DX-ing

Posted on December 31, 2013 by gcochran9

I was looking at the blog stats, and although our readers are widely distributed (179 countries and statelets) , there are nations we haven’t heard from. So, if any of you get the chance, pass the good word on to South Sudan and San Marino.  And I have to wonder why we’re getting so many hits from Laos and the Faroe Islands.

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28 Responses to DX-ing

  1. Candide III says:
    January 1, 2014 at 2:18 am

    The answer is very simple: Tor. Happy New Year!

    Reply
    • Handle says:
      January 1, 2014 at 7:44 am

      Yep. When the proxy’s on, there’s no telling where I’m from. I usually VPN to the same ISP, so I get the opposite effect, I look more stationary than I am.

      Reply
    • NobleHipsterSlayerOfDeath says:
      January 4, 2014 at 5:56 pm

      It isnt Tor, for example, I am a Pakistani from Pakistan. Laos and the Faros Islands have a lot of foreigners; dignitaries, ngos, maybe even expatriates who knows (perhaps a local could answer). Dr. Cochran has a wide readership because the topics he comments are are of vital importance worldwide even if they are geared to the West. A lot of people read this blog from a lot of places. I dont even have the info Dr. Cochran has here but I am sure there would be some odd, unexpected locations where he gets hits from. Tor is not very common. As far as legit, legal, SFW content from Tor is concerned, there are probably almost as many regular blog readers (not commentators) here than there are such Tor users.

      Either that or I know nothing about Tor.

      Reply
  2. Patrick Boyle says:
    January 1, 2014 at 8:52 am

    Sorry, I’m not from anyplace exotic. The only thing I can think of to help you is that I might join one of the Northern Counties Secede From California Groups. I could be your first reader from the new lower tax state.

    Reply
  3. The fourth doorman of the apocalypse says:
    January 1, 2014 at 10:34 am

    OT, but sometimes NPR has some interesting stuff on the NPR channel.

    Saw a show about dogs and intelligence recently, and they claimed that some breeds of dogs seem to instinctively understand pointing. That is, when a person points at something that contains a treat, the dogs will investigate it.

    They also showed that approximately 2-yo humans seem to have that ability but that chimps (of a later age) do not.

    This seems to be a genetically controlled behavior pattern, and it would be interesting to determine:

    1. Whether all breeds of dogs respond that way or only some,

    2. Whether all individuals in those breeds that do respond that way respond that way or not.

    This could lead to determining, at least in dogs, which genes are responsible for that behavior and could lend itself to knock-out experiments.

    Reply
    • Patrick Boyle says:
      January 5, 2014 at 2:31 pm

      Well I can tell you for certain that at least my King Charles Spaniel responds to pointing. I feed him cooked chicken by hand outside. He’s a sloppy eater (that’s why I feed him outside). I just point at a piece he missed and goes right to it. I certainly didn’t train him for that.

      The King Charles should be a good test subject for this sort of study. They are hardly older than the famous Russian Foxes. They are, I believe, less than a century old. The original little spaniels that Charles II had had were extinct, and they were recreated by breeders in the last century from Cocker Spaniels. So they are double domesticated and well documented. Wolves at one end and the King Charles at the other should define the full spectrum.

      Reply
      • Anonymous says:
        January 6, 2014 at 4:09 pm

        My Tiger Woods doesn’t get pointing; on the other hand, she bursts into fits of enthusiasm upon seeing me, while the rest of the universe clearly underestimates me, and attracts a lot of young female attention when walked (also a lot of child and middle-aged to old lady attention; this source of attention somehow though feels less annoying in the presence of young females, as if them children and old ladies then are dog enhancers). I understand that cuteness would be a side effect of selection for timidity, good in any domesticated animal, but is there also further selection for cuteness per se? I have the impression that the less killable a species has to be to be useful (and thus the more people would get away with sympathizing), the cuter it is, not only dogs vs. pigs, but also sheep vs. goats.

        Reply
  4. dave chamberlin says:
    January 1, 2014 at 11:18 am

    Do you have any world wide ambitions? Are you planning as grand master evil scientist to someday command your army of darkness to do your bidding? The world could use a few more colorful cults that feed the mass media infotainment industry and strike fear into the easily fooled. The stupid need to be told they are stupid and that if they have kids they will be stupid too. Nothing works with the mentally inferior except repeating the same simple message over and over. It’s works kind of like brand recognition, Your army awaits the thoughts of the great and powerful Cochran to tell us just how we go about succeeding at this all important task.

    Reply
  5. panjoomby says:
    January 1, 2014 at 5:29 pm

    speaking of cults, any thoughts on Bingham & Souza’s “Death from a distance & the birth of a humane universe” – are they making a mountain out of a molehill – or is human ability to enforce non-kin cooperation (b/c we throw accurately, especially sandy koufax) over conflicts of interest crucial? (minor aside – i was disappointed they sidestepped group differences in crime (“oh, it’s SES & uh let’s move along, look over here…”) file this under your old request for book reviews:)

    Reply
    • dave chamberlin says:
      January 2, 2014 at 9:41 am

      On the subject of book reviews I find it helpful to read the reviews on Amazon of books before I decide to purchase a book or directly after I have read a book. If the book has dozens of reviews I find it helpful to zero in on the most recommended negative reviews. What this does is really very useful because it often allows you to find the flaws in the authors arguments oftentimes presented by other experts in the particular field of study. This tactic didn’t work particularly well with the book in question because it only had 16 reviews but it gave enough information that allowed me to determine I’m not interested in reading the book in question. That doesn’t mean very much regarding this book, after all I didn’t read it, I just thought I would throw out this idea because since Razib Khan suggested it I have found it very useful. I read a lot of non fiction covering all kinds of subjects and I often develop a suspicion that I can’t confirm, because I am not an expert in the field of question, that the author is trying hard to hide major flaws in his basic premise. By going to the highly recommended negative reviews I often am enlightened to where the scholarship ends and the salesmanship starts. This is just my personal opinion as to why I wouldn’t read this book. I’ve grown very cynical over the years regarding books that lean in the direction of fuzzy philosophy. Gimme hard facts, gimme hard science, don’t babble me to death with 300 pages of speculation that can’t be proved one way or another.

      Reply
      • panjoomby says:
        January 2, 2014 at 12:42 pm

        thanks for your helpful comment! i’m proud to say that that’s what i do:) some of the comment strings within the amazon reviews are more interesting than the books! …there needs to be a name for the phenomenon whereby listening to the author interviewed is often better than reading the book. i listen to most of the new books network-new books in history/science podcasts. Greg Cochran’s interview there is excellent, btw. so was the bingham-souza interview – bingham took the trouble to respond thoroughly to commenters at the website. i’m trudging thru the book – got it based on the podcast, but those dang podcast interviews are often better than the book (present company excepted, of course:) thanks for your comment, & i’m pleased as punch to be in that club:) it dissuades me from a lot of books.

        Reply
  6. Assistant Village Idiot says:
    January 2, 2014 at 3:55 pm

    I have friends in South Sudan – more friends of friends, really – and I hear they are busy at present. I’ll see what I can do.

    I am betting that the genetics of the Faroe Islands – isolated even more than Iceland, but Scandinavian – would be interesting

    Reply
  7. The fourth doorman of the apocalypse says:
    January 3, 2014 at 8:12 am

    Progress proceeds in fits and starts:

    http://io9.com/advanced-imaging-reveals-a-computer-1-500-years-ahead-o-1492104535?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

    It is interesting to speculate what the dinosaurs might have been capable of.

    Reply
    • RS says:
      January 3, 2014 at 9:27 pm

      > The researchers theorize that the Antikythera mechanism is based on an Archimedian design, and might even have been built by a workshop carrying on his technological tradition. But if the design has been “industrialized” in such a way, why have we never found another one like it? Mysteries remain.

      Not really, considering the large majority of classical books are lost.

      The world is lost. Tears in rain. That’s not news, I guess.

      Many of the great Greek statuary are only known from Roman copies. I guess the Romans had the money for perhaps some tens of copies, so one or two were apt to survive.

      The book of Herakleitos is one of the principal treasures of the world, and was the best single source of instruction for the stoics who dominated elite Roman religio-philosophy for centuries — even this is lost and is known only from quotations found in other works. It was probably about 15-25 pages long and would then have been ~100x easier to reproduce than Antikythera. Just speculating, I wonder if it was targeted for destruction because it was the elite text of the overthrown elite weltanschauung.

      Reply
      • dave chamberlin says:
        January 4, 2014 at 9:14 am

        “The world is lost. Tears in rain.”
        I like that. The Antikythera mechanism isn’t particularly shocking if you give due credit for Greek genius and their preoccupation with the movement of heavenly bodies. The site linked to has lots of fun garbage in it. It tells me that dogs always poop on a north south axis. Ah the internet. Chock full of delightful bullshit.

        Reply
  8. Jim says:
    January 4, 2014 at 7:10 am

    What else is there to do on the Faroe Islands?

    Reply
  9. Greying Wanderer says:
    January 5, 2014 at 4:56 pm

    Random off-topic thought

    If you have ten couples where the men all have different y markers, say A1 to A10 and they all have one son and one daughter then the ten y markers would all carry on into the next generation but say 1 in 10 has two sons or two daughters. If A1 had two sons and A2 had two daughters then the next generation would have two A1s, no A2 and one each of A3 to A10. Repeat again and say this time it’s A3 who has two sons and A4 who has two daughters and the result is two A1, two A3 and one each of A5 to A10.

    So i’d have thought random chance would naturally tend to reduce the number of y markers in a population over time and i wonder if that effects the studies you read which say things like “population x all descended from three guys?”

    Reply
  11. Staffan says:
    January 6, 2014 at 5:43 am

    There is some study claiming islanders to be introverted and conscientious, a combination suggestive of some type of aspies. If they lack immigration they probably have a decent IQ too. And, as someone pointed out, there is probably not that much to do there. I noticed traffic from there too, more than from anywhere else if you adjust for population size.

    Reply
  12. athEIst says:
    January 6, 2014 at 8:26 am

    South Sudan and San Marino. That’s quite a combo

    Reply
  13. athEIst says:
    January 6, 2014 at 8:33 am

    Scandinavians in general spend a lot of time complaining about other Scandinavians.
    Please don’t lump them together. Many years ago, I wrote a note to an “Olsen” I knew but I spelled it Olson. I thought all Olso(e)ns were spelled that way. You wouldn’t have believed the tongue-lashing I received. “Olson is Swedish, I’m Danish. It’s Olsen” said this third generation American.

    Reply
  14. thedukeofleinster says:
    January 6, 2014 at 2:17 pm

    those are bots and proxies. the faroese only read about shamu and other orcas, because they love to eat them. 99% of your genuine readership resides in eastern kentucky.

    Reply
  15. The fourth doorman of the apocalypse says:
    January 7, 2014 at 10:11 am

    Yes, indeed, Students Matter but not for the reasons those people think.

    A teacher I know tells me that 15% of the students at her school in CA are Special (Education). Another school is close to 30%.

    Reply

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