[Signal boosts are awesome.
...zomg, Yahoo! is axing, er, selling Delicious.com!
...And over here on the calm planet, I am looking into my options.
--L.]
- It’s been proven: You’re either a hypocrite or delusional
- A recent set of experiments proves the punishment you dole out to people is always worse than what they did to you.
- Next Up, DOMA
- President Obama tells The Advocate DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) should go too and says his lawyers are looking at a "range of options."
- Foreclosure Scams and Thievery. It just gets worse and worse.
- Dday comments on today's better-late-than-never NY Times story about banks burglarizing houses that they say are in foreclosure:…
"The banks claim that they only do this with vacant homes, in an effort to keep out squatters, but it hasn’t worked out that way. There have even been reports of break-ins on homes where the borrowers are current on their payments."
…I think this story tells itself. But if you haven't been following the details I highly recommend dday's coverage on this over the past few months if you want to catch up. It's an astonishing story. [link]
Meanwhile, the wonks at Naked Capitalism have put together a petition [link] to ask the regulators to do their jobs…
- Border collie takes record for biggest vocabulary
- …a border collie has learned the names of 1022 items, more than any other non-human…
- Solar-Powered Hornet Found; Turns Light Into Electricity
- [National Geographic News]
- True Meaning of the Silhouette Illusion Revealed
- The direction a viewer sees a dancer's silhouette spinning is not related to their personality, but to something else, according to a psychological study.
- The Consequences Of Selective Gender Science Popularizations
- …Does that sound a bit extreme? But so do all those biology-is-destiny commentaries! We just don't spot it because a certain kind of extremism is so very common in our public discourse.
That is naturally helped by what is brought to that public discourse. Female chimpanzees making spears and killing? [link] Nah. Female chimpanzees playing with dolls? You bet your ass….
Why can't I let go of this topic? Because the sexist culture is so strong that innate differences don't even matter.
- The Cruelty Lobby: Looking for reasons to cut the safety net
- Not content to merely lobby for cutting social security pensions, the other day Peter Orszag put disability insurance on the menu as well, saying that people with disabilities should be working during this economic downturn…
Here are the facts:… [blockquote]
I'm sure disabled people are at the head of the hiring lines right now. Employers don't have many people to choose from, after all.
- Sleep Well. Dream Big.
- [FeelGooder - Lisa Johnson]
Sleep Well. Dream Big.
I say this every night to my son. I have since he was about two weeks old.
none
- Year in Review 2010: The Year in Clean Energy
- [GOOD - Andrew Price]
- Ahead of their tenure clock
- [SCIENCE! Links of greatness. -L]
"…Aged between 8 and 10, the 25 children have just become the youngest scientists to ever be published in a Royal Society journal.
"Their paper, based on fieldwork carried out in a local churchyard, describes how bumblebees can learn which flowers to forage from with more flexibility than anyone had thought. It’s the culmination of a project called ‘i, scientist’, designed to get students to actually carry out scientific research themselves. The kids received some support… But the work is all their own.
"The class…came up with their own questions, devised hypotheses, designed experiments, and analysed data. They wrote the paper themselves (except for the abstract), and they drew all the figures with colouring pencils."
…The experiment had not been done before. The abstract was the one part of the paper they could not write on their own…
- A chilly solstice
- [The Big Picture]
…The coloration is due to sunlight filtering through the Earth's atmosphere – the same conditions that create red sunsets – so an observer standing on the Moon during a lunar eclipse would look up and see the dark Earth surrounded by a red ring, a sunset around the globe. Collected here are images of the eclipse, the solstice, and some of the icy weather as winter officially begins… (25 photos total)
- White House Drafts Executive Order for Indefinite Detention | TPM LiveWire
- …the order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.
Nearly two years after Obama's pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo, more inmates there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges…
That is in part because Congress has made it difficult to move detainees to the United States for trial. But it also stems from the president's embrace of indefinite detention and his assertion that the congressional authorization for military force…allows for such detention.
After taking office, the Obama administration reviewed the detainee population at Guantanamo Bay and chose 48 prisoners for indefinite detention. Officials…said that number will likely increase in coming months as some detainees are moved from a transfer category to a continued detention category.
[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
The Of interest (Wed, Dec 22nd, 11am) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.