Simon

"A portfolio that mimics the purchases of House Members beats the market by approximately 6% annually" - Simon

I read somewhere they are exempt from insider trading charges. - Private Sanjeev

Wow, I didn't realize that they were exempt: http://online.wsj.com/article... - Simon

"certain conditions must be met for crowd wisdom to emerge. Members of the crowd ought to have a variety of opinions, and to arrive at those opinions independently. Take those away, and crowd intelligence fails." - Simon

"LG Electronics has claimed the iPhone's design was copied from the LG Prada. “We consider that Apple copied the Prada phone after the design was unveiled when it was presented in the iF Design Award and won the prize in September 2006.”" - Simon

"The country found itself offline for hours on 28 March after cables linking Georgia to Armenia were damaged. A 75-year-old woman had admitted damaging fibre-optic cables while scavenging for copper. She has been charged and reportedly faces up to three years in prison." - Simon

Excellent Hack :)- - Peter Dawson

"God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar." - Simon

I bet they broke up when she found out about Jesus. - Private Sanjeev

"Lessons from a place that combines most of the shortcomings of the modern Western state" - Simon

"Yahoo! will be closing AlltheWeb on April 4, 2011, as we focus on other features to improve your search experience." - Simon

It might be upside down. - Simon

Do a significant number of Americans still pronounce it "toe-mah-toe"? I've only ever heard it pronounced "toe-may-toe" since I've been here. - Simon

"The document Apple submitted was not only too long, according to Microsoft, but also "printed in less than 11 point font," an apparent violation of court rules which require letters of a reasonable size." - Simon

"Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat." - Simon

Interactive chart. e.g., "Between 1971 and 2008 average incomes in the US grew. All growth went to the richest 10%. Income for the bottom 90% declined." - Simon

It's interesting comparing the stats for different start and end years. - Simon

"In the first significant revision to lending terms for ebook circulation, HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires." - Simon

"In one 40-second clip, you can hear how “gaga” turned into “water” over the course of six months. In a video clip, below, you can hear and watch the evolution of "ball."" - Simon

"The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has outlawed the practice of pricing insurance premiums based on gender. The ruling, which will be formally handed down later today, means that premium pricing based upon other areas of discrimination, such as age or disability, is also incompatible with European law." - Simon

What do folks think about this ban? What if it insurance pricing used race or ethnicity for adjusting premiums? "Oh, you're Jewish. Ok, we'll raise/lower your premiums by $X". - Simon

Can we just generalize this to a ban on any use of personal data? Or perhaps a more general ban on any company in any industry setting prices based on expected cost of service? I think if you're going to prohibit these sorts of things, you might as well just nationalize the industry and provide the service to everyone, paid for with taxes that are not based on your expected health care costs. - Seth

"Less than 5% of police officers in England and Wales carry a gun on duty. Infinitely fewer fire one, and fatal shootings by police are vanishingly rare (there were two in 2009-10)." - Simon

"The source said the undercover agent carried a pistol in her undergarments when she put the body scanners to the test. The officer successfully made it through the airport's body scanners every time she tried, the source said." - Simon

"Somalia has done very well for itself in the 15 years since its government was eliminated. The future of peace and prosperity there depends in part on keeping one from forming." - Simon

Perhaps not... - Simon

Wow. - Ruchira S. Datta

Nice try, Mises. - Stephen Mack

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... If authorizing covert photos of kids in their bedrooms doesn't get you fired, it makes me wonder what you have to do... - Simon

Lindy Matsko and Carol Cafiero still appear to have their original roles: http://www.lmsd.org/section..., http://www.lmsd.org/section... - Simon

"On July 2, 1925, Palo Alto voters approved the annexation of Mayfield and the two communities were officially consolidated on July 6, 1925. This saga explains why Palo Alto has two downtown areas: one along University Avenue and one along California Avenue. The Mayfield News wrote its own obituary four days later: It is with a feeling of deep regret that we see on our streets today those who would sell, or give, our beautiful little city to an outside community. We have watched Mayfield grow from a small hamlet, when Palo Alto was nothing more than a hayfield, to her present size … and it is with a feeling of sorrow that we contemplate the fact that there are those who would sell or give the city away." - Simon

"And so was born Chinese restaurant syndrome (CRS) and a medico-academic industry dedicated to the researching and publicising of the dangers of MSG - the foreign migrant contaminating American kitchens. [...] Science has still not found a convincing explanation for CRS: indeed, some researchers suggest it may well be to do with the other things diners have imbibed there - peanuts, shellfish, large amounts of lager. Others say that fear of MSG is a form of mass psychosis - you suffer the symptoms you've been told to worry about." - Simon

"My friend Nic came round. He told me about a Japanese restaurant he'd been to that gave him headaches and a 'weird tingling in the cheeks' - until he told them to stop with the MSG. Then he was fine, he said. I nodded and I served him two tomato and chive salads; both were made using the very same ingredients but I told him one plate of tomatoes was 'organic', the other 'factory-farmed'. The organic tomatoes were far better, we agreed. These, of course, were the tomatoes doused with mono sodium glutamate." - Private Sanjeev

List price: $625. - Simon