• Pepper And Salt – “This Next One Is A Typical Blues Number About Exceeding Your Data Plan Limit”

    Technology, WSJ articles I like 24.10.2021 No Comments

  • What Type Of Water Do You Want?

    WSJ articles I like 14.10.2020 No Comments

  • How To Keep Your Glasses Clear When Wearing A Mask

    WSJ articles I like 24.05.2020 No Comments

    PSA from DFW Enterprises:

    Everybody who wears glasses knows the problem: They fog up when you’re also wearing a mask. That’s not only an inconvenience, but it can also be a safety hazard.

    Here is a simple way to clear things up by absorbing the fog-inducing moisture from your breath.

    Fold a tissue
    Fold a tissue or napkin lengthwise at about one-inch intervals. Five or six folds should do.

    Line the mask
    Use the tissue to line the back of the mask along the top edge. Hold the tissue in place with your thumb and forefinger.

    Put on the mask
    Anchor the bottom of the mask on your chin, then pull the top up beneath your eyes with the tissue in place. Try not to touch your face while putting the mask on. Pull the straps over the back of your ears, and adjust the mask to make sure it fits snugly.

    Try it out
    Put on your glasses and test out the anti-fog effectiveness of the tissue strip. Some adjusting of the nose guard might be necessary. Another solution is to wash your glasses before applying a mask. Do this with soap and water to create a surfactant film on the lenses, which will resist moisture.

    To read this Wall Street Journal article, please click (HERE):

  • The Surprising Science Behind Friendship

    WSJ articles I like 10.02.2020 No Comments

    New research shows how crucial friendship is not only for happiness and emotional well-being, but physical health too, a new book reveals

    PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
    By Andrea Petersen

    For many of us, the top of our life priority list might look something like this: family, work—maybe exercise. Time with friends can sometimes end up near the bottom.

    That’s a mistake, says Lydia Denworth, a science journalist and the author of the new book “Friendship,” which was published last month by W.W. Norton & Co. Ms. Denworth interviews animal biologists studying baboons and rhesus macaque monkeys, anthropologists and neuroscientists to uncover just how important friendship is not only for happiness and emotional health, but, she argues, physical health, too. In fact, friends are key to our very survival, Ms. Denworth asserts.

    Lydia Denworth, author of the new book, ‘Friendship,’ is a science journalist.

    PHOTO: JESSICA BARTHEL

    Here are edited excerpts from an interview.

    To read the rest of this story, please click (HERE):

  • The Tax Increases to Come

    Good Reads, On my mind, The way I see it, WSJ articles I like 29.01.2020 No Comments

    Even Joe Biden would raise the top marginal rate on work to over 50%

    The brawl in President Obama’s second term over raising the top income-tax rate to 39.6% from 35% was centuries ago in political time. One way to tell is that even moderate Democratic 2020 presidential candidates have quietly proposed to raise the tax rate on labor by double digits and it’s received almost no attention. Unlike single-payer health care and wealth taxes, this tax increase could command majority support in a Democratic Congress on day one.

    The idea is to increase the Social Security payroll tax, the 12.4% levy that falls directly on labor and is not eligible for deductions. Currently the tax applies to income up to $137,700, split between employer and employee. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar want to impose it on all labor income above $250,000. Joe Biden wants it to fall on income above $400,000. Pete Buttigieg says he wants “additional Social Security taxes” on income above $250,000.

    Meanwhile, Representative John Larson’s Social Security 2100 Act, cosponsored by 208 House Democrats, would apply the tax to income above $400,000 to finance an expansion of the entitlement. The bill would also gradually raise the payroll tax rate on all workers to 14.8% from 12.4%. As entitlement watcher Charles Blahous notes, that’s a 19% increase in the payroll tax burden. That’s significant for less-skilled workers who don’t earn enough or have too many dependents to pay income tax.

    Raising rates on high earners may be less politically toxic but it’s terrible economics. Experts can debate how much the top rate affects the incentive to work for, say, a dentist or an engineer, and whether a two, three or five percentage-point tax-rate increase has an effect on the wider economy. But there’s little doubt a new 12.4% tax would depress incentives and reduce America’s competitive advantage for high-skilled workers and make the tax structure more typical of European countries.

    The nearby table borrowed from our friends at Cornerstone Macro captures the magnitude of the tax increases on labor and investment income that Democratic presidential candidates are proposing. The top marginal federal tax rate on labor is currently about 40% including the Medicare tax.

    To continue reading this story, please click (HERE):

  • What A World War I Hero Looks Like, According to ‘1917’

    Entertainment, Good Reads, On my mind, The way I see it, WSJ articles I like 26.01.2020 No Comments

    Director Sam Mendes’s film uses an edgy cinematic technique to follow a pair of soldiers through the horrors of the Great War


    George MacKay, center, as Schofield in ‘1917,’ directed by Sam Mendes.     UNIVERSAL PICTURES

    By John Jurgensen

     

    George MacKay is a veteran of war on screen. The 27-year-old actor has played a soldier or veteran seven times in movies and television over the years, including World War II and Afghanistan fighters. Now he has his third role set in World War I, but the biggest of his career so far. As a stoic English infantryman saddled with an impossible mission, he helps carry the new movie “1917,” a Golden Globes nominee opening on Christmas.

    “Maybe it’s that sort of juxtaposition,” says Mr. MacKay, a Brit with soft eyes and a sharp chin, reflecting on why so many filmmakers have seen a soldier in him. “Being the baby-faced fella in that awful landscape, or being a gentle man doing violent things.”

    His “1917” co-star Dean-Charles Chapman, fresh from his role as an ineffectual prince in Netflix’s recent Shakespeare adaptation “The King,” is 22 years old and best known for playing a doomed boy-king in “Game of Thrones.” Together the actors are the sole focus of “1917,” which was filmed and edited to play as a single, uninterrupted camera shot. It follows a pair of foot soldiers sent to prevent 1,600 of their distant comrades—including the brother of Mr. Chapman’s character—from charging into a German ambush.

    “1917” was directed by Sam Mendes, who drew inspiration from his grandfather, a messenger on the Western Front when he was a teen. With Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Mr. Mendes also wrote the film, which features cinematography by Roger Deakins. The movie, by attaching itself completely to the two lance corporals as they hurtle through crowded trenches, across a hellish no-man’s-land, and into enemy territory beyond, has a scale that shifts between intimate and epic.

    To continue reading this story, please click (HERE) to go to the Wall Street Journal

  • Embracing the Science of Home Cooking

    Food, Good Reads, WSJ articles I like 26.01.2020 No Comments

    Experience and tradition are essential for great food—but being ready to experiment is a big help too

    ILLUSTRATION: MITCH BLUNT
    By Bee Wilson

     

    Is cooking a science? For years, many home cooks—myself included—would have said no. A kitchen is a place we go in search of warmth and coziness. I used to find the idea of treating this homely space as some kind of high-tech laboratory slightly off-putting.

    But there are signs that more home cooks are embracing science in the kitchen. The other day, while browsing for food books, I noticed that “The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science,” by J. Kenji López-Alt, had overtaken the 2019 edition of “The Joy of Cooking” in the number of customer reviews it had received on Amazon, with an average rating of five stars.

    Ratings aren’t everything, but this is surely a sign that thousands of home cooks now see scientific cooking as a positive thing, giving us the tools to produce everyday dishes in a more delicious or reliable way. If science can help us make a meat loaf that won’t fall apart (gelatin is the secret ingredient) or produce lighter waffles (by adding club soda), then what’s not to like?

    To continue reading this story, click (HERE) to go to the Wall Street Journal

  • “What’s Your Mount Everest?”

    Good Reads, WSJ articles I like 24.01.2020 No Comments

    ‘The Impossible First’ Review: The Great White South

    Reflections on life while traversing 900 miles of the Antarctic alone—with a 375-pound sled in tow—for 54 subzero days.

    Colin O’Brady crosses Antarctica. PHOTO: COLIN O’BRADY
    By Mark Yost

    If you’re looking for inspirational support to stick to your New Year’s resolutions, you might try “The Impossible First: From Fire to Ice—Crossing Antarctica Alone,” by the triathlete-adventurer Colin O’Brady. On its face, the book is an incredibly engaging and well-written account of one man’s quest to cross the world’s harshest and most barren continent unassisted. That means no motorized sled, no food drops; just Mr. O’Brady, slogging 900 miles on skis with a 375-pound sled in tow, dragging everything he needs to survive for nearly two months across a vast, frozen expanse that doesn’t change much from day to day except for the degree to which he has to contend with wind and snow.

    Thankfully, the book is much more than that. In addition to chronicling the physical challenges of staying alive in such inhospitable terrain, Mr. O’Brady weaves in biographical details that make you care as much about the man as the mission. But where the author excels is in detailing the mental challenges of such an expedition in a way that makes his struggles and the lessons he learns relatable to the average person. “It all starts with believing in yourself,” Mr. O’Brady writes. “Believing that something is possible is the first step to making it really happen. . . . All of us have a dream, something we might one day hope to do or become. All of us have an Everest. . . . What’s your Everest?”

  • A Thank-You Note Helped Me Find My Calling

    Good Reads, The way I see it, WSJ articles I like 29.12.2019 No Comments

    PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

    It spurred a friendship, then, years later, a visit to a clinic. There I realized I was to become a doctor.

    By Michael P.H. Stanley

    It’s a season of thanks—and also of interviews for medical schools and residency programs. I share the pros and cons of my hospital’s residency program with applicants who are neatly dressed in the same clothes, with the same résumés, from the same prestigious institutions. Any one of them is a stronger candidate than I was a few years ago. In addition to the usual platitudes about how well-fed we are, how diverse our patients are, and how expert our experts are, I like to make one other claim on their appraisal of programs.

    I tell them, “Hughlings Jackson, the father of English neurology, once observed that you can tell a lot about a man by what he laughs at. So while you’re visiting with us, judge us on what makes us jolly and learn what makes us thankful. Our gratitude reveals our values.”

    At the postinterview dinner, one applicant turns to me and asks: “So what are you thankful for?”

    I open my backpack to show him my latest purchases—boxes of stationery. Then I tell him two stories.

    Please click (HERE) to read the rest of this story

  • A Thank-You Note Helped Me Find My Calling

    Good Reads, WSJ articles I like 28.12.2019 No Comments

    It spurred a friendship, then, years later, a visit to a clinic. There I realized I was to become a doctor.

    It’s a season of thanks—and also of interviews for medical schools and residency programs. I share the pros and cons of my hospital’s residency program with applicants who are neatly dressed in the same clothes, with the same résumés, from the same prestigious institutions. Any one of them is a stronger candidate than I was a few years ago. In addition to the usual platitudes about how well-fed we are, how diverse our patients are, and how expert our experts are, I like to make one other claim on their appraisal of programs.

    I tell them, “Hughlings Jackson, the father of English neurology, once observed that you can tell a lot about a man by what he laughs at. So while you’re visiting with us, judge us on what makes us jolly and learn what makes us thankful. Our gratitude reveals our values.”

    At the postinterview dinner, one applicant turns to me and asks: “So what are you thankful for?”

    I open my backpack to show him my latest purchases—boxes of stationery. Then I tell him two stories.

    To read the rest of this story, please click (HERE):

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