Newmark's Door

"Top 100 Best Software Engineering Books, Ever".

"8 ways to be a better programmer in 6 minutes".

According to distinguished economist Alan Blinder.

.. . have had trouble recently. (Forbes, 2/20.)

An old New York Times article I just ran across. "95% Regain Lost Weight. Or Do They?" Note the source of the alleged fact:

The success stories might not have been so surprising had it been clear that the 95 percent failure rate was so poorly founded. The figure comes not from any kind of random sampling, but from a study of 100 patients treated for obesity at a nutrition clinic at New York Hospital in the 1950's. In 1959, its authors, Dr. Albert Stunkard and Mavis McLaren-Hume, published a paper in which they concluded, ''Most obese persons will not stay in treatment, most will not lose weight, and of those who do lose weight, most will regain it.''

The six are:

Nipple-high pants.

Smelling like yesteryear.

Being cranky.

Lipstick teeth.

Hard candy.

Driving at walking speed.

Google will sooner or later--I say sooner--be in the gunsights of our antitrust agencies. From the same fine folks who sued IBM and Microsoft.

A lot of people on the Web have been linking to this. Futurist Juan Enriquez argues that while our current economic situation is not good, science and medicine offer a lot of hope for our future. We're going to evolve into something else.

How we--people--have gotten away from a proper balance of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats in our diet, to our great detriment.

Tied for number one, with 93%, are "Rent control limits the quantity/quality of housing" and "Tariffs and quotas reduce economic welfare".

Note that seventh, at 83%, is "Large federal deficits adversely affect the economy." (Yeah, yeah, this isn't an up-to-the-minute survey; probably a bunch of folks would feel differently about today's unusual circumstances. But still . . . )