University faculty and administrators are now getting worried about the popularity of the website RateMyProfessors.com, a site which allows students to review their good (or bad) teachers.

I personally don't see it as a problem. Although it is possible for reviews of professors to be biased, thoughtful consumers are able to handle similar biases when reading product reviews on Amazon or IMDB. Plus the expression of opinions is fully protected by the 1st Amendment, provided that it doesn't cross the line into libel/slander. I wish something like this had been available when I was in college.

"The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity". (Via Linkfilter.)

Foreign words with no English equivalent. For example:

Bakku-shan -- a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front (Japanese)

Kummerspeck -- excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating (German)

Aviador -- a government employee who only shows up on payday (Spanish)

Update: Here's a more extensive list.

Invention of the day: The $100 laptop.

Bryan Caplan analyzes insurance markets and the "Idiot's Stigma".

In part, people buy insurance so they don't "look stupid" when something bad happens to them.

If you get in an auto accident and you don't have insurance, then most middle-class Americans will consider you an idiot. But for some reason, they don't consider you an idiot if you fail to buy long-term care insurance and suddenly need it -- even though it could be argued that long-term care is a smarter buy than a lot of auto insurance.

The result is multiple equilibria. If most people buy insurance and you don't and something bad happens to you, you get a double whammy -- the direct loss plus the idiot's stigma. If most people don't buy insurance and you don't and something bad happens to you, you are only out the money. If most people buy it, you want it too; if most people don't, you probably don't want it either.

By way of analogy, consider these two scenarios:

1. You lose $1000 in some unforeseen way.

2. You lose $1000 in a way your spouse specifically warned you might happen.

It seems to me that #2 is MUCH worse for most people than #1. $1000 is no big deal; but $1000 plus the scorn of your spouse is a very big deal. Now think how much worse it would be if everyone took your spouse's side against you. Ouch.

(Via Marginal Revolution.)

The science of quicksand and how to escape if you fall in. Here's a related article.

Weather story of the day: A tropical storm named "Typhoon Longwang" is apparently forming in the Pacific Ocean. No, really. Rand Simberg comments:

It could pound Asia pretty hard. It may penetrate deep into the continent. Let's hope it doesn't result in another premature evacuation.

OK, so it's a little juvenile.

He also notes this wry observation by "Psychobunny":

If this thing makes landfall in Puntang, the Weather Channel's going to have to go Pay Per View.

More on MRI machines as lie detectors.

Go See Serenity: Last night, Diana and I had the pleasure of watching a bloggers' preview of the upcoming Serenity movie, due to open this Friday. We had previously seen a very rough version of the movie back in May, and the final version is better, and nicely done. In particular, the soundtrack and the visual effects are polished now.

The story line is the same as before, following the characters from the cult hit television show "Firefly" in their next adventure. And although the movie is sure to appeal to fans of "Firefly", the writers also do a good job of setting the background and establishing the characters in the first few minutes of the movie so that audience members who aren't already familiar with the TV show will also be able enjoy the movie as a stand-alone story. What I especially liked was the fact that the movie felt like a real *movie* (as opposed to some of the Star Trek: Next Generation movies that often felt like bad 2-hour episodes.)

The storyline was exciting, the visuals were engaging, and the characterization was crisp. In particular, the external dramatic action scenes nicely mirrors the internal conflict faced by Mal Reynolds, captain of the smuggler ship Serenity.

Unfortunately, I have to be deliberately vague here since I don't want to give away any plot spoilers. But I want to give it my full recommendation to any science fiction fans out there who somehow haven't already heard of this fine movie.

(I also think that the movie studio has adopted an interesting marketing strategy by asking bloggers to review the film in return for being able to attend advanced screenings. If this works out for them, then we should expect to see a lot more of this in the future. BTW, here's Diana's review.)

New office slang. Some examples:

Beepilepsy -- The brief seizure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stopping speech in mid-sentence.

Plug-and-Play -- A new hire who doesn't require training. "That new guy is totally plug-and-play."

Salmon Day -- The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed in the end. "God, today was a total salmon day!"

(Via Clicked.)

"Search engines for the forgetful: New firms zero in on tracking items that get mislaid".

Update on non-lethal weapons. The technology sounds quite interesting, although the article also points out some counter-intuitive legal issues:

As valuable as these weapons might be to American troops, they may violate U.S. obligations under treaties forbidding the development of biological and chemical weapons. The antitraction gel, for instance, could conceivably be forbidden under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, which put restrictions on chemicals that "can cause death, temporary incapacitation, or permanent harm to humans or animals"...

It wouldn't be the first time that those treaties prevented U.S. troops from using NLWs. The Chemical Weapons Convention, for instance, prohibits the use of riot-control agents "which can produce rapidly in humans sensory irritation or disabling physical effects which disappear within a short time following termination of exposure." This means that weapons like tear gas -- which domestic law enforcement personnel can use -- are forbidden to our troops. This has led to situations, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has noted, in which "our forces are allowed to shoot somebody and kill them, but they're not allowed to use a non-lethal riot-control agent."

(Via SciTechDaily.)

Carnival of Tomorrow #10 is up.

What to do if you are wrongly included on the TSA "No Fly" List.

Some people want to abolish the leap second.

"Nine Fads To Ignore". (Link via Rand Simberg, but I should note that he disagrees with some of them.)

Left-handed women apparently have twice as great a risk of developing a certain type of breast cancer than right-handed women.

The Supreme Court may soon have to deal with issues that were formerly only science -fiction.

If you need to get off the phone, you'll be able to get help with these audiofiles at SorryGottaGo.com. They include audiofiles like "There's the doorbell", "I can't hear you (jet noise)", and for desperate circumstances "The ambulance is here". Something for every occasion! (Via Linkfilter.)

"Death To Folders!": Will tagging replace folders?