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.