[links] Link salad is Brian, and so is its wife

[jaylake]

There She Blows! 'Tis the Contract for Moby Dick! - Huh. Cool.

Colon Cancer: Aspirin May Improve Survival in Some - Not sure if I'm in this pool or not.

The Snail Wrangler - Wow. Who knew the intricacies of escargot? (Via my Dad.)

MIT's artificial leaf is ten times more efficient than the real thing - This is seriously cool. (From Lisa Costello

Comments

[autopope]

The Italian seismology trial turns out to have been wildly mis-reported in the English language media.

What they were convicted of seems to have been a conspiracy to deliberately down-play the risks of a major quake, at the behest of local officials (also convicted), without reference to the scientific findings.

Still not fully clear, appeal in progress, etcetera. Just saying it's not as crazy as most of the reporting makes it out to be. "Jailed for not predicting an earthquake" is obvious idiocy;"jailed for conspiring to mislead the public about the probability of an earthquake for business reasons" is a very different story.

[jaylake]

"jailed for conspiring to mislead the public about the probability of an earthquake for business reasons"

I'm not quite sure how I feel about that, either, but you're right, it's a lot less insane than has been represented, at least here in US. Thanks for the clarification!

[pierceheart]

Brought peace!

[madwriter]

>>Conservative Media Ignore GOP Voter Registration Fraud <<

Here in Virginia just north of me, the GOP-employed guy who was caught dumping voter registration forms in a dumpster has thus far gotten off with not even a slap on the wrist because the county GOP office refused to press charges, and the state attorney general doesn't think it's worth an investigation. People around the state are actually having thus far to engage in a letter-writing campaign to get the AG to see if this is a one-time event or more systemic.

[daveraines]

>> Thanks to the GOP's decades-long embrace of theocracy while trolling for votes, Christianity is far more of a danger to the United States than Islam can ever hope to be.

Yeah, and vice-versa: the same entanglement is a danger to Christianity as well. (No, I'm not asking for sympathy .) Did we learn nothing from the French Revolution, among other church-state entanglements?