Private enterprise vs. NASA

From http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail662.html:

 

"One last point of comparison, on the fundamental need to shut down NASA in-house space transport development in favor of procuring transportation on a commercial basis outside of the utterly dysfunctional NASA rocket bureaucracy: Ares 1/Orion were up to $49 billion projected cost to 2019 first flight when they were cancelled. SpaceX recently stated that their total cost for Falcon 9/Dragon development (actual first flight, 2010) has been $600 million so far. That's more than an 80 to 1 cost ratio, for considerably less than a 2 to 1 vehicle capability ratio."

 

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Science Is

J.,

 

Scientific praxis from a game theory perspective. Excerpt attached, bolding the key insight.

 

http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1886-terence-kealey-what-does-climategate-say-about-science.html

 

Secrecy was originally normal: when around 1600 a young London obstetrician called Peter Chamberlen invented the obstetric forceps, for over a century he, his younger brother, his younger brother's son and that son's son (all obstetricians) kept the invention a secret. Rich women, knowing that the Chamberlens were the best obstetricians in Europe, engaged them to deliver their babies, but the price those women paid (apart from handsome fees) was to be blindfolded and trapped alone with the Chamberlens in a locked room during labour so that no one could discover the secret of the forceps. That emerged only during the 1720s when the last Chamberlen, having retired rich but childless, finally divulged it.

 

It was Robert Boyle who, by his leadership of the Royal Society of London, which was created exactly 350 years ago this year, negotiated (i) the convention whereby priority - and therefore esteem - goes to the scientist who publishes first, not to the scientist who might have made the discovery earlier but who has kept the findings secret, and (ii) the convention that papers are accepted for publication only if they contain a methods section as well as a results section, to allow reproducibility.

 

We see here, therefore, that science is not innately a public good: it is innately a discreet one where, in a state of nature, scientists would publish not their methods but only their findings . and where they would sometimes delay or obscure the publication even of those. But it was Boyle who realised, in classic game theory mode, that if the Fellows (aka members) of the infant Royal Society collaborated with each other in publishing their findings (i) openly, and (ii) including their methods sections, then the scientists within the Society would do better, by virtue of their access to the whole of the Societyfs membershipfs collective discoveries, than would those isolated researchers who worked outside the circle of mutual disclosure. And it was because the Royal Society's original experiments were conducted collectively but in the presence only of its Fellows, and because its publications were preferentially circulated to its Fellows, that the Fellows enjoyed an advantage over non-Fellows.

 

Science, therefore, only appears to be public because, over the centuries, most scientists globally have gradually modelled themselves on the Royal Society's 'new' conventions, the better to take advantage of the mutuality of knowledge. But not all scientists have done so completely, and as Birkhead showed in his THE article many disciplines have elaborated the convention of publishing their findings a year or two before they publish their data, thus keeping a lead on the further study of their data

 

My favorite definition for science is still Jerry Pournelle's, "Science is what you can put in a letter to another colleague and he'll get the same results you did." Therefore what she calls "science" I would call "research," with one (mine) being an individual activity and another (hers) being a social phenomenon. At any rate, when we talk about funding "scientific research" for example it is the social phenomenon (her definition) we are talking about. I would argue that the key problem for a society is trying to set the rules so that researchers engage in science instead of something else.

 

-M.

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

Schizophrenia pathogen

J.,

This article ("the insanity virus") reminds me of taxoplasma gondi and
Greg Cochran's pathogen theory of homosexuality. In this case these
researchers think they've identified the (a?) pathogen responsible for
schizophrenia: HERV-W, also implicated in multiple schlerosis cases.

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun/03-the-insanity-virus/

The background on endogenous retroviruses is interesting too.

-M.

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Morality of lying

D.,
 
Interesting to see this discussed. I think you know already what my position is: God cannot lie, therefore followers of Christ cannot permit themselves to lie--lying, even in a good cause, is ultimately a dead end and should be swiftly repented of if you find you have engaged in it.
 
http://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/02/the-on-line-journal-public-discourse-under-the-brilliant-editorship-of-ryan-anderson-has-become-a-key-site-for-people-inter.html

Here's an excerpt to give the flavor of the discussion. Emphasis added for a definition that I like.

 
Even apart from the invocation of religious authority, it seems to me that Tollefsen (with whom I am co-author of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life) is correct that lying is intrinsically wrong.  So the only way I can think of to defend Live Action's tactics is to argue that the utterances and actions of those who represented themselves as sex traffickers and prostitutes were not lies.  My sense is that Rick is inclined to defend Live Action's tactics in precisely this way.  I don't think it can possibly work when it comes to the utterances of the Live Action team.  They stated things they knew to be false precisely with a view to persuading the Planned Parenthood workers that they were true.  That's just what a lie is.  And their utterances were not made in a context of social conventions that could render a statement one knows to be false something other than a lie:  such as when someone invites a friend out for a "quiet meal" on his birthday, only to deliver him to a big surprise party in his honor.  Could Live Action have pulled off the sting without making false utterances?
 
I think the answer to that is probably yes.  And that takes us to the next question.  What about deceptions that do not involve false utterances?  Some are plainly wrong.  Others, however, seem pretty clearly not to be.  Tollefsen points out that Aquinas, while condemning lying even in justified wars, held that military feints are not necessarily lies and can be morally permissible. Getting to just what it is that distinguishes the two is, I predict, where this debate is heading---and that, I believe, is just where it should head.
 
-M.
--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Federal Wages (data on)

Some snippets:
 
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/yes-they-re-overpaid_541409.html
 
The specific econometric procedure is called "fixed effects," because it focuses on wage changes for individual workers, who have many characteristics that are fixed from year to year. One of the first economists to apply fixed effects analysis to the federal pay issue was Princeton's Alan Krueger in 1988. Using a dataset called the Displaced Workers Survey, Krueger found that workers who lost jobs in the private sector and then joined the federal government earned about 12 percent more than displaced workers who found another private sector job. (Somewhat ironically, Krueger would go on to become President Obama's chief economist at the Treasury Department.)  
 
A similar approach confined to postal workers reached a similar conclusion. In the late 1990s, the Postal Service surveyed all new hires, asking them how much they were paid in their previous job. Overall, new postal hires received salaries over 28 percent higher than what they had been paid in the private sector, which University of Pennsylvania law professor Michael Wachter and his co-authors called "enormous wage increases over their previous wages in full-time private sector jobs." 
 
A number of studies of fiscal consolidations in OECD countries over the past several decades have shown that reductions in the government wage bill—that is, the size and pay of the public sector work force—are an important part of larger efforts to balance the budget. A recent study published by the American Enterprise Institute showed that countries that succeeded in reducing their fiscal gaps placed a lot of weight on reducing public sector pay. 

Just as few federal employees quit their jobs, many private sector workers seek federal employment, seeing it as both well compensated and secure in a time when many private sector jobs are not. While data on the number of applicants per federal or private sector job are scant, research in the late 1980s indicated that federal jobs on average received 25 percent to 38 percent more applicants than private sector positions. A 1985 study by economist Steven Venti concluded that from 18 percent to 29 percent of workers would accept federal employment if offered. Roughly three times as many men would be willing to accept federal employment as are actually offered federal jobs; for women, the ratio is six times, implying that federal jobs provide a significantly more attractive overall package than private sector options. 

These results, Venti concluded, suggest "the government could continue to attract a workforce of current size with substantially lower wages." Moreover, even significantly lower wages would only slightly reduce the quality of federal job applicants. We will have the opportunity to test this view as the administration's pay freeze takes effect. Will federal quit rates rise as pay is frozen? We doubt it.

The devil is in the details. Cutting or freezing federal pay across the board would be an improvement over the status quo, but more fundamental reform is needed. Without a change in the basic system of setting pay, salaries could easily creep upward again with little fanfare. In addition, we do not want to cut the wages and benefits of certain federal workers—research scientists, engineers, and senior lawyers, for example—who are not currently overpaid.

-Max
 
--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.
 
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Why Gold?

Why gold as a reserve currency? Here's a cogent explanation from intellectual-detox.com, emphasis added:

The Gold Standard

Some people ask the question: "Should the dollar be backed by a gold standard." But that is the wrong question. The right question is what will happen.

Any government that is strong enough will want to enact a fiat currency. If the government is greedy it will enact a fiat currency to reap the benefits of seinorage. If the government is benevolent (or thinks its benevolent) it will enact a fiat currency to smooth over economic fluctuations.

The world switched to a fiat currency when the U.S. had enough domestic and international hegemony to enforce the dollar as the global standard. The fallacy that many believe is that gold was made obsolete because of technology and "progress". They believe that somehow basing a currency off a inert, mostly useless metal is somehow archaic.

But gold is not a natural currency because its shiny. It's a natural currency because it is the best Schelling point/Nash equilibrium for a group of independent actors to settle on as a store of value. If you have five independent, mutually wary agents (either individuals or governments) trying to negotiate a common store of value, then gold is the default because a) no one can simply print infinite amounts of it b) it has the highest stocks to production ratio, so its has the least amount of dilution from mining.

As the American manufacturing base rots, its military fails at yet another war, and its political system continues to spin in circles, people and nations may start to lose faith in the dollar as a store of value. At that point, the most natural alternative as a reserve currency will be gold.

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Food

From a friend: http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/health/2010/fall/sweet-satisfaction.shtml

Thinking about food makes you eat less.

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Interesting blog

Interesting blog. Will get added to my regular feed.

http://www.halfsigma.com/

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

MLK Day Terrorist Bomb

About four hours away from me: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0119-spokane-bomb-20110119,0,3022661.story

Is al Qaeda diversifying outside of airports, or is this another lone crazy like Loughner?

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Marriage rate

This data is U.S.-only:

Age	1970	1999	2000	2002	2004	2008
Male:
20 to 24 years	35.8%	83.2%	83.7%	85.4%	86.7%	86.9%
25 to 29 years	10.5	52.1	51.7	53.7	56.6	57.6
30 to 34 years	6.2	30.7	30.0	34.0	33.4	32.4
35 to 39 years	5.4	21.1	20.3	21.1	23.4	23.0
40 to 44 years	4.9	15.8	15.7	16.7	18.5	16.9
Female:
20 to 24 years	54.7%	72.3%	72.8%	74.0%	75.4%	76.4%
25 to 29 years	19.1	38.9	38.9	40.4	40.8	43.4
30 to 34 years	9.4	22.1	21.9	23.0	23.7	24.0
35 to 39 years	7.2	15.2	14.3	14.7	14.6	15.2
40 to 44 years	6.3	10.9	11.8	11.5	12.2	12.9

(From http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763219.html)

It used it be that 95% of 45-year-olds had been married at least once. According to this chart, it's now down to 87% for women, 83% for men. On one level this is worrisome: the U.S. is already underpopulated by global standards, by about x3, if you go by people per acre of arable land. On another, Darwinian level it's merely amusing. I predict that the marriage rate in 2070 will be at least as high in the United States as it is today, and families will probably be slightly larger, because the people who never marry (like me) will have bred themselves out of the gene pool...

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Manipulation WAS RE: Touching base

Hi T.,

[Max wrote] "And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit eternal life. But many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first." (Matt. 19:29-30.)

[T. wrote] I've never thought of applying that scripture in that way, I've always thought of it regarding the Gentiles and house of Israel.  The house of Israel was the first to receive the gospel at the time of Christ (focusing specifically on the Jews for example) then the Gentiles after Christ's ascension; even so, in this dispensation the Gentiles (and the lost tribes of Israel) will receive the gospel first while the Jews will be after Christ's second coming.

[Max replies] Some principles apply in multiple situations and are given as the answer to more than one question. For instance, see JST Matt 5:32-34 ("if thy right hand offend thee..."), where hand/foot/eye represent sins according to v 34, and the same analogy in JST Mark 9:40-48 where they represent other people. The scripture does apply to the Gentiles & House of Israel as well (for instance 1 Nephi 13:42) but here in Matthew 10 (and also in Mark 10:29-31) Jesus is answering a question about personal destiny. It wouldn't make sense if he answered Peter's question by talking about the Gentiles: he is talking about Peter (and it's quoted in the scriptures because the same answer applies to all the righteous).

[Max wrote] 2.) One reason the inversion occurs in the first place is that eternity and mortality play by different rules. Things that work inmortality don't work in eternity and sometimes vice versa. (See Moses 8:15 for an example of playing by mortality's rules, and where it leads.) ...

[Tom wrote] I'm not sure I follow your thinking here.  Are you saying Noah's daughters were playing by mortality's rules and thus condemned of God?

[Max replies] I suspected that reference was too oblique when I wrote it. Compare Moses 8:12-14 to Genesis 19:14, and think about the fact that Noah's granddaughters (and grandsons-in-law) were not on the Ark. Why? At least in part, because their husbands weren't spiritually awake. (Didn't take Noah seriously, just like Lot's sons-in-law didn't take him or the message from the angels seriously.) Why then did they marry these men? They must have had something to offer--we don't know if it was good looks, or money, or just making them feel great emotionally--but they valued those qualities more than they valued a love of righteousness, which is why the Lord says they "sold themselves." As for the husbands in question: yes, they got the girls, and were probably popular with their (wicked) friends and rich to boot. And then they drowned. And spent the next 3000-4000 years (at least) in spirit prison. Short-term success, long-term failure. It only looks like success in the short term.

[Tom wrote] After reading your example below I'm glad you wouldn't treat your wife that way.  I do not believe manipulation is behavior becoming a priesthood holder.  I've found manipulation to, in a way, deny a person their God given right to be a person and choose despite their motivation.

I don't think I share that view, and in fact I think manipulation, in a sense, is an important duty of a husband. Women are emotional creatures, and it's my duty to know what her buttons are and how to push them. What is a candlelit dinner and a romantic evening but a form of emotional manipulation? You're using your knowledge of her psychology to customize her experience to put her in a certain mood. It's not like she minds, either, and in fact she will cooperate because it makes her feel good. Self-manipulation is also very useful: knowing how to push your own buttons in such a way that your emotions do what you want them to. The key component to both kinds of manipulation is actual knowledge of the details of how a person works internally.

However, I have other problems with the described behavior.

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

RE: Touching base

Hey T.,

 

I will have some questions to ask you about rock climbing, etc., at a later date, but right now I just want to make a quick observation about this topic:

 

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 11:13 AM, ... wrote:

With regards to single life in Salt Lake, I'm on the up and up, despite the impending 'ejection' from the young single adult ward due to my upcoming birthday.  I am hopeful things will eventually work out, but I only have minor girl interests at this point in time as well.  I hold to the maxim: "If you do your best, you can't do any better."  I believe everything else is God's timing and grace.

 

"And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit eternal life. But many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first." (Matt. 19:29-30.)

 

1.) Many that will be first in that day must be last here and now, or the scripture would be broken. If someone has to be last, it might as well be guys (and girls) who are equipped to handle it. Tougher, more stable, able to accomplish things even alone.

 

2.) One reason the inversion occurs in the first place is that eternity and mortality play by different rules. Things that work in mortality don't work in eternity and sometimes vice versa. (See Moses 8:15 for an example of playing by mortality's rules, and where it leads.) I think I mentioned that I've learned some interesting things from the pick-up artist community (sosuave.com for example), and there are some principles that I can use (paying attention to emotions), but there are plenty of other things that I can't bring myself to use because I would never treat my wife that way[1]. The price is that my success with normal, emotional women will be limited. I expect this to change over the next thousand years or so as resurrected women develop more perspective and better control over their emotions, but for now it's a price to be paid. Playing by long-term rules can impede short-term success: just ask your average socialite what the value is of following the Golden Rule.

 

There are things I don't know about your situation (and tastes, etc.) but I think these observations probably apply to your situation. Factor #1 is one reason I plan to look quite hard at girls who never married during mortality: it stands to reason that there should be some superb individuals among them.

 

-Max

 

[1] For example: never apologize even if you're partially in the wrong--being an emotional creature, she will take the cue from your demeanor. If you act like you're in the wrong, she will assume you're in the wrong whether you were or not. If you act like you're not in the wrong and freeze her out, she will chew over her own behavior until she finds something she did wrong and then decide she was in the wrong and come crawling back. Thus you maintain psychological dominance and the upper hand in the relationship, which conveys masculinity and keeps her attracted to you.

 

P.S. If you are at all interested in thinking about the long term, geopolitics is an interesting discipline to look at. George Friedman has a book called The Next 100 Years which is quite readable.

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

Case study: minimum wage laws

http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/printer_101130-williams-minimum-wage.php

 

"The higher the price of something, the less people will take of it; and the lower its price, the more people will take of it? The law of demand applies to wages, interest and rent because, after all, they are the prices of something... [because of minimum wage increases in 2007] Sea International moved its operation from Samoa to a highly automated cannery plant in Lyons, Ga. That resulted in roughly 2,000 jobs lost in Samoa and a gain of 200 jobs in Georgia."

 

Let me be clear: I'm not concluding anything, or trying to tell readers (if any) that increasing minimum wage is always a bad idea. I don't know. I _am_ pointing out a case study to the effect that it's stupid to think that increasing the minimum wage by $1 an hour is the same thing as increasing income of the poor by $1 an hour. Unless they are underpaid in actual fact (i.e. they are actually worth more to the business than they are currently being paid, with their employer pocketing the difference), increasing the minimum wage will just result in their unemployment.

 

If you think about it, that makes minimum wage laws a pretty blunt policy instrument, since it has no way to account for actual worker value. If you set minimum wage at level X, you are making life better for some unknown number of people who are worth X and being paid less than that, and much worse for some other unknown number of people who aren't worth X and are now doomed to permanent unemployment unless their skills can be somehow upgraded.

 

Original link via Chaos Manor (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2011/Q1/mail656.html).

  

-Max

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

What to do when terrorists attack

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-terrorism-20101226,0,2998659.column

 

One of these days, one of these plots is going to succeed. It's not unpatriotic or defeatist to say that; it's realistic.

And that's why one of the most intriguing concepts in counterterrorism today is called "resilience" -- preparing for terrorist attacks and minimizing their impact when they happen.

Terrorists aim to damage their opponents partly by provoking reactions bigger than the original attack. Osama bin Laden spent less than half a million dollars on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, but he caused billions in damage by prompting a shutdown of financial markets, air travel and other chunks of the U.S. economy -- not to mention the war in Afghanistan and the other counterterrorist campaigns that ensued.

But if a society is prepared for terrorist attacks, makes sure its citizens know how to react when they happen, and protects its transportation, communications and utilities networks from being paralyzed by local disruptions, the impact of terrorism is reduced. It's still a problem, but it's no longer an existential threat.

...In case of most terrorist bombs, experts say, the best thing to do is to seek shelter inside a building -- whether the bomb is conventional, chemical, radiological or (in the least likely scenario) nuclear. If the bomb is inside your building, get out; but if it's somewhere else, take shelter.

The greatest danger from most of those bombs may be from secondary explosions, airborne contaminants or radiation. Jumping into your car to flee merely exposes you to more risks, and when thousands of people try to evacuate, they choke the roads, cause traffic accidents and impede emergency responders.

But not everybody knows that. A 2007 survey found that in the event of a "dirty bomb," a conventional explosion that spreads radioactive material, 65% of people said their first impulse would be to flee. Flynn talked last year with New York City firefighters and said some of them didn't know whether they should tell people to evacuate or seek shelter in the event of an explosion. ("The policy of the department is clear, and that's shelter in place," responded Joseph W. Pfeifer, New York's assistant fire chief for counterterrorism. "We've trained everyone on that.... The real challenge is educating the public.")

"Nobody ever told the emergency responders what to do," he said.

In the case of a nuclear explosion, a study by Stanford professor Lawrence Wein estimated that a small nuclear device in Washington, D.C., could kill 120,000 people if most people sought shelter in buildings -- but 180,000 if most people tried to evacuate.


--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Von Neumann (humor)

Subject: Von Neumann (humor)

 

From http://www.infiltec.com/j-logic.htm 

 

The following problem can be solved either the easy way or the hard way. 

 

Two trains 200 miles apart are moving toward each other; each one is going at a speed of 50 miles per hour.  A fly starting on the front of one of them flies back and forth between them at a rate of 75 miles per hour.  It does this until the trains collide and crush the fly to death.  What is the total distance the fly has flown?

 

The fly actually hits each train an infinite number of times before it gets crushed, and one could solve the problem the hard way with pencil and paper by summing an infinite  series of distances.  The easy way is as follows:  Since the trains are 200 miles apart and each train is going 50 miles an hour, it takes 2 hours for the trains to collide. Therefore the fly was flying for two hours.  Since the fly was flying at a rate of 75 miles per hour, the fly must have flown 150 miles.

 

That's all there is to it.

 

When this problem was posed to John von Neumann, he immediately replied, "150 miles."

 

 "It is very strange," said the poser, "but nearly everyone tries to sum the infinite series."

 

"What do you mean, strange?" asked Von Neumann.  "That's how I did it!"

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

Girl advice

[fwd to blog from another conference]

 

General girl advice to any young males who might be in love: telling her exactly what you're feeling because you can't hold it in any longer is not generally an effective strategy, because (her being a woman and you being a man) what you say is not actually what she will hear. Also, since women are more emotional than men (in general, just like men are taller in general--there are exceptions)--because of that, the best way to communicate may be to her feelings, not her intellect: use very few words indeed. The goal is not for her to KNOW how much you love her so she can make the correct logical inferences from that fact, it's for her to feel how much you love her so she can intuitively make the correct judgments for herself based on that reality. Note also that the goal is not for her to feel how much you need her--that's your problem. "I love you and I want to bring you joy. Interested?" It's an offer, not a plea. If not you are doing it wrong.

 

~Max

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Check your pronunciation

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Announcing/Standard_Pronunciation

 

I think I've been mispronouncing "apartheid", "candidate", "electoral", "foliage", "inclement", "jewelry", "mayonaise", "Visa", "zoology" and "diphthong" for years. I would have been mispronouncing "bruschetta" too except I don't even know what the word means [five seconds later: I do now]. But at least I say "hundred" correctly (and "twenty" also, though it's not on the list).

 

Surprisingly, the way I pronounce "spiel" ("shpeel") is incorrect/nonstandard. The naive way ("speel") is correct. Oh, and "yarmulke" should be pronounced phonetically, after all.

 

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!