Danny Yee >> Pathologically Polymathic (blog)

January 2006

<< December 2005 | February 2006 >>

an Iranian blogger visits Israel - Haaretz [via Loewen]
more on pebble ped modular nuclear reactors - EST [via 3q]
Riverbend's Baghdad Burning now a book - Amazon [via ProRev]
Hamas in context: other theological-political movements - HH
if they stay in power they'll end up just as corrupt as Fatah
Wikipedia moots disciplinary action against the US Congress - Wiki
a 9-year-old Palestinian girl is shot dead - Guardian
"Israeli soldiers killed twice as many Palestinians last week alone - both of them children - as the number of Israelis killed by Hamas all last year"
protests in Jakarta as Indonesian Playboy prepares to launch - Guardian
US politicians censor their own Wikipedia biographies - LowellSun [via RW]
the Iraq Body Count project's systemic underreporting - Zmag - 2 [via RW]
now a fig-leaf letting everyone pile into the Lancet mortality study
deaf mutes and 18th century English justice - HH
a 1774 case saw "what may be the first recorded instance of sign language interpretation in court"
try Saddam - and his accomplices - Margolis
"The trial should be moved at once to the UN tribunal at the Hague, where real justice will take its course. This case is too important for a Texas style judicial lynching."
watching lies propagate: Canadian/US crime comparisons - Roam [via Deltoid]
one right-wing pundit cherry-picks and distorts reality, then others distort his claims...
a sensible pro-life Baptist American - NYROB
Jimmy Carter's Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis [Amazon]
a Russian naturalist with great travelogues - Vladimir Dinets - Mongolia - East Africa - Madagascar
avian systematics are "oversplit" at all levels - Dinets
plans for field guides to Mongolian birds and mammals - SteppeForward
Timothy Garton Ash on the new Poland - NYROB
the rise of Asian Englishes? - Asia
the implications of the Hamas victory - Independent - HH
how much lost literature was actually worth losing? - IHT [via CR]
US joins Iran, Cuba, Sudan, China in homophobia - HRW
voting to stop gay and lesbian organisations having consultative status at the UN
experiments in folding paper - ABC
another try for an IgNobel
Alice Springs: photos and tales of a mad anthropologist - Elsewhere
Abbas stands down after Hamas wins majority - Guardian
"This is the choice of the people. It should be respected."
attacking Iran - SFgate
shorter version: it's a really stupid idea, but the Bush administration may do it anyway
nearly $9 billion in Iraq reconstruction money cannot be accounted for - Times [via AW]
forensic archaeology reveals candidate for plague that hit Athens in 430 BC - Aetiology
an epidemiological study of disappearing tearoom teaspoons - Aetiology - BMJ
"escape to a spoonoid planet and resistentialism are equally plausible explanations"
(this is an obvious try for an IgNobel Prize)
Iranian official threatens to seal Straits of Hormuz in response to sanctions - Haaretz [via AW]
this is their real "nuclear" option...
a camping manual from 1877 - Gutenberg [via Barista]
"There should be in every party a clothes brush, mosquito-netting, strings, compass, song-book, guide-book, and maps, which should be company property."
Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies [review]
Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese
Western Massachussetts is full of Khöömei fans?! - Accra
I'm not the only blogger who's visited Mongolia
the Ten Commandments are now way out of date - Michigan [via ProRev]
New Zealand tops 2006 Environmental Performance Index - Yale [via ProRev]
Australia comes 20th and the US 28th
a review of Graphs, Maps, Trees - Cosma - Valve [seminar]
can you tell Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell from Osama bin Laden? - Funny [via JWalk]
background on Japan's Livedoor investigation - Economist
Takafumi Horie has tried to shake up everything from baseball to the financial system
freezing weather descends on Germany and Eastern Europe - Guardian
"Even the polar bears at Berlin's zoo have refused to go swimming"
does Toxoplasma infection contribute to schizophrenia? - Loom [via Barista]
"It's estimated that about half of all people on Earth are infected with Toxoplasma."
Hindu nationalists get Californian history texts rewritten - CSM
Buffet, Soros and Gates bet against the US dollar and lost - Bloomberg [via RW]
a broad-ranging history of 17th century England - The Century of Revolution [review]
how insurgent attacks have crippled Iraq's oil infrastructure - MSNBC [via Informed]
omega-3 in maternal diet helps children's IQ, sociability - Economist
the Zhongshan incident: more protests in South China - ESWN [via Far]
the evolution of hemichordates - Pharyngula
"So what is the problem with heroin?" - Age [via Crikey]
cold water on the latest "China beat Columbus" map - MSU - MapHist [via FrogInWell]
"There is no need to rewrite anything except the history of 21st-century charlatans"
and an excellent debunking of Menzies from 2004 - JournalWorldHistory
progress with Spain's Basque separatist violence? - Guardian
slow change in how corporations manage employees - Economist
an interview with RealClimate.org climatologists - Kos [via Pharyngula]
giant jellyfish (2m across, 220kg) invade Japanese coasts - NatGeo - CNN [different photo]
male circumcision and HIV prevention: a debate - BMJ
the decline of the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) - Guardian
forget about sharia law, people want the drains fixed
David Irving should be released from prison - Times [via CR]
"Sticking the revisionist in prison for something that he said 16 years ago, based on a law nearly 60 years old, is a neat way for Austria to demonstrate its liberal bona fides."
a US historian serving in Kuwait - HNN - 1 - 2 [via CT]
"in five months nominally training for deployment... we never saw a single moment of instruction in Arabic"
background on artemisinin anti-malarial drug - CPAmedia
Paradise Now director amazed at Golden Globe award - Guardian
Shivaji was a wise king: some of his "defenders" are exceedingly foolish - OLInd [via Ki]
Geelong camera club forbidden to photograph sensitive locations - Age [via Barista]
but the government refuses to tell them which buildings are off-limits, on security grounds...
yet another stupid net censorship idea - AlterNet [via EFA]
a serious proposal that all "adult content" be served on port 1101...
Google fights US government request for massive amounts of search data - MWatch
they want every search query carried out for a two month period -- not to track terrorists, but "to help build a case" to revive a 1998 anti-pornography law
a sonnnnet on the theme of sex - Capacious [via Tangled]
normal human radioactivity - Shallow [via Tangled]
privacy in China - Economist
a long way to go, but at least the idea is beginning to surface
eating some animals is wrong? - Majik
I'm not sure about octopuses, but I'll pass on apes, cetaceans, elephants, and some mammalian carnivores
the best quality health care in the US? the Veterans Health Administration - WashMonth
"For health-care providers outside the VHA system, improving quality rarely makes financial sense"
Toyota's Yaris cars now available in Australia - Toyota
we drove one of these around Iceland and I really liked it - I'd look at one if I were buying a car
sequencing the human stomach flora - PNAS [via Aetiology]
US Supremes uphold Oregon assisted suicide law - Guardian
meanwhile, in Australia it's become a crime to even give advice on suicide
is Australian university management behind the times? - Australian
everything you wanted to know about Al Gore - ProRev
US education moves to standard tests; Asian countries to creativity - DetroitFP [via ProRev]
security experts attack planned Australian ID card - ZDnet [via EFA]
ID cards will not protect Australia from terrorist attacks, despite Attorney-General Philip Ruddock claiming that as motivation
How to Quiet a Vampire: A Sotie [review]
a superb novel about the psychology and philosophy of Nazism
a comparison of the United States and Germany - Axel [via ProRev]
what Martin Luther King would have done about Iraq - Informed
medicine learns from antlers unique ability to regrow - BBC [via 3q]
a different view of Karachi and Pakistan - 3q
biomedical study finds military women are more than competent - Wired
they're smaller and less powerful on average, but otherwise a physical match for men
advice on getting long life out of CDs and DVDs - DPR
can California's Salton Sea be saved? - Guardian
Iraqi insurgents appropriate Western models for their tv shows - Billmon
some stats on browser vulnerabilities - scanit [via Schneier]
Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History - InHigherEd - Amazon
animals and the natural world in Edo art - PacAsiaMuseum [via Barista]
the effect of Turkey's bird cull - USAtoday [via Effect]
"No more turkeys gobbling in open fields. No more fetching fresh eggs from the backyard coop. No more roosters crowing at dawn."
SUVs 1.5x as dangerous for kids as sedans?! - MedPage [via Effect]
"after adjustment for all of the factors, the risk of injury was not significantly different for children in SUVs versus standard passenger cars (adjusted OR=1.50; 95% CI=0.88-2.57)"
climate change and frog decline: a complicated death - Loom - BBC
"no one predicted that it would be nighttime warming and daytime cooling that would make the fungus so deadly"
the impeachment of George W. Bush - Nation
learn Python in ten minutes - Poromenos
kidnapped Jill Carroll may be alive, but her interpreter is dead - Riverbend
the real Ariel Sharon - CP
"Sharon has come to be the standard bearer for the hypocrisy of much of the American peace movement"
more on India's girl deficit - CSM
"female feticide is most common among India's elite, who can afford multiple trips to an ultrasound clinic"
hardware costs have plummeted; software remains expensive - SOS [via OSWALD]
"the price of Microsoft Windows XP Pro and Office licenses exceeds the price of a top-of-the-line PC"
much of Kenyan faces a terrible drought - BBC - Reuters
Vista and the slow move to Linux desktops in Australia - ZDnet [via OSWALD]
tough action in the UK on "loitering teenagers, noisy neighbours and drunken louts" - Economist
teacher-pupil relationships in ants - NatGeo [via 3q]
a global perspective on sati - HistCoop [via Far]
"Following into death ... can be shown to have occurred in most areas of the world for a longer or a shorter time, with the notable exception of Western Europe, for which there is no satisfactory explanation so far, due to the lack of sources."
how "No Child Left behind" school tests leave poor children out - Palast [via ProRev]
a Colombian town plans to make men over 14 carry condoms - CNN [via ProRev]
Egyptian police slaughter a hundred Sudanese refugees?! - Ahram - Younis [via HH]
it happened on New Year's Eve, which may explain why I missed any mention of this till now
Hepatitis B rather than selective abortion may explain female deficit - Guardian
"while the virus accounted for 75% of the missing women in China, it accounted for only 20% of the missing women in India"
Thais to get more expensive drugs with US free trade agreement - Huff [via RW]
Ian McDonald's science fiction novel of India in 2047 - River of Gods [review]
I wasn't impressed
more on the aerial slaughter in Iraq - Toms [via RW]
using algae to clean up power plant emissions - CSM
and producing biodiesel fuel at the same time!
a Spanish general is sacked and arrested - Independent
the military fears increasing Catalan autonomy
Maharashtra bans another book on Shivaji - Hindu
following the 2004 ban on Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, his 2001 translation Epic of Shivaji is being targetted
Berlusconi to give war veteran status to Mussolini's Salo soldiers - Guardian
DVD zone restrictions kill Spielberg's Bafta chance - Guardian
The Book of Hrabal [review]
the ACLU opposes a Supreme Court nomination for only the third time - Ostroy [via SideS]
Alito joins Bork and Rehnquist
ten photos - Kashmir earthquake area now under snow - BBC [via RW]
can Argentina go it without the IMF? - Guardian
things are looking up, but inflation risks getting out of control
Henry Green: the last English modernist - TLS [via 3q] - Caught [review]
research suggests major health risks from GM soya - Independent [via ProRev]
"55.6% of the young of the mothers given the modified soya died, against 9% of the offspring of those fed the conventional soya"
was Kerry Packer that good a businessman? - Crikey
he inherited $100 million in 1974 and has done worse than the S&P/ASX200 Accumulation Index since

<< December 2005 | February 2006 >>

Pathologically Polymathic (blog) << Danny Yee