Cheap Talk » kludge

The clocks in Grand Central are off by 1 minute: But Grand Central, for years now, has relied on a system meant to mitigate, if not prevent, all the crazy. It is this: The times displayed on Gran...

https://cheaptalk.org/2013/02/06/consider-the-equilibrium-20/

Cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and when the cuckoo chick is born it kicks all of the eggs out of the nest and monopolizes the care and attention of the cuckolded parent.  Fairy w...

https://cheaptalk.org/2012/11/18/cuckoo-kludge/

I was having coffee outside and I saw ants crawling on my feet so I moved to another table. Then I rewound my stream of consciousness about 30 seconds and I was able to recall that in fact there ...

https://cheaptalk.org/2012/03/06/ant-alert/

As the director of recruiting for your department you sometimes have to consider Affirmative Action motives.  Indeed you are sympathetic to Affirmative Action yourself and even on your own your ...

https://cheaptalk.org/2012/02/29/playing-with-yourself-or-against-2/

If you take your placebos on time and never miss a “dose” you are less likely to die. Here’s the big finding: in the placebo group of 1174 patients, the people who took all of their placebo...

https://cheaptalk.org/2012/02/02/give-me-placebos-or-give-me-death/

This is something I have wondered about for a long time. When the muscle is stretched, so is the muscle spindle (see section Proprioceptors). The muscle spindle records the change in length (and...

https://cheaptalk.org/2012/01/30/what-happens-when-you-stretch/

Suppose our minds have a hot state and a cool state.  In the cool state we are rational and make calculated tradeoffs between immediate rewards and payoffs that require investment of time and ef...

https://cheaptalk.org/2012/01/02/playing-with-yourself-or-against/

Here’s what you already know:  it’s a parasite that reproduces in the digestive system of cats.  The eggs are excreted out and the vehicle is consumed by other animals in whose brains the e...

https://cheaptalk.org/2011/11/09/the-latest-on-toxoplasma/

Tyler Cowen quotes Richard Dawkins: Isn’t it plausible that a clever species such as our own might need less pain, precisely because we are capable of intelligently working out what is good for...

https://cheaptalk.org/2011/07/06/pain-is-a-kludge/

Emperor penguins form a group huddle to share warmth as they wait for eggs to hatch.  How do they coordinate? Emperor penguins are the only vertebrates that breed during the austral winter where...

https://cheaptalk.org/2011/06/14/the-penguin-huddling-game/