Radioactive batteries keep going and going - Future of Energy- msnbc.com
I would like a few.  Please.


Children should be allowed to play in the dirt, new research suggests - Telegraph
It helps them heal faster.  Actually, this is pretty cool, because they found that staphlococci bacteria put out some stuff that reduces inflammation and promotes healing (and this is commonly found wherever. Stop disinfecting everything!)

Nonprofits get help from rookie lawyers - Giving- msnbc.com
This is good - new lawyers get assigned to nonprofits for their first year, as a public service.  It gives them experience, non-profits some decent legal help, and law firms a good name.  Also, I liked this quote:

Murphy, 25, started her public interest fellowship at the University of Mississippi's Civil Legal Clinic in August. She has helped poor clients with housing and tax problems and traveled this month to the poverty-ridden Delta with other attorneys and law students to investigate one low-income neighborhood's sewer problems.

"This is what this profession is for — it's for helping people," said Murphy, who focused on corporate tax early in law school at Ole Miss. "I had lost sight of that."

mental_floss Blog » Holocaust Hero Chiune Sugihara
Mental Floss is irratatingly obsessed with being smart - with knowledge for knowledge's sake, and only tidbits of it at that.
However, they do find things from time to time that are pretty good - like this guy, Chiune Sugihara.  He was Japan's ambassador to Lithuania during WW2, and when he was ordered to leave the country, he refused, and instead, working with the one other Dutch ambassador who wouldn't leave, they devised a plan to save Jewish refugees, but it would require them being routed through Japan.  His government refused, and even told him to issue no travel visas at all.  So,

Sugihara discussed the plan with his wife Yukiko and decided to risk his career and his entire future by defying his superiors. The couple then spent 29 days issuing travel visas, up to 300 a day, as thousands of refugees stood in line at his office. Yukiko would prepare and register the visas while Chiune Sugihara would sign and stamp them, hour after hour, without breaking for meals. They would work late into the night until Yukiko would massage her husband’s weary hands in preparation for the next day. Sugihara was under orders to leave, which he could no longer delay. The family departed on September 1st, but he kept signing visas even as he boarded the train. Sugihara then tossed his official stamp out to the crowd, as he hadn’t time to stamp them all.

His government reassigned him a few times, then allowed him to go to a POW camp for a year and a half. After that, it pretended he didn't exist, and went so far as to tell the people that had survived because of him that he did not exist. He fell into poverty, worked in Moscow for a trading company, and only saw his family once a year. He was recognized for his efforts only one year before he died (which is much better than I was expecting!)

At the very beginning of the article, it mentions he joined the Greek Orthodox Church. I wonder if he was a Christian? His actions during the war seem to say yes....

Nevertheless, I thank God for people like this, and am thankful that He saw fit to save people's lives through this one man's actions.



Deseret News | Blast closes canyon
This is from 4 years ago, but is pretty scary.  A truck carrying explosives tipped over, started a fire in the remote canyon it was driving through, and the fire then set the explosives off, creating a crater 30 feet deep(!).
No one died.  Not a single person.
Amazing.  I thank God for His watching over people like this, and giving evidence of His mercy and providence and love.  I pray that people would turn to Him after seeing how much He cares even for those who are against Him (that's all of us, by the way, prior to being saved)


The Twilight Saga: New Moon | Plugged In Online Movie Reviews
Someone, somewhere, signed me up for Focus on the Family.  While I appreciate the thought, it seems that particular group is more concerned with fighting culture wars than for fighting to proclaim the message of Jesus Christ, which is that everyone has fallen short of God's standard, you will be judged impartially (meaning: you are not getting off the hook for anything), and now is the time to repent and believe in Christ as your perfect substitutionary sacrifice.

What does that have to do with a movie review?  Not once did it mention anything about God, or Jesus, or why any of the things present in the movie are objectionable.  If I can't tell whether this was written by a Mormon, a Christian, or just a conservative American, then something is not quite right.  We, as believers in our Great Lord Jesus Christ, must be bold for Him, and use whatever opportunity we have to build up our brothers and sisters, to proclaim His Gospel of salvation, and generally let the world know in every way we can that Jesus is coming back - that there's no room for anyone to be complacent.  Steven Isaac, please consider how you are serving the Lord.


Masking-Tape Art, With One Vehement Critic - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com
This is the sort of inanity that most people associate with art and artists.  It seems so much like something out of a bad parody that I wonder if it isn't. 

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’? – Telegraph Blogs
I have no idea how reliable a source this guy is, I'm guessing not entirely reliable, but I'm too lazy to look this up at the moment. 
But you know how the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia got hacked, and their e-mails stolen? 
This blog mentions those.  And they apparently are working to cover up and discredit evidence that disagrees with global warming, as well as those who dare to advocate against the same.  That's not good.  I would like our leaders to make decisions that are based on truth, and that are as just as possible.  This can't happen when special interests lie to us.


Idolatry on Sunday Mornings, Pt. 1 | Worship Matters
This is a great blog series.  I recommend it.

Songwriting
And this is a great series of free MP3s about writing songs to glorify God.

Lastly, this bizarre video, which I saw as an advertisement somewhere:

Rental Goats Clear Brush Better, Beat Cosmonauts in Space Race | GOOD
Look at the picture, too.  I'd love to use goats for clearing brush, if I had any to clear. 

Israel: Photos show Iran link to arms - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com
There are photos proving the arms shipped to Hezbollah came from Iran.  Big surprise.

Report: Blackwater OK’d plan to bribe Iraqis - Conflict in Iraq- msnbc.com
Remember when they killed some people randomly?  They tried to bribe their problems away. 

Is Saying Sorry Better than Prison? | GOOD

Instead of sending kids who commit assault, theft, or “motoring offences” to a prison, the government sends them to a meeting. There, the young troublemaker is asked to give an account of the offense, and the victim, who is usually present, is invited to ask questions and describe the effects of the crime. Then they decide, together, with the help of a professional coordinator, on a “plan” to make things right. This usually means doing unpaid restorative work and giving a face-to-face apology.

More than 5,500 meetings between victims and offenders have taken place in Northern Ireland since 2003…. Some 38% of 10 to 17 year olds participating in the scheme in Northern Ireland in 2006 re-offended within a year, compared to 71% of those given custodial terms. The percentage of those re-offending where restorative justice was used instead of a prosecution was 28%.

In a report, the PRT said many victims were found to prefer the experience of participating in a restorative justice meeting to attending court.

It's cheaper than jail, establishes justice, the criminals are less likely to re-offend (and they also have to see the effects of their crime), and victims like it better.  Is there a better system than this?  And if not, what are we using?


Gas Loss | GOOD
According to this, cars only use about 15% of the gas for moving the car and running systems like AC.  The rest is mostly wasted. 

‘Slow money’ gains momentum - Giving- msnbc.com
This sort of thing usually irks me, but investing money in your own community, and knowing who you've invested in, personally, and being able to walk in and check on them, and help them out if need be - that sounds like a pretty good thing to me. 

10-day China package from $888 - Deals- msnbc.com
This is a ridiculous deal.  Airfare and lodging is included. 

The Truth About 2012 Doomsday Hype | LiveScience
I'll bet they will say nothing particularly surprising to most of you.  Such as: the Mayans have no idea what you're scared of, and this whole thing is new to them.

Penn Museum - Penn Museum's Year 2012 Prediction
If you don't entirely trust Livescience (not a bad idea), here's an expert in ancient Mayan writing.

"The Maya made calculations spanning millions of years and the 5,200-year cycle that ends in 2012 is a rather short one. The date itself is mentioned only once in all the many thousands of Maya inscriptions, where it is used as an arbitrary anchor date for the matters under discussion and not associated with any particular prophesy. We know that the Maya believed in a world after 2012 since they mention events set well beyond this, with an inscription at Palenque, Mexico, describing one in the year 4772."

Imagine that.  Their calendar has arbitrary dates. 

The Year 1000 - Hachette Book Group
I would like to read this book.

As the Shadow of the Millennium Descended Across England and Christendom, it Seemed as if the World was About to End. Actually, it was Only the Beginning... Welcome to the Year 1000. This is What Life was Like. How clothes were fastened in a world without buttons, p.10 The rudiments of medieval brain surgery, p.124 The first millennium's Bill Gates, p.192 How dolphins forecasted weather, p.140 The recipe for a medieval form of Viagra, p.126 Body parts a married woman had to forfeit if she committed adultery, p.

Smart.fm
It's a site where you can learn a lot of different things, with built-in review sessions at intervals.  It has a lot of language stuff.  Want to learn Japanese?  There's plenty there.  Chinese has a fair showing, too.  Lots of others. 

Roadside Geology Series - Geology Underfoot - GEOLOGY.com
I remember my dad having the one for Arizona.  I liked that book, though I doubt I learned much from it.  heheh.

Hideous Rodent May Provide Cure For Cancer | Popular Science
Trust nothing from Popular Science.  If I told them I'd found a toothpaste that mostly prevents cavities, they'd lead their article with something like, "Keep Your Teeth Until 300?"
All the same, I didn't know naked mole rats were immune to cancer, or that they obeyed their queen.  I should probably look somewhere more reputable before I trust those "facts". 


How debit cards fleece consumers - MSN Money
They aren't treated the same as credit cards, because it's just your money, not theirs.  There are also plenty of fees.  Yay.

Banks punish perfect customers- Top Stocks - MSN Money
How surprising.  The rich oppress the poor so that they may become even richer.  This by no means is the worst of their examples, and if you're fortunate to be a good customer you're probably not that poor.  "Those filthy poor people barely deserve to have a bank account at all - they have so much trouble holding onto money, that we should do them a favor by taking as much of it as we can in fees and incomprehensible loans, an dputting it to a better use...on ourselves," would perhaps describe the attitude of the banks.  I am reminded of this:

They sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor
as upon the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed. 
(Amos 2:6-7)
Do you think that God does not see, or that He will not judge? 

Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Have Jewish Roots? | Foreign Policy
I'm not sure that it matters, but it would be ironic.


Billions in aid never reached Pakistan army - Pakistan - msnbc.com
Apparently, of the 6.6 billion we gave Pakistan to fund its army (which was supposed to be fighting al-Qeada or whatever else), only $500 million actually went to it.  The rest was misused.  And the Pentagon and our government don't care.


Is Afghanistan the New Africa? | Foreign Policy
Is our money really improving things?


Finally, an interesting quote from the days when it was still cool to burn living widows on their dead husband's funeral pyres in India:

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
- General Napier

Dwarves found 'theme park' commune to escape bullying - Telegraph
Only in China. I guess in the old days they said "only in America", but we can't compete with this.

Farmer's daughter disarms terrorist and shoots him dead with AK47 - Telegraph
Terrorists break into her house, beat her father, and what does she do? She runs at them with an axe, hits one, takes his gun, shoots him, then shoots at the others (and hits one). All without ever having fired a shot before. Brave girl.

Think Again: Lawrence of Arabia | Foreign Policy

Afghanistan is a mess. Suicide bombs are still going off in Iraq. Is nation-building doomed to failure? It's time to consult the original insurgent, T.E. Lawrence.

Yup, he seemed to know what he was doing, maybe we should finally listen to him?

Mom ordered to stop baby-sitting friends’ kids - Parenting & Family
Because by watching her friends' kids as they wait for the bus, as far as the state of Michigan is concerned, she is running an illegal daycare.

Homeless sex offenders ordered out of woods - Crime & courts- msnbc.com
This seems like a pretty foreseeable consequence of prohibiting child molesters from living anywhere near anywhere children might possibly go. Not that I particularly like them, but God has made them in His image, too, and we are called to stand for justice. This isn't right.
Also, having a bunch of perverts living in the woods, somewhat supervised, just seems like a bad idea.

This girl sings songs in English/Hebrew, and she's pretty good. I assume she's a Hebrew Christian. I'd love to sing some of these songs, too, but no one here in Taiwan knows any Hebrew (including me), so it'd be a little weird.
Still, it's nice.

Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty : The New Yorker

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

It's long, but well worth reading. It appears that Texas relied more on machismo, gut feelings, and the hokey-pokey instead of due process, science, and reliable investigators. So they killed an innocent man. After making him spend ~15 years in prison. After his children were killed in the fire. Which he was blamed for, along with wanting to murder them. And his wife left him while he was in prison.
Way to kick a man when he's down, Texas.
This is not good. If you ever have power over another man's life, be very sure you have the right to take it. We all answer to God in the end.

People of Walmart
On a less horrifying note, here's something I found from my sister. People of Walmart. If you are not an American, this is the sort of thing you can see in America. I don't care which picture it is, you can see this sort of thing almost anywhere, if you're lucky.
I love my country, and I try to love people the same way God does, but...sometimes it's harder. If they just look crazy, or are poor, or whatever, hey, I've done that, and that's nothing much. We are the same to God. It's the ones who are crazy with attitude that are harder to love. The arrogant ones. And yet I know God loves them, too. My Savior is far more amazing than I could ever hope.
Anyway, it's picture of people (and their things) at Walmart.

Pigeon beats Net firm in data transfer race

Bird with card strapped to leg triumphs in 50-mile South African showdown

I'd believe that.

U.S. student kills burglar with samurai sword
And it sounds like he knew how to use it, too - he took the guy's hand off in addition to slashing his neck.

Unguided, we really do go in circles, study finds

Just as pop­u­lar wis­dom holds, peo­ple try­ing to walk a straight course through un­fa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry end up walk­ing in cir­cles, ac­cord­ing to a new stu­dy.

That's too bad, huh?

Cities work much like brains, study finds
The bigger and more complex the city/brain, the more, and better, connections it needs. Pay attention, city of Atlanta! All of America, for that matter.

Masked speeder stymies Arizona police - Crime & courts- msnbc.com
Sounds like the typical guy trying, pathetically, to get out of paying fines for speeding. Except he points this out:

VonTesmar, who said he simply drives with the flow of traffic, said if DPS does have surveillance photos of him on the road, it proves he's not a danger to other drivers. If he was, DPS would have pulled him over, he said.

Also:

"They're out staking out a guy with a monkey mask?" he said. "They watched him break the law and didn't do anything about it? If they had pulled him over, they could have pulled the mask off. It just proves photo radar is not about safety, it's about money."

And cops wonder why people don't respect them. Or the speed limit. Or the government. If you know you're the one people see most often as representing the government, how do you think you should act?
Of course, Christians have a duty to obey, no matter how stupid the rules (unless they go against what God has commanded); but, even if you're not a Christian, as a citizen of the US, or wherever you find yourself, you should probably obey anyway.

Video: Brazil crime show host 'used murder to boost ratings' - Times Online
Exactly what it sounds like.


A man's home is his constitutional castle. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
This whole thing over Professor Gates is ridiculous.  He shouldn't be excused because of his race, he should be excused because the police had no right to be in his house or arrest him after he identified himself.  Where was probable cause?  Don't we have a Constitution?


Foreign Policy: Working in Hell for $11 a Day
Really interesting article and series of pictures about Indonesian sulpher miners.  Your job might be bad, but you don't have to walk into a volcano whose vapors melt your teeth, or lug twice your body weight in smoking hot rocks up and down a mountain for $11 a day.  But they're glad to have the work!  Really says something about Indonesia, huh?


The powerful and mysterious brain circuitry that makes us love Google, Twitter, and texting. - By Emily Yoffe - Slate Magazine
We love seeking.


The lost world: Doggerland
Not a terrible fantasy novel or alternative history thing.
Thousands of years ago, Britian was not an island, but was connected to France.  All the major rivers fed into one huge lake in the east, which got blocked by ice floes.  The water built up until it finally spilled over in the west, which is presently the English channel.  The whole lake spilled out through there and destroyed everything in its path.  People used to live there.


Yale University Press capitulates to religious extremists. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
Remember those cartoons about Mohammad?  Yale published a book about the controversy, but took the cartoons out for fear of offending Muslims and being responsible for causing bloodshed.  The author of this article rightly points out that the Muslims themselves are responsible if they start killing people for infantile reasons. 


Cops Use Old Brink's Truck to Shame Suspects - WSJ.com
Park a giant, ugly truck packed with surveillance devices near a problem house (drug activity, gang activity, whatever).  Suspects quiet down, behave, or move out pretty quickly.  It's legal because the street is government property!  This seems like a pretty good solution, if it continues to work.


Crayfish Poaching Has Fishermen Boiling, but Thieves Are Hard to Trap - WSJ.com
I had no idea anyone even wanted to poach crawfish.  That's a shame.  I like crawfish.  Finding those critters under rocks was one of my favorite things when I was little. 

Typhoons Trigger Slow Earthquakes
Because Taiwan gets hit so regularly and so hard, small earthquakes are triggered which prevent huge ones from building up. 

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Clever rooks repeat ancient fable
There's a worm floating in a glass of water.  It can't be reached.  So it puts stones in the glass until the water level is high enough.  Smart birds, huh?


Allway Sync: Free File Synchronization, Backup, Data Replication, PC Sync Software, Freeware, File Sync, Data Synchronization Software
This works really well.  I tried using Microsoft's Synctoy for a while, but it has some problems.  This is much more reliable.

This is, "In His Time", the Chinese version. The words are fine, but the singing is...very Chinese.

Analysts: Tweaks May Not Save Congress’ Failed Foreclosure Fix - ProPublica

The Hope for Homeowners program was created by Congress last summer to help an estimated 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure. But it could more aptly be called the Hope for A Homeowner program, given that just one has used it successfully since its October launch.

Yup, only one person in America has been helped.


Magnets in ant antennae work as internal GPS - Discovery.com- msnbc.com
They pick up bits of magnetic material from the ground.

Grand juries cite Obama for ineligibility, treason
The WorldNetDaily seems like a somewhat unreliable publication. Still, Obama needs to prove beyond doubt that he is qualified to be President. It's a simple matter that he needs to take care of, or he's going to have this problem with him for a long time. And if he's not qualified to be President, we need to know sooner rather than later.


Are Too Many People Going to College? — The American, A Magazine of Ideas
"America’s university system is creating a class-riven nation. There has to be a better way."
I agree. It used to be everyone recognized that being a college graduate didn't make you smart - lots of smart people did their jobs well without ever going to college. Now, though, if you don't gradaute, you're seen as a second-class citizen - someone who's just not as smart, hardworking, or responsible as those who do make it through. I have news for you if you do believe that: I was not at all hardworking - in fact, I rarely read any of the books I was assigned, and frequently did my work poorly or not at all, yet managed to graduate college without much trouble. Being a college graduate should not equal employability and respect. Not having a college degree excludes too many people from jobs that they are eminently qualified to perform.


Foreign Policy: The Revenge of Geography
Robert Kaplan has written an article about why geography matters. I like it, and think it is probably helpful.


Ray Kurzweil Wants to Be a Robot | Newsweek Technology | Newsweek.com
His ideas are interesting, and he has a lot of followers, but the part that got my attention was at the end, where he voices his hope that he will be able to

bring his father back to life by getting DNA from his father's grave site and using a swarm of nanobots to create a new body that is "indistinguishable from the original person." He'll dig up all of his father's old letters and other materials, and download them along with his own memories into an artificial-intelligence program to create a "virtual person."

That's really sad.


Robot warriors will get ethics guide - Discovery.com- msnbc.com
These guys are trying to teach robots when to shoot, in an ethical way. Good idea, scary implications.

Cloud nine (Tensegrity sphere) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It's a giant floating city, as envisioned by Buckminster Fuller. Is it doable? I have no idea. I'm no physicist. I'd be a little worried about living in a bubble that depended on differing air temperatures to float, though - poke a hole in it, and it will fall. Or you could screw with them by heating the place with a laser, and watch it ascend uncontrollably. Heheh.


Amazon.com: Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, Available in Various Sizes: Apparel
The comments on this thread are priceless.

This next video is weird, but interesting. Thanks, Brandon!

The Sahara Forest Project: A proposal for ameliorating the effects and causes of climate change
This sounds crazy, but it's a very workable, practical, and cheap way to do terraforming, by building greenhouses cooled and humidified by seawater. The greenhouses will not only grow crops, but the evaporated seawater will come down somewhere as precipitation, and the higher humidity in the area of any of these greenhouses will enable a lot more plants to survive near them. With enough of these, you could even restore vegetation to parts of the Sahara, or any other dry place in the world. They also plan to put some of these in below-sea-level depressions, so that pumping the water will cost nothing in terms of energy - and they also want to build solar collectors alongside these projects, to power the farms, the villages that will spring up around them, and anyone nearby (or even far away) who wants power. That part will be much more expensive, of course, and I'm not sure putting it right next to all that humidity would be the most efficient thing to do, but hey, it's not my project. Very cool. I'd love to build one of these.

A woman's quest to erase a past that won't die - Sexual health- msnbc.com
This is a nonsense post about a man who had a sex change, and wants to be left alone.  It's actually pretty self-pitying and sad.

Frank Partnoy's The Match King. - By Sam Kean - Slate Magazine
The people had a villian to blame during the Great Depression, but he sounds like he was a pretty good guy. 

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
I posted a link a few weeks ago about this suspect statistic, in which the author claimed that you could buy rocket launchers, grenades, and etc. in American gun shops, which is nonsense. 
It turns out that this statistic is true - in a statistically true way.  There are roughly 30,000 guns confiscated per year in Mexico.  Of this number, 11,000 were sent to the FBI to be traced, and of this number, about 6,000 were traceable.  Only 5,114 were traced, last year, from the U.S., so 5114/6000 is nearly 90 percent.
But of the guns confiscated, this is only 17%, and this would be rifles, semi-automatics, and pistols - dangerous, but hardly the favored weapons of terrorists, militants, and drug-runners.  They prefer machine guns, after all, and grenades.  These come from elsewhere.
This whole "90 percent of Mexico's guns come from the U.S." story sounds like a pretty stupid push to ban more guns here.  If you don't like guns, that's fine, but please be honest in what you say.  When you lie, or misrepresent the truth, it makes crazy, paranoid people look like they're prescient and wise, and that is the last thing anyone should want.  Encouraging people to hate and fear the government doesn't seem healthy.  Nor, if you are a Christian, is that allowable - we are to honor and serve our government, no matter how bad, as best we can while following God.  And we are to love all people - even if you think they are crazy and dangerous. 

U.S. Warns China, Other Countries Not to Ban Pork
More political nonsense.  China has been itching to do this, so now that there's "swine flu", which, oddly, is not being passed by pigs, they are banning pork.  An easy misunderstanding, if it were one. 

Amid swine flu outbreak, racism goes viral - Swine flu- msnbc.com
This never occurred to me, but I guess it should have.  Mexicans are all to blame for swine flu, especially ilegal immigrants and their filthy, wretched ways.  Fortunately, I think there will be no culls of potential carriers which happen to be Mexicans.  Or at least I sure hope that doesn't happen. 

Foreign Policy: The Land of No Smiles
It's a small collection of photos taken secretly in North Korea.  Very interesting.

True blue: Afghan lakes become national park - Afghanistan- msnbc.com
This place is beautiful.  Google it. 


Ex-rebel: Tamil Tigers killing civilians - Sri Lanka- msnbc.com
I respect the fearlessness of the Tamil Tigers, but man are they screwed up.  They're terrorizing their own people now in an attempt to win the war. 


BBC NEWS | South Asia | Is world's wettest place getting drier?
The wettest place on Earth is supposedly in India.  Or was, until it dried up.  Or maybe it didn't.  It was dry in 2005 and 06.  '07 was normal.  Now is normal.
However, this is not to say that this article is entirely worthless.  It does point out that it's been hotter, and there is a very real threat of loss of topsoil and of desertification, as most of the trees have been cut down, and the rains will easily strip the land of its soil without vegetation to hold it back.  I just wish people weren't such irresponsible fear-mongers.  There is a real problem here, but it is not whether or not this is the wettest place on Earth.  It is that the people there are altering their land in a way that will damage it irreversibly.  This is a big problem all over the world, and not just India.


Radical Ways to Cool the Planet | Newsweek International Edition | Newsweek.com
And on the subject of climate change, there's this.  I've heard of pumping gasses into the atmosphere before, to cool or heat it, or whatever - it's pretty common if you've ever read any sci-fi that involves terraforming - but what's worrisome is something I didn't think about.  This is an easy solution.  No problem with that.  Anyone can do it, even relatively middling nations, because it is cheap, and because only one player has to act.  That's great, too - that means we don't need everyone's cooperation. 
The problem is that the nations that feel hardest hit by global warming - say, China, or India, or...who knows? - may feel inclined to go ahead without consulting anyone, and in a haphazard, reckless way.  This could give us the opposite climate problem, or could even be used as a weapon.  If done foolishly, this could potentially starve millions of people.  Not good.


The Rape of Solomon's Song
This is by John MacArthur.  He argues that the way many pastors today teach the Song of Solomon is wrong and does not honor God - that it is only about being shocking and crude, and attempts to ascertain what each image is describing, and saying that not only is that permissible, but is ordained by God.  Obviously that would be wrong, because what God wants He has made pretty clear, and what we are allowed is made pretty clear.  We don't need secret knowledge and decoders to figure it out.  Anyway, read it and see what you think.


Spurgeon and the Down-Grade Controversy
This is something I haven't finished reading, but would like to.  Maybe soon!

End the University as We Know It - The New York Times
It's an interesting article.  You'll have to log in to read it, though.

Did Pentagon lose billions, pennies at a time? - Capitol Hill- msnbc.com
Yes.  And it has known of the problem for 40 years.  And it does not care to change.

There Goes the Neighborhood: A Fight Over Defining 'Blight' - WSJ.com
Remember how the Supreme Court said the government could take your land for any damn reason it felt like?  There was justifiable outrage over that, and most states added laws to their books that would make this illegal - except, unfortunately, in the case of blight, which is undefined, and can mean almost anything.  If you have a decent, livable, affordable house in an area that has been defined as "blighted", or if the government decides "blight" means "an area that doesn't pay much tax", guess what?  You're screwed.

The Case for a Federalism Amendment - WSJ.com
Lastly, there is yet a way to restrain the Federal Government before it ruins us all.  Make an amendment for federalism - in other words, restore to the states the power they were meant to have. It seems pretty doable, and isn't something the President can mess with, nor is it something Congress can just ignore. 



Food Time!

JO GOLDENBERG’S PARISIAN BAGELS
Supposedly the best bagels you'll ever make.  I would love to test that!

Granola Recipe : Alton Brown : Food Network
Supposedly the best granola you'll ever taste.  This sounds good, too.

Yogurt Recipes - The New York Times
Yogurt.  I like yogurt.

5 Expert Grilling Tips - Better Holiday Cookouts - delish.com
I also like grilling.  There are actually a couple useful tips here.  I suspected this things were true, but it's always nice to have confirmation.

House Dust Yields Clue to Asthma - Roaches - NYTimes.com
Some crazy scientist decided to study what's actually in people's houses, giving them allergies, and found it was bits of roach.  Cleanliness is important!


Brain Power - Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory - Series - NYTimes.com
This is simultaneously creepy and awesome.  Pro: perhaps memory can be improved with this drug.  Con: your memories can be erased.  Some people think erasing bad memories would be beneficial, but I disagree.  How would we know what to avoid, what to work for, if we didn't have our memories of how things were?


Category:Nephila pilipes - Wikimedia Commons
I've been meaning to show a picture of one of the spiders we've got here in Taiwan.  These things are huge - when they walk on the wood of my closet, I can hear their feet thumping softly. 

http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Araneomorphi
You can also see some more pictures if you click here:
Nephila


Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot
This is something I've been meaning to link to for a while.  The government tells us to greatly fear these people...but...I think we should be more concerned about them harming themselves.


Oh, and something somewhat related:
Why hasn't America been attacked since 9/11? - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine
A series of eight essays, proposing different reasons why we haven't been attacked, ranging from the "terrorists are idiots" theory, all the way to "they don't need to right now - they are waiting until they can do the most possible damage again."

World's lightest material made into muscle - Discovery.com- msnbc.com


Lightweight metallic glass is strong as steel - Discovery.com- msnbc.com


Videogame craving may rev up brain's addiction circuits


Report: cells "from space" have unusual makeup


Dolphins and the evolution of teaching


Drug may trick body into "thinking" you worked out


Tit-for-tat: birds found to repay wartime help


Dip in brainpower may follow drop in real power


A function for "gay genes" after all?


Stem cell recipe gets even simpler
A new re­port in­di­cates one chem­i­cal can con­vert stem cells from adult mice in­to the de­sired type.


Google's kinship with the mind


Schizophrenia reassessed as fixation on self


On to Z! Quirky regional dictionary nears finish - Life- msnbc.com
It's a dictionary of regional American words and phrases. I'm excited about the online version - if it weren't for the promise of that, I'd probably order a set of these books.



Face Research » Demos » Make An Average
Combine faces to make them more "average". Apparently combining even ugly people's faces makes the "average" look better!


Spotify – A world of music. Instant, simple and free
It looks pretty good, but it's only available in Europe right now. Too bad.


This is why you're fat.
"Where dreams become heart attacks"
Pictures of food that is "deliciously gross", like Deep Fried Guacamole


40% of coma patients in a ‘vegetative state’ may be misdiagnosed, says a new report - Times Online

Mosquito laser gun offers new hope on malaria - Times Online

'Please help me,' Taliban hostage begs - World Blog - msnbc.com

Woman converts to Islam after 9/11, sets up a website to "provide an alternative voice to Western media", leaves for Pakistan to do some freelance journalism about a town hit by a drone strike, against everyone's better judgement and advice, and then is taken captive. Now she's made a video saying she will be killed by the Taliban unless $2 million is paid by the end of the month. If nothing is done, she says, "the responsibility of this will be on somebody's shoulders. I have done nothing wrong. Help me and save my life."
Three scenarios seem possible:
1. Her Taliban co-religionists do not feel especially obliged to treat her as their fellow Muslim, and she is stupid for what she did, but is telling the truth.
2. She is working with the Taliban to try to get money
3. She is not a Muslim at all, but someone with very poor reasoning skills, and the Taliban know this. Maybe they are trying to get money, maybe she's just been trying to get attention. Or maybe she's trying to get money. Whatever.
What's really frustrating about this is that even people like this, God has commanded us to love. That's hard. I guess I have a ways to go yet.


Brain cell type found to differ between man and mouse
If you know what an astrocyte is, this is exciting news: they don't do nothing. They actually do send signals, using calcium. And our brains are full of them. Time for more study!


Collective rituals spur support for suicide attacks: researchers
This study suggests that people who are more involved in their religious communities are more likely to support self-sacrificial efforts...and in the case of Jews and Muslims, to support suicide attacks.

Road Map for Financial Recovery: Radical Transparency Now!
Good article from Wired about how to prevent future problems.

Internal Bacterial Imbalance Leads to Asthma | Wired Science from Wired.com

Without Tears, Is There Still Sadness? | Wired Science from Wired.com
Scientists removed tears from photos of sad people. Without the tears, people couldn't tell they were sad.

Wired 14.10: START - Boost Your Life the Urawaza Way
Little tips and tricks for making life easier for less money. I actually read a better article about it, but couldn't find it again.

Depiction, Inc.
It's like Google maps, if Google maps had an option that said, "destroy the city and see what happens."

Get a Personal Loan or Invest Money - Peer-to-Peer Lending - Lending Club
You can borrow or lend money directly, and either pay less interest, or get more interest paid to you, than you would be going through a middleman (like the banks). Might be a good idea, seeing how responsible those guys are.


Cooperation Beats Selfishness, at Least in Theory | Wired Science from Wired.com
It's a no-brainer, but this is the part I thought was interesting:

The key, suggests Helbing's simulation, is mobility and imitation. When individuals are free to choose their associates and smart enough to imitate their success, cooperation emerges, then flourishes — and it doesn't take much to start the process.

Scientists Identify Bacteria That Increase Plant Growth
Put special bacteria on the plants, and they grow faster.

Why is the United States backing Mexican drug gangs? | The Argument
The author makes a good point that most of the drug war problems in Mexico are our fault - Mexico's government is doing all it can to fight, and we're not doing our part. I agree, and have for some time.
But - she says this:

Yet the arms that cartels can and do buy from the open U.S. market -- completely illegally -- leave Mexico's police force and even its military outgunned. There are nearly 7,000 gun shops along the southern U.S. border, about three for every mile. They sell thousands of hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK-47s, and "cop killer" guns and bullets that cut through Kevlar body armor.

She was rightly torn apart for this statement, as no legal gun shop in America can sell any of those things (except "cop-killer bullets", to which one poster replied, "(Is it) some sort of modern variant of the vampire killing silver/garlic alloy bullet made famous in Hollywood vampire flicks? You mean that cops are somehow protected by black magic powers and they are impervious to regular bullets that can kill ordinary people? Gee, if that's true, I wanna be a cop too!"). Alright, so she's irresponsible and sloppy, or a liar. Then she posted this reply:

I do incorrectly imply in the article that gun shops on the border sell hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The border gun shops do not legally sell these. However, these type of weapons used by Mexican drug cartels have been seized by customs officlas making their way south through the border. How they are purchased is somewhat unknown, but many of these are making their way to Mexico through the United States.

She was rightly torn apart for this, too - making a statement that gun shops sell illegal weapons is not at all the same as implying they do.
It's disappointing that the author is supposedly a credible researcher, and that the article is published in Foreign Policy, which is supposedly a credible magazine.