Addiction is a Choice?

I am reading Amazon reviews of this book Addiction is a choice. The author Jeff Schaler argues how addiction (of alcohol, nicotine, other substances or behaviours) is a choice and not a disease (as AA and others would like us to believe). I must say that I have mixed feelings about it. I tend to agree with Mr Allen Wiser from Louisville, Kentucky:

On the one hand, i KNOW consciously that i can turn down a drink of scotch or a 40 ounce bottle of beer whenever i want. on the other hand, i can't escape the feeling that i want (note: i won't say "need") these things more than people who do not suffer from an addiction to alcohol. so what am i to conclude?

And the best of all:

we are responsible for the choices that we have made. if we are addicts, the choices may be harder, but they are still ours to make. ... ultimately, the power (to become addiction-free) does not lie with god, or with the collective group of fellow alcoholics. the power lies with you and with me... in the end, we are accountable to god (if he exists) but more importantly to ourselves and to our loved ones.

I salute you, Mr. Wiser, for articulating so well what we always knew in our hearts as the truth.

does it matter which brand of gas you buy?

Good Morning America did some research to find out if there is any differences in quality between a named-brand gas station and a generic one.

The results: no significant differences. Chances are they buy the gas from the same refinery and at most have different levels of detergent. These days EPA require that all fuel has a minimum level of detergent so it does not matter you buy it you will get it.

More details here.

UK scientists want to rate alcohal more dangerous than ecastacy

UK scientists are proposing that the drugs should be classified by the amount of harm that they do, rather than by a subjective, rigid system that exists today.

They say the basis of current drug laws are ill-defined, opaque, and seemingly arbitrary and overestimates the risks of ecstasy, which kills around ten people annually of the half a million people who use it every weekend, while neglecting those of alcohol, a legal substance which kills more than 300 annually by acute poisoning, and many tens of thousands by road traffic accidents, cirrhosis, gut and heart disease.

In the paper, the team argues that it would make much more sense for drugs to be reclassified on a rational basis that can be updated as new evidence emerges, and more easily than the current rigid category system now in use.

In terms of the decreasing risk the drugs were ordered as:

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbitutrates
4. Street Methodane
5. Alcohal
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodarepines
8. Amphitamine
9. Tobacco
10. Canabis
11. Solvents
12. 4-MTA
13. LSD
14. GHB
15. Khat

The study was published in Lancelot Medical Journal and led by Professor David Nutt, from the University of Bristol, and Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council.

Read more at Telegraph

13 ways to make your web app suck less

The Codist{} has a list of 13 ways to make your web app suck less.

In a nutshell:

1. Put Javascript and CSS in seperate files out of HTML.
2. Always use compression
3. Validate against a doctype
4. Keep your debugging info out of production code
5. Use CSS instead of tables. I will add - dont use frames
   
6. Support all browsers. Code to standards and tweak for IE6 and IE7
7. If you need to something special (javascript, flash, activeX, cookies etc.) - check upfront and (even better) degrade nicely
8. Test usability with real users
9. Use real database like mySQL, Postgres or Oracle (I dont really agree with this one)
   
10. Dont use platform-specific features (like ActiveX)
11. Be considerate to your dial-up users (compress, combine and cache)
12. Deal with accessablity and internationalization
13. Test early, test often (even better, automate the testing)

I will add

1. Dont use pop-ups
2. Make sure the back button always work correctly.
3. Check for different resolutions and screen sizes. Degrade nicely to all.
   

If Being A Programmer Were Like Being An Air Traffic Controller

• Every time your software crashed, 300 people would die
• You get new tools every 30 years, whether you need them or not
• Everyone has to use the same language
• A good day is coming home and not seeing your work on the news
• A bad day is coming home and seeing your work at the top of every news program being dissected in detail by experts
• If you sneak a peek at Digg or Reddit while you work, everyone knows it
• No matter how much work comes your way you have to deliver in the time alloted
• After just a few minor bugs you would be fired
• If your tools stopped working for any reason, you then have to work blind and from memory
• The video game you play has only 1 life
• The project manager is the government
• When you use someone else's software, you need to know the programmer personally and how long they've been on duty
• If you do your job well, no one will notice

via codist

Walgreens' prices for generic drugs could be 1000% higher than Costco !!

Generics medicines are supposed to be a cheaper alternative to name-brand drugs, but a recent Wall Street Journal found that there wasn't as much difference as you might think.

Here are the prices at Houston stores for 90 tablets of generic Prozac:

• Walgreens: $117
• Eckerd: $115
• CVS: $115
• Sam’s Club: $15
• Costco: $12

Those aren’t typos. Walgreens charges $117 for a bottle of the same pills for which Costco charges $12.

It should be noted that chains like WalMart and Costco consider medicines as loss-leaders (a way to drive people to their stores) and the real money is made on those large-screen plasma televisions and that 10-pound box of pretzels.

Read more: Why Generic Doesn't Always Mean Cheap

50 states in 1 week of vacation !!

In 1998, Barry Stiefel took off from work on Friday at 5pm and was back at his desk a little more than a week later on Monday at 8am, having visited every US state in the interim (48 by car, Hawaii and Alaska by air). I love the map...except for the jog to San Francisco, it looks pretty optimized.

(via kotke.org)

How much it takes to create and run a web 2.0 site?

SXSW organized a panel and asks some real life guys on how much it cost them to build and run a successful web app.

The gory details are here. As a ballpark, if we take the median of the numbers talked about, then a web applications takes:

• 5k in Design creation
  
• 50k in Development costs (one-time costs) + 17k/month to maintain
• 7k in initial hardware and hosting costs + 5k/month ongoing
• 3k in initial legal costs + 2k/month ongoing
  

So, in all you are looking at:

• 65k in initial expenditure till the first version is launched
• And, another 24k/month for the first year after that.
• This excluded marketing costs.
  

Of course, these are from a highly unscientific sample of 4 companies so should not be considered anything more than just one data point.

GreenDimes: Stop your spam mail and keep earth green

Finally, an idea that arrives not a moment too soon.

GreenDimes strives to stop the junk mail you get and plant a tree for you every month.

Religious people should not irritate scientists

"If there really is a Supreme Being who is concerned about how His name is worshipped on Earth, these days He may be wishing he had put a caveat in His scriptures: Please don't irritate the scientists."

Read more at: LA Times via Dawkins.net

Review of Blackberry 8300

Engadget Mobile has the screenshots of the new blackberry 8300

Sort of cross between Blackberry Pearl and 8800. No Wi-Fi but adds spell-check, create/manage folders and full-screen on video playback.

Make no mistake, and I have said this before, Blackberry is planning to fly under the radar and be the phone with the best music and video on market. They will possibly be the largest selling music phone in next 12 months.

Sandwitch Provider Protocol

http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/03/09/sandwich_provider_protocol

Daniel Dennet's interview on evolution and religion

Answers following questions:

• What is it about Darwin's idea that is so dangerous?
• You've described the design of natural selection as "brilliant" but "mindless." Can you explain?
• How do you explain evolution to skeptics? How can you convince them? Can you?
• You said earlier that you think secular institutions are failing us? Do you include museums?
• In discussing your book, Breaking the Spell, you've said that part of what the book does is to "reveal how the magicians do their tricks" when it comes to organized religion. Can you elaborate?
• You've talked about teaching a course on World Religions in public schools. What do you think that would accomplish?
  

http://richarddawkins.net/article,716,n,n

25 great personal finance books

GRS has a great list of 25 financial books for your library.

If I have to create a similar list I will say:

• What Color is your parachute?
  
• How to win friends and influence people
• Your Money or Your Life
• The Joy of Simple Living
• The Only Investment Guide You will Ever Need
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street
  

How to move an iTunes library from a PC to Mac (or vice versa)

Transferring your iTunes library along with your playlists and ratings isn't just a matter of moving the music files. Sure, the song-specific metadata like artist and album will be copied over in the files, but the data YOU assigned, the playlists and ratings? Those live inside iTunes' internal database files which can't be simply copied from PC to Mac.

Moving your song ratings and playlists from a PC to Mac isn't impossible, but it takes a little elbow grease. Here's how to get the job done : Gina Tripani @ Lifehacker

10 Common Money Mistakes

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2007/03/09/10-common-money-mistakes/

1. Procrastinating. The best time to make any sort of financial improvement is now. The best time to start paying off your debt is now. The best time to start saving for retirement is now.
   
2. Spending more than you earn. Don’t spend more than you earn. It’s only by mastering this fundamental principle that you’ll ever begin to accumulate wealth.
3. Not saving enough. Glink writes: “Building wealth isn’t about how much money you earn each year; it’s about how much money you don’t spend.”
   
4. Failing to pay off debt. When you’re burdened by debt, a single disaster can be enough to bury you. Don’t tempt fate. Eliminate debt as soon as possible.
5. Looking for quick fixes. Playing the lottery is not an investment strategy. That hot stock tip is not going to make you a millionaire. Multilevel marketing is just a good way to make your friends and family uncomfortable. Take the slow, sure path to wealth.
6. Letting emotion interfere with your decisions. When you let your emotions get the best of you, you end up in debt. You make poor investment decisions. You buy a house you cannot afford. You buy a shiny new Jetta when your three-year-old Focus still runs fine. As much as possible, separate emotion from your financial decisions.
7. Trying to time the market. If 80-90% of professional mutual fund managers are unable to beat the market, what makes me think that you are to be any better?
8. Failing to diversify your investments. The best defense against a decline in any single stock is invest in many stocks. The best defense a decline in any single market is invest in several markets.
9. Following fad investments. First it was real estate. Now it’s gold. What will it be next year? Don’t chase the hot investments.
   
10. Not taking enough risk. We all want our money to be safe. We worked hard to earn it, and we don’t want to lose any through investment mistakes. But the truth is the less risk you’re willing to take, the lower your potential returns.
    

10 Best Charities to donate to

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/topten.detail/listid/7.htm

Many of America's most effective charities are also household names. But some well-known charities are less effective than you'd think, while a number of lesser known charities are truly exceptional. These 10 charities all operate on less than $2 million a year, but they all earn a four-star rating from Charity Navigator. We encourage you to learn more about them.

Rank	Charity	Overall Score
1	Asha for Education	69.70
2	Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust	69.35
3	Environment Northeast	69.25
4	National Ataxia Foundation	69.18
5	Animal Welfare Institute	69.15
6	American Skin Association	69.13
7	Dogs for the Deaf	69.10
8	North Cascades Institute	69.00
9	Action on Smoking and Health	68.98
10	PAWS Atlanta	68.96

Soon only terrorists will fly American Airlines

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/03/08/soon-only-terrorists-will-fly-american-airlines/

The executives at American Airlines must be crazy. I heard a rumor — and I believe it is true — that they have made the decision to replace plastic knives with honest-to-God metal table knives in the first class cabin.

Are they crazy? Metal table knives were banned after 9-11 for good reason! Those things are dangerous. They could poke an eye out. There is no way the government, or whoever got rid of metal table knives after 9-11, would have banned them unless it was absolutely necessary to fight terrorism. This horrible decision to allow metal on the plane is simply an invitation to terrorists that they can come right on the plane unarmed, gather up these knives, and poke people at will. No honest citizen in his or her right mind would take the risk of flying on American in this new regime.

India's Education Revolution

Naveen Manda writes:

"Walking around the hot summer streets of Sangam Vihar—Delhi’s largest slum colony sprawled over 150 acres and home to 4 lakh people—in 2005, Aditi Bhargava noticed that almost every street had a school...
... These were low-budget schools, where poor parents paid small amounts extracted from their meagre wages in the hope that their children would get a good education, a promise too rarely delivered at the “free” government schools. "

WordPress adds support for OpenID

WordPress becomes the latest big software to add support for OpenID.

A good analysis of Indian Budget

Ajay Shah has the best analysis of this year's Indian Budget.

Highlights:

• Most depressing news is ban on futures trading in wheat and rice. Quoting Business Standard : It was a jarring reminder that India may be an IT superpower with a $1 trillion GDP, but there are many people at the top who are still thinking in the 1970s mentality of blaming futures traders, hoarders, profiteers and speculators for an economy-wide mismatch between supply and demand.
• Planned fiscal deficit for the new year is 3.23%. This is higher than historical target of keeping it below 3%. Higher deficit means government is spending more and it needs to either borrow or increase money supply. Both of them cause increase in inflation. Government has deliberately chosen the route of increasing "plan" expenditure as a populist measure in place of containing inflation.
• Peak customs rates have been decreased. This should reduce local prices and increase competitiveness.
  
• Other than the above, there is no progress on tax reforms.
• Expenditure on "plan" outlays have been dramatically increased (3.9% to 4.3% of GDP in last two years) while non-plan outlay is decreased (5.4% to 4.8% in last two years). Overall federal expenditure declined from 14.2% to 13.8% of GDP in two years.
  
• Plan expenditure is on schemes like "National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)" while non-plan expenditure is on things like salaries for police and teachers. The game-plan in election year is to take credit for launching schemes like NRHM. There is little evidence that these schemes work.
  
• There is some fresh thinking on education. There is a new scholarship program that will give INR 6000/year (a big enough scholarship for most families in India) to 100k students every year in grade 9, 10, 11, 12 (a total of 400k students nation-wide). This should allow the best 400k students in the country to get a decent education. (If implemented correctly).