Sunday Links

Alex Tabarrok points to a man who paints himself invisible. (Marginal Revolution)


And speaking of optical illusions, tilt-shift photography continues to fascinate me. (Instant Shift) 
And here. (Wehr in the World)


Scott Adams has a great post about turning advertising around. I really, really hope this takes the place of 'push' advertising. (Dilbert Blog)


This scares me... (Philip Greenspun)


All this discussion of health care spending makes now a really good time to think about the meaning of the large numbers that are being kicked around. (Wehr in the World)


My family plays a game a lot like this. Never thought that it could be useful for more than entertainment. (Wehr in the World)


In case you don't already know, NASA's Earth Observatory page has some striking photos and interesting information. Regularly updated. (Earth Observatory)

Sunday Links

California's budget problem results from the uncontrolled growth of government. However, help is on the way! Unfortunately it's coming in the form of a possibly illegal takings (Mother Jones and Cafe Hayek).

You may have already guessed that a rushed and kludgey repair job on the Bay Bridge caused the recent failure. This analysis suggests that guess is correct (Sci-experiments.com).

The University of Utah Genetic Science and Learning Center has created an excellent interactive graphic that helps explain the scale of small things. You'll want to show this one to your kids as you explain to them about germs or molecules (U of U).

The problem with economics is that it hasn't advanced far enough that it can make useful predictions. However, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would point out, that's OK because there are still plenty of economists who are willing to go out on a limb and suggest untestable hypotheses to explain past events (Amazon.com and Bluematter).

The problem with socialism is that no one knows how much anything costs. Eric Falkenstein uses Amtrack as an example. Funny, but I keep hearing the same thing about health care (Falkenblog).