging a monthly subscription, which I'd probably go for, but it's not clear if the webcast would still be free for everyone, whether you subscribe or not. That does seem to be what they are proposing, though, which may go a long way toward explaining why they've only had 4 volunteers so far. In economics this situation is known as the "free rider problem." If you can get something while having someone else pay for it then why pay for it yourself?

Another possible solution might be for Static Beats to charge artists for inclusion in the webcast. It is an effective advertising method for them. I would never have heard of Bluetech, MD, Modeselektor, Automat, etc., without the webcast, after all. On the other hand, this will result in the webcast's content being determined by commercial considerations instead of the tastes and whims of Shimone/Justes, effectively eliminating its appeal in the process. Not good.

Anyway, I hope it all gets worked out somehow. I'm lost without my static beats!

The Sleeper Has Awakened

So.

Obviously this blog has been dormant a while. My excuse is roughly equal parts of overworking, lack of time, and lack of things I want to say. Throw in an appreciable amount of laziness and you've got yourself a deadly combination.

However, I am back. I managed to leave my shitty job in Virginia and move back to Arizona with only one unfortunate $1000 stopover in Amarillo, TX, to replace my car's MAF sensor, fuel pump, and fuel filter.

Now I am once again gainfully employed - this time at a job that has no overtime and will actually allow me to take every other Friday off! As Borat would say, "Nice!" Plus, I'm living in a nice apartment, not a kitchenless basement "apartment."

Things are looking up. Look for more activity on Die Eigenheit in the near future. For now, it looks like I have several new(ish) comments to respond to.