Behavior

Nice guys do finish first, study confirms - Behavior- msnbc.com
At least when you're playing prisoner's dilemma under certain conditions where punishing people costs you. Still, nice to know.


Do three-strikes laws make criminals more violent? - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine
Yes. After all, if you're going to jail forever for your next crime, would you rather it was for jaywalking or pulling off a huge bank heist?


Clueless Guys Can't Read Women | LiveScience
"More often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on, and a new study discovers why: Guys are clueless."
And before you guess it's because most guys are horny, they also misinterpret actual flirting as being friendly. So actually, most of us just aren't sure what's going on most of the time.


Western and Asian observers judge facial expressions differently - International Herald Tribune
As you probably will guess, it's all about context for those crazy Asians. If one person is happy and everyone around him is not, Asians tend to rate his happiness lower than if he were alone. The reverse is true of Westerners. Well, ok, not the reverse. If you're really happy and everyone around you isn't, that doesn't mean you should be even more happy. That'd be silly. It's just the people around the person aren't taken into account as being part of that person's emotions.



Science


When Life Goes Cloudy - Olivia Judson - Evolution - Opinion - New York Times Blog
Some things actually do live in clouds. Warning: the author has a rather overblown writing style.


Scientist wins prize for 'virtual water' - Innovation- msnbc.com
He figured a way to include all the water that goes into a process or product. That's pretty handy, but why is this only now being recognized?


Growth hormone doesn't boost athletic abilities - Fitness- msnbc.com
Bad news for bodybuilders.


Food

Could we really run out of food? - MSN Money
The answer: we probably won't, but a lot of other people are screwed. Like everyone in North Korea.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | N Korea's food crisis 'worsening'
And this time it's not just the peasants.


Study: Corn ethanol will worsen 'dead zone' - LiveScience- msnbc.com
Hooray! In addition to making more people starve, driving up the price of gas, and driving up the price of food, ethanol produced from corn will create a bigger dead zone than ever before in the Gulf!
Thank you Congress.



Islam

Outrage over cartoons still trying for Danes - International Herald Tribune
Round two. Some more genius Muslims decided to prove to the world that they were being slandered - that they are not violent - by trying to murder one of their critics.
Fortunately, they were caught. And in a show of solidarity, all the Danish newspapers too cowardly to print those infamous cartoons last time around are now printing them. Naturally, this has been followed by more inane calls to violence.


And speaking of silliness...


China

Foreign nations support China's handling of Lhasa riot_English_Xinhua
Xinhua is always good for a laugh. Yes, it is true that some foreign countries have approved of shooting protesters for the crime of wanting foreign occupiers out. Those include such luminaries as Russia, Belarus, and Vietnam. Actually, that is the entirety of the list. The others are all very vague, noncommittal attempts not to anger the Chinese.


Tibetans mourn five young women who died in riot_English_Xinhua
More reliable Xinhua news. I feel kind of bad about posting this one, because it really is very sad. It's about six girls - they took shelter in their shop to hide from protesters. The protesters set fire to the shop. Five of the girls were burned alive. Only one escaped.
That is horrific, and sad. I cannot approve of that. It's perfectly justified to fight against those who oppress you, but killing people like those girls is inexcusable.
Of course, it is Xinhua, so it never mentions why the protesters are angry, or how many of them have died. It only mentions the pure, good, Chinese girls burnt to death by an angry crowd of Tibetans. And for that I despise them even more. Using those girls' deaths like that is disgusting.

And speaking of those riots...
I hadn't expected to, but I now have some respect for Nanci Pelosi.
Visiting Dalai Lama, U.S. House speaker denounces Chinese oppression - International Herald Tribune
If she's willing to meet with the guy, even though she knows how much that'll piss off the Chinese, that says something about her convictions. Or her lack of responsibility. It could be either...but I'm hoping it's the former.
She said, "If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China's oppression and (sic) China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world."


BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | New Chinese rules on Dalai Lama
You know those silly Buddhists aren't sufficiently loyal to Marxism, so of course the People's Republic must choose their religious leader for them. Yes, their power extends so far that they can choose who the Dalia Lama will reincarnate as. Simply amazing.

Japanese fire pianist_English_Xinhua

Just weird.

Japanese fire pianist_English_Xinhua
Xinhua is almost totally unreliable. But the picture is like you might imagine. (He is not losing his job).


Woman sits on boyfriend's toilet for 2 years - More health news- msnbc.com
You might've seen this already. Pretty damn strange. Her skin grew around the toilet seat.


Burned alive for not washing feet U.S. Reuters
Yeah, so this bride was unhappy with her new husband. They fought a lot, drank a lot to forget the fighting, and he had the misfortune of forgetting to wash his feet before getting in bed. So she set his sheets on fire.



China


China slams U.S. human rights record - China- msnbc.com
Because they aren't happy that we called them mean.
Guess what?

"The invasion of Iraq by U.S. troops has produced the biggest human rights tragedy and the greatest humanitarian disaster in the modern world," the council said in its report.

You mean, aside from the murderous repression in Burma, the genocide in Darfur, and the preventable deaths of millions of Koreans from starvation and work camps? Or aside from the occupation of Tibet, in which, as you read this, soldiers are shooting protesters?
And on smaller tragedies, what about the occupation of Xinjiang? In both Tibet and Xinjiang the people are not Chinese, do not wish to be Chinese, and are not allowed to practice their religions, to say nothing of the millions of Christians in China. And then there's the threatened war with Taiwan.



I will grant that the war in Iraq has not gone terribly well, and a lot of people have died. But here's the difference: we're trying to make things better. Even if that's pitiful, at least we're trying. I'm not sure how brutally repressing a people, and crowding them out of their own land with foreign settlers, makes much of anything better.

Anyway, off my soapbox and onto the next thing. For now.



Taiwan elevates aboriginals to downplay Chinese roots International Reuters
I'd noticed when I was there that aboriginals were being fussed over. There really aren't a lot of them, though. I think they should also play up their Japanese and pirate roots, too - after all, they were a Japanese colony for a while, and some famous pirates were based on the island. The mainland never really did govern the place.


Science


Too many distractions get in way of learning - Kids and parenting- msnbc.com
Don't multitask, if you want to remember anything.


Welcome to the Frontier - Home Page
These guys make rocket engines for a living. They decided they needed more space and better facilities, so they bought a decommissioned Atlas-E missile silo. It's still got the blast doors and everything (well, all the structural parts. The nukes are gone, obviously). It's pretty cool.


Tardigrade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There is a creature that can

survive temperatures close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151°C
(303°F), 1,000 times more radiation than any animal, nearly a decade without
water, and can also survive in a vacuum like that found in space.

Sounds a little scary, right? Fortunately, they are so small you can't even see most of them. They are pretty damn cool if you ask me.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iranian to pay 124,000-rose dowry

BBC NEWS Middle East Iranian to pay 124,000-rose dowry
Men have to pay a dowry to their wives in Iran. They don't have to do it at the wedding, but they do have to give it to her whenever she wants. It's part of the wedding, so if it is not paid, the wedding is not valid.
So this lady decides her husband is a cheapskate - he won't even pay for her coffee when they go out to eat. So she decided it was time to claim her dowry - 124,000 roses. I have no idea why he agreed to that, but, he did. He says he can only pay 5 roses a day; the judge has ruled they must all be given at once, and has seized his apartment until the payment is recieved.


Why do writers pretend to be Indians? - By David Treuer - Slate Magazine
There are a lot of them. And it's sort of pathetic.


NPR: Studies: Iraq Costs US $12B Per Month
Yup, it's expensive.


Immigrants who served U.S. deserve citizenship - MSNBC TV Experts- msnbc.com
This guy is of the opinion that those who fight for us deserve to get citizenship - and not at some distant point in the bureaucratic future eternity, but right damn now. If they are willing to fight and die for us, why would we want to give them trouble?
I, too, think this is a problem.


If only actors can smoke, everyone's an actor - Addictions- msnbc.com
In Minnesota, smoking indoors is illegal - unless you are an actor portraying a part. Then you can smoke. But only in character.
So a lot of bars are having "actors nights," where everyone's a star!
No one is making the employees work where they do, and non-smokers don't have to go there, either. Why is it illegal?
I'm all for this, especially if it encourages people to be creative. It'd be better if everyone respected the law, but it's absurd, so it's better to mock it.


China.


Is China the key to Africa's development? - By Eliza Barclay - Slate Magazine
It's an interesting article. I didn't know it, but should have - there are African traders now living in China.

Taiwan memories fade for China parliament delegates World Reuters
The mainland continues to pretend it rules Taiwan by appointing delgates for Taiwan. Most of them have never been there. I especially liked this one:

"I'm from Wulai," (Chen) said, referring to a rural area outside of Taipei
perhaps better known for its waterfall. "I've been. I took a
photograph."

Yeah, you sound real qualified to speak for those people's concerns.
I liked this part, too:

The delegates used Communist phrases like "socialist market economy" and
"harmonious society", which would sound distinctly out of place in Taiwan, with
its free-wheeling and sometimes chaotic democracy.
(...)
Taiwan reporters attending the delegation's meeting could barely suppress
their giggles at some of the staid answers they received, being more accustomed
to dealing with feisty Taiwanese politicians. "They don't represent us," one Taiwan reporter remarked dismissively of the delegates.

Damn straight. Those guys are crazy. They throw chairs at each other. Each meeting of the Legislative Yuan is more like Jerry Springer than anything else.


China's latest crackdown: The liquid lunch - International Herald Tribune
Drinking obscene amounts of liquor is important for party discipline...or it was, until it wasn't, and now is the time it no longer was ever appropriate. So it's being cracked down on. That's good, I suppose. But man - they're right about that baijiu (白酒) -

"I've never met anybody, even at the heights of alcoholic derangement,
prepared to admit that they actually liked the taste," Clissold wrote of baijiu.
"After drinking it, most people screw up their faces in an involuntary
expression of pain and some even yell out."

Actually, the taste isn't so bad. It isn't good, though, and it is fire-y.



Heroes.

Iraq's 'cult of Chuck Norris' - Conflict in Iraq- msnbc.com
Yeah, looks like not only do our guys like him, but the Iraqis admire him, too. They aren't always sure who he is, though.

He fell from sky, into their hearts - Wonderful World- msnbc.com
I really like this guy. I have to admire him. He got shot down over one of the islands of Papua New Guinea during WW2, and should have died. The place was occupied by the Japanese, he got lost in the jungle, and was starving and sick after several weeks alone. The natives of the island had practiced cannibalism, and no one was sure they didn't still.
He was found by a native tribe - and they saved him. They risked their lives to help him, they nursed him back to health, and they sheltered him for 8 months until he could get away from the island and into Allied territory.
He never forgot them, and he spent the rest of his life building them schools, and trying to improve their quality of life.
I admire this guy.