Science and technology links
The funniest blog post (or is that meta-blog post?) ever. (Do read the comments.)
The Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint™ presentation. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech as a PowerPoint™ presentation.
Natural selection explains why there are more jocks than nerds in the world.
Humans are part virus.
Study estimates there were only about 18,500 breeding pairs of humans 1.2million years ago.
About reproductive technology and it's implications for family structure.
Fermentation may have been the reason we started cultivating plants. More.
About how we enjoy music.
About eating and exercising more randomly and with greater variation (pdf).
A website that tells you how many people are in space right now. The Obama Administration wants to commercialise space, the Republicans prefer the government monopoly.
About the biological basis of human compassion: that compassion is grounded in human nature would hardly have been a surprise to Adam Smith, author of The Theory of the Moral Sentiments. Studying how power creates forms of mind-blindness.
Suggesting that shouting at the cosmos is not a clever idea.
About a study that false confessions to crimes are much more common than one might expect.
A surfer dude with no academic affiliation has published what may be a breakthrough physics paper. (One not good for string theory.)
Really cool picture illustrating design problem with windfarms.
About internet obsession in China:
But in China’s rigid, hypercompetitive society, the Internet explosion represents more than a disciplinary annoyance. It is seen as an existential threat. And that helps explain why treating kids with supposed Internet addiction has become a national obsession.
Rating economic blogs by their scholarly impact.
Reminding us of how wrong predictions about technology can be. Inteview with Jaron Lanier being pessimistic about where the internet has gone.
There is likely to be a really nasty earthquake and tsunami in the West Coast of North America’s future.
China is apparently being quite successful in developing anti-missile technology.
The US Navy’s latest ship is an aluminium trimaran which can do 45 knots and has range of 3,500 nautical miles: it looks sexy.
The US Air Force is developing killer micro-drones.
Looking at the energy expenditure of different types of transit systems: mass transit is not nearly as energy efficient as people assume.
More things scientists say from the archives of the NYT.
Study finds that blondes are more aggressive and determined to get their way than brunettes or redheads. Actually, the study found something quite different.
Study finds that being raised by two parents is not significantly affected by whether the parents are of the same-sex. Study finds that stepdads do as well or better at parenting than biological fathers.
Pointing that technology may change, politics not so much. South Australia wants to control internet comment on its State election.
A nice takedown of homeopathy:
Homeopathy is actually based on 18th century wishful thinking that water will somehow remember substances that it had previous contact with (but will forget the countless effluent that it has passed through). That a 10 billion year old water molecule will remember everything it has touched flies in the face of all known science and is an insult to any thinking person. Sincere people with medical needs buy homeopathic remedies only because they masquerade as being something more than mere sugar pills.
They are an insult to the herbal remedies on the shelf next to them at Boots; at least snake-oil has the decency to contain some snake.
The Lancet publishes a study which blames the Jews for Palestinian wife-beating. About the money trail.
The Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint™ presentation. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech as a PowerPoint™ presentation.
Natural selection explains why there are more jocks than nerds in the world.
Humans are part virus.
Study estimates there were only about 18,500 breeding pairs of humans 1.2million years ago.
About reproductive technology and it's implications for family structure.
Fermentation may have been the reason we started cultivating plants. More.
About how we enjoy music.
About eating and exercising more randomly and with greater variation (pdf).
A website that tells you how many people are in space right now. The Obama Administration wants to commercialise space, the Republicans prefer the government monopoly.
About the biological basis of human compassion: that compassion is grounded in human nature would hardly have been a surprise to Adam Smith, author of The Theory of the Moral Sentiments. Studying how power creates forms of mind-blindness.
Suggesting that shouting at the cosmos is not a clever idea.
About a study that false confessions to crimes are much more common than one might expect.
A surfer dude with no academic affiliation has published what may be a breakthrough physics paper. (One not good for string theory.)
Really cool picture illustrating design problem with windfarms.
About internet obsession in China:
But in China’s rigid, hypercompetitive society, the Internet explosion represents more than a disciplinary annoyance. It is seen as an existential threat. And that helps explain why treating kids with supposed Internet addiction has become a national obsession.
Rating economic blogs by their scholarly impact.
Reminding us of how wrong predictions about technology can be. Inteview with Jaron Lanier being pessimistic about where the internet has gone.
There is likely to be a really nasty earthquake and tsunami in the West Coast of North America’s future.
China is apparently being quite successful in developing anti-missile technology.
The US Navy’s latest ship is an aluminium trimaran which can do 45 knots and has range of 3,500 nautical miles: it looks sexy.
The US Air Force is developing killer micro-drones.
Looking at the energy expenditure of different types of transit systems: mass transit is not nearly as energy efficient as people assume.
More things scientists say from the archives of the NYT.
Study finds that blondes are more aggressive and determined to get their way than brunettes or redheads. Actually, the study found something quite different.
Study finds that being raised by two parents is not significantly affected by whether the parents are of the same-sex. Study finds that stepdads do as well or better at parenting than biological fathers.
Pointing that technology may change, politics not so much. South Australia wants to control internet comment on its State election.
A nice takedown of homeopathy:
Homeopathy is actually based on 18th century wishful thinking that water will somehow remember substances that it had previous contact with (but will forget the countless effluent that it has passed through). That a 10 billion year old water molecule will remember everything it has touched flies in the face of all known science and is an insult to any thinking person. Sincere people with medical needs buy homeopathic remedies only because they masquerade as being something more than mere sugar pills.
They are an insult to the herbal remedies on the shelf next to them at Boots; at least snake-oil has the decency to contain some snake.
The Lancet publishes a study which blames the Jews for Palestinian wife-beating. About the money trail.