links for 2009-07-22

  • Sean Hannity criticized the Obama administration on Monday night for spending $1.50/lb ham for food kitchens, claiming that "it actually costs only 79 cents in most grocery stores." I've never heard of 79¢ ham, but the thought is a bit horrifying. I'm sure it's many years since Sean Hannity has gone shopping in a grocery store, limousine conservative that he is.
    (tags: tv food politics)
  • Vietnamese catfish can no longer be called "catfish," by a 2003 act of congress. Now it's "basa fish," a result of a protectionist tariff. At least one taste test shows that people prefer basa fish to catfish.
    (tags: congress food)
  • In 1966, mathematician Leo Moser calculated the largest size couch that can be moved around a 90° corner in a hallway of the same width as said couch. Unfortunately, I have no idea of how to apply this formula to actually moving a couch.
    (tags: math)
  • A collection of the very craziest public comments made before the Santa Cruz City Council. I'd love to see somebody do this for Charlottesville.
    (tags: video humor)
  • Vanity Fair sent Palin's resignation speech across their three editing desks. The result is a sea of red ink.
  • Setting across the country with a sheaf of $20 bills, prepared to hand them out like candy to gas station attendants, bellhops, and waitresses, just to see what sort of access a Jackson will lead to. It turns out that $20 will get you everywhere.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

5 replies on “links for 2009-07-22”

  1. Hannity got that number from a Drudge link to Food Lion mailer. Was .79/lb at some random store. Our local Food Lion has Smithfield ham for $1.09/lb.

  2. Vietnamese catfish are raised in ponds full of run-off from various unregulated sources of pollution. It looks like the same catfish raised in the US, but its full of pesticides, fertilizer and heavy metals. Congress shouldn’t have just restricted the labeling – they should have banned the import of farmed Vietnamese fish entirely.

  3. Waldo:

    The problem with the sofa problem is that no one has the odd-shaped sofa that the solution posits.

    My analysis is that the largest rectangular sofa that can make it around the corner is one that is the square root of 2 long (assuming a hall of width of 1), and the square root of 2 divided by 2 deep. So if you have a hallway that is 3 feet wide, you could move a sofa 4.24 feet long (just shy of 51 inches) by 2.12 feet wide (just over 25 inches).

  4. I should have added that the best way to get a long sofa around a corner in a hallway is to stand it on end and walk it around the corner. Then you have the additional constraint of the height of the hall ceiling, but that is almost certainly 7 feet or more.

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