"the intense bias atheism arouses in most Americans": but on the other hand, an atheist friend of mine dismisses Americans as "the people who believe in the Munchkins".

It's not available in my country. How very diplomatic.

"economic activity is historical and progressive and there’s no quantity that it conserves." Perhaps it conserves the sum of greed and fear.

True, a picture is worth a thousand words. But only if the picture is a good one. I'm a fan of Tufte on this business. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

You're right, brother Razza, praise the Lord. It's time for repenting and atoning.

I often delay reading a book I beieve I will really like until I have a quiet couple of hours to spend in a recliner with a glass of wine nearby.  That is, sometimes one delays a guilt-free pleasure because the pleasure will be greater when we later enjoy it --- it will earn interest. 
 
OK, I just read the article.  How crappy it is.  The following paragraph describes perfectly rational behavior as long as you believe that visiting landmarks is really valuable the first time and then not so much the second (and does anyone really want to visit that goofy obelisque in DC twice?).  The author doesn't seem to see how drastically the last two sentences undermine his point.  People put off doing things until the opportunity cost is zero.  People do things right before the cost of doing them goes way up.  How irrational! 
 
<i> 
Why, for instance, is it so hard to find time to visit landmarks in your own backyard? People who have moved to Chicago, Dallas and London get to fewer local landmarks during their entire first year than the typical tourist visits during a two-week stay, according to a study conducted by Suzanne B. Shu and Ayelet Gneezy, who are professors of marketing at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, San Diego, respectively. The Chicagoans in the study had visited more landmarks in other cities than in their own, and even their relatively small amount of local sightseeing was done mainly in the course of entertaining out-of-towners. Otherwise, the only time Chicagoans rushed to see the local landmarks was just before they were about to move to another city, when that deadline inspired sudden passions for taking architectural tours and going to the zoo. 
</i> 
 
Probably the underlying literature is better than the article, but the article is unconvincing.  Maybe the reason the US has such a low savings rate is that people keep delaying the gratification associated with paying off their credit cards!

"geographic ancestry": someone should keep a list of euphemisms for what the layman might call "race".

No doubt everyone notices forms of what you could call Intelligence that don't correlate only with IQ. Some, I'd guess, are to do with picking up the habits of intelligent people from your upbringing. I'm always struck when I notice someone of obviously high IQ fail to behave in an intelligent way, in a way that implies to me that he was brought up in a family that was stupid, or, more precisely, unreflective and uncritical - people who didn't routinely treat pretty much everything in life as worth thinking over and discussing; people, perhaps, who gossipped rather than questioned, who assumed rather than established, who believed rather than enquired, who accepted rather than debated. I dare say that that too is "associated with socioeconomic status".

I was very struck when I moved to East Anglia and found how unfriendly the natives are. I then realised that it was because they are in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Evidence that a "Team" attitude isn't confined to the Global Warming scam? 
 
It's also evidence for my long held belief that part of the grant pot should be distributed by lottery amongst people reckoned to be valid applicants.

Whisper who dare: there was quite a lot of nice, warm weather in the Bronze Age.

"the poor supposedly live in "food deserts"": a few years ago I saw this notion demolished - at least for Britain - by a paper in the BMJ, where some medics had used the investigatory technique of walking around and looking. It might be that "food deserts" was just another of those cases where an American idea was imported and applied to Britain without any critical thought whatsoever.

"On 'forum shopping', the Guardian newspaper is published in England, so England (not Scotland) is the appropriate jurisdiction." 
 
It's distributed in Scotland so libel ("defamation" in Scotland) could have been sued for. England might have been chosen for convenience - it surely wouldn't have been chosen for prompt or economical decision-making - but it's hard not to suspect that the English law, or custom, are more favourable to the accuser in cases of libel that the Scottish courts. Similarly, if you had a choice you'd always favour England over Scotland in a divorce case if you were hoping to strip your spouse of most of his wealth.

There was a wee bit of "forum shopping" - after all, they could have used the Scottish Courts.

Bishop Hill is gathering some of the horrors from the software. 
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/24/code-thread-updated.html

Well said, jeecee. From time to time I have opined on similar lines on non-climate scientific blogs, probably including this one. Forgive my my manners, chaps, but I TOLD YOU SO.

Have you guys all seen Harry Read Me, the chronicle of Poor Harry wrestling with the CRU software? Wot larks. Read it and weep. With laughter, or at the Death of Science, according to taste. 
 
http://di2.nu/foia/HARRY_READ_ME-0.html

"the semi-PC, also rather Szasz-ish "de-institutionalization" which I have heard was done under Reagan": the war against "lunatic asylums" started (I have read) in the late 60s and early 70s.

Emerson, this Obama-like uncertainty about US States must be corrected. :)

That horizontal vs vertical distinction: jolly good. I will, Razib, I will.