18
stunning bridges.
Researching
our dreams.
Study finds that France (and Australia) have really good health care systems and US (and UK) don’t,
or something.
Study finds that introducing TV (and soap operas) to rural India
raises the status of women. Study finds that prosperity
tends to increase gender differences in personality. An
apt comment.
About the key researcher behind the Green Revolution who
is still at it: Paradoxically, 1968 also saw the genesis of an environmentalist dogma that was pessimistic about humanity's capacity to feed itself. In that year--when the global population growth rate peaked, at 2 percent per year--Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, intoning, "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. ... Hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs." The madding crowd of "stinking hot" Delhi was odious to Ehrlich: "My wife and daughter and I ... entered a crowded slum area. ... People, people, people, people. ... [We] were, frankly, frightened." It was a "fantasy," he said, that India would ever feed itself. Yet Borlaug's program delivered such stunning results that India issued a 1968 stamp commemorating the "wheat revolution," and by 1974 it was self-sufficient in all cereals.
Nonetheless, a neo-Malthusian fear of overpopulation became endemic to environmentalist thinking. ... "For the catastrophist, India becoming a food exporter was disturbing," he says. "This wasn't supposed to happen. They blame Borlaug for spoiling the fun."
People with life-threatening heart rhythm problems
are more likely to survive at airports and casinos than hospitals. Of course, people at hospitals may tend to be sicker …
What’s the difference between religion and cosmology? Both require you to believe weird things, but the cosmologists ultimately have to provide empirical evidence. A theory that time
may be slowing down and will eventually disappear. Via
arthwollipot.
Arguing that Britain
is doing more normal science but less revolutionary (i.e. path-breaking) science.
China has assembled considerable
cyber war resources.
A UK company offers software
to track what folk are saying about your brand or product on the internet. Then there are companies that
promise to “clean up” your online reputation.