I thought it was cute on Friday when I got a link to the MSN A-List blog entry about mustaches. Hahaha, I have a mustache and the internet says they might be cool in 2008. But it got downright creepy yesterday when their entry was about bacon. I like bacon. I think people think I like it more than I do, because I get about 2-3 bacon related links a week from friends. I can’t be the only bacon lover with a mustache that reads all the internet, but really, it is odd. Though, if MSN thinks you’re cool, how cool can you be.

(As an aside, apparently the MSN A-List blog prevents Wordpress and Blogger extensions from working, preventing lazy bloggers from linking to them. Well, this lazy blogger loves bacon and his mustache too much to be thwarted.)

Someone on Unfogged recommended the song Love Song, and damn if it isn’t peppy as hell, so I bought the album. Why not, right?

Bareilles sounds a little like Nellie McKay, only more mainstream, or like Fiona Apple, only more poppy, or like Vanessa Carleton, only—actually, she sounds a lot like Vanessa Carleton.

“Love Song” and “Morningside” are particularly good songs, and the whole album is, at worst, inoffensive.

I’m studying economics for the first time this semester. I suppose I’m a little embarrassed that it’s taken me this long, but better late than never. Our text is specifically about micro-economics and public finance.

Reading the introductory material, I can’t help but notice (clearly, in print) something that I’ve suspected for a long time: economists think that people are robots. With the caveat that I’ve only read three chapters of this textbook, so far it seems to me that all of the economic theory (Pareto efficiency, welfare economics, etc) depends rather strongly on people being good little rational choice-making utility maximizers.

Thing is, I don’t feel like a mechanically rational utility maximizer, and I don’t think anyone else really is, either. Can someone who’s studied more of this than I have point me to some readings in one of the following two categories?

1. An economist making reassuring noises that, yes, these things are only models, and as a result they’re only abstractions and approximations, and only a very shallow thinkier would take all of this perfectly literally.
2. A serious thinker making a critique of rational choice and utility maximization as the underpinnings of (micro-)economics.

Thanks, smart people of the Internet!

And in local news…

A couple living on America Way has been charged in connection with a raid in which Jamestown and Narragansett police seized 1½ pounds of marijuana, three guns and materials used in the packaging of marijuana for distribution.

The police said Michael Netro, 54, and his wife, Erin Netro, 26, were each charged with one count of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver in Friday’s raid.

Drugs, guns, and a 28-year age difference? I bet they had an interesting wedding.

I mean, why not, right?

Pretty entertaining video from the NY Times, even if it is from the Freakonomics blog.

We’re definitely guilty of some of those pretensions. Band photos are hard!

I love politics. I love Tom Hanks. I love Philip Seymour Hoffman.

You know how sometimes in a movie, an actor’s fake accent will start to fade the longer the movie goes on (assuming the movie is filmed chronologically)? As it was very annoying, the first 20 minutes of Juno left me glad that the tooschoolforschool dialogue faded clearing the way for an enjoyable film. Cera and Bateman, together again.

Here’s a movie that’s been receiving pretty much universal acclaim, and boy-howdy, is it justified. You’ve got great performances by great actors as great characters in a movie that may even, depending on your interpretation, pass the Bechdel test.

Think it’s too clever and precious? That’s just because you have a heart of stone.

Feltron Eight is out. I want to document like this. So many numbers. (Via kottke)