Danny Yee >> Pathologically Polymathic (blog)

February 2008

<< January 2008 | March 2008 >>

a close-up look at Iraq's oil industry - Harpers [via RW]
bias in the Israeli media - LRB [via RW]
the EU may treat Internet censorship as a trade barrier - ArsTechnica [via /.]
Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of a Dutch Trading Company [review]
a precocious anti-colonial novel
the Kabul government now controls just 30% of Afghanistan - WiredDispatch [via AntiWar]
Karl Theodor Helfferich (1872-1924) - FirstWW
he was related to one of my great-grandfathers
how subprime mortgages have ruined Cleveland - Times
"The mayor's office is suing some of the world's biggest banks"
overview of alternative early climate theories - AstroBio
is a Chinese takeover the best option for North Korea? - Asia [via Far]
B-2 stealth bomber crashes in Guam - Tele [via /.]
the pilots got out ok, but how would it feel losing a $1.2 billion plane?
Iceland can't adopt the Euro without joining the EU - IceNews
but what's to stop them just pegging the krona?
Microsoft bribes the Library of Congress - LibraryThing [via OSWALD]
"anybody using an iPhone, an old version of Windows, any version of Linux, or any other operating system or device not supported by Silverlight will be unable to use the Library of Congress' new website"
trying to predict the next plague - Economist
it seems British troops in Iraq did some executing and torturing too - Guardian
"Several gunshot wounds to body - severance of sexual organs"... "Gunshot in face, pulling out of the eye, breaking the jaw, gunshot to the chest."
Turish troops enter northern Iraq - Guardian
Standing Stones: Stonehenge, Carnac and the World of Megaliths [review]
advances in free-standing turbines - Economist
arms company BAE runs its own foreign policy and intelligence service - Guardian
the myth of the "Google Generation" - CMSwatch [via Link] - JISC [PDF]
younger people don't actually have more clue about IT
US court shuts down DNS for wikileaks.org - wikileaks.be [via AntiWar]
Australia's defense purchasing has been incompetent - ABC
"The army has spent half a billion dollars on tanks of questionable strategic value. The Navy has FFG Frigates that can't be deployed in combat zones because their radar and weapon systems would make them easy targets for the enemy."
a renaissance for US railways - WSJ [via ProRev]
many false positives on Finnish "child porn" blocklist - EFFI
hearing aid devices, doll stores, Thai princesses, you name it
will Bill Gates succeed in funding a malaria vaccine? - Guardian
when peer review fails - Guardian
"Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul: Proteomic prospective evidence"
more churches should be offering sex education - Age
Australia tied up 475 police and spent over $7.5 million persecuting a clearly innocent man - SMH
wealthy German tax evaders in trouble - IHT
after documents are leaked from a Liechtenstein bank
the US could be moved to solar power for $400 billion - SciAm
analysing the sex diaries of John Maynard Keynes - MoreIntelligent [via Crikey]
H.M. Bark Endeavour: Her Place in Australian History [review]
the US media is still in denial about the human costs of the Iraq war - E+P [via Delt]
Finnish "child porn" blocklist used to censor critic of censorship - EFFI [via /.]
"If the site really had illegal content, wouldn't the correct solution be to take the site down and take the site owner to court?"
has Paris Hilton made the worst ever movie? - IMDB [via RW]
it's currently the all-time lowest ranked movie on IMDB, by some margin
British students get reprieve from "thought crime" convictions - Reg [via /.]
merely viewing extremist web sites is not a crime
just shoot all pregnant women on sight - KDKA [via ProRev]
"a prosthetic pregnant belly serving as a compartment for explosives"
Lomborg versus Gore - Deltoid
Lomborg has more errors "just on the subject of polar bears"
lecture course on Chaos, Complexity, and Inference - Cosma
maybe a supplement to reading Flake's The Computational Beauty of Nature
the demographics of a small Russian village - Guardian [video]
Slyozi now has a population of four, all women over 80
50% chance Lake Mead will be dry by 2021 - Wired
the Colorado River system is dying
how Ikea names are chosen - Guardian
pink and blue - colourlovers [via RW]
"these gender identity colors appeared after WWII"
betwween 0.4 and 2 percent of open DNS servers are malicious - DarkReading [via LWN]
OLPC gets a trial in outback Australia - SMH
The General of the Dead Army [review]
Ismail Kadare's novel about an Italian general recovering bodies in Albania
a database of amusing IRC logs - bash
US crop biofuels are worse for greenhouse emissions than petrol - Seattle [via /.] - Science
using wastes and byproducts is the way to go
Eyak is dead - Economist
Australians don't recycle old PCs - CNet
tobacco may kill another billion people this century - Economist
further progress towards a police state in the UK - CT
it seems bugging MP-constituent conversations is now ok
just 55 human genes under geographically localised selection - Economist
6 for skin pigments, 4 for disease resistance, 6 for dietary metabolism, and many of unknown function
the Sadrists and the Surge - CrisisGroup [via Abu]
"The dramatic decline in bloodshed in Iraq is largely due to Muqtada al-Sadr's August 2007 unilateral ceasefire..."
some shops in New York will now accept euros - MSNBC
biodiversity and fish invasions of river systems - PLOS
possible discontinuities in climate change - SciBlog [via RW]
the IPCC report largely ignores these "too hard to model" possibilities...
Saudi Arabia cracks down on critics calling for reform - PkNews
German Family Ministry tries to ban anti-religious children's book - DW [via CR]
Brits think Richard the Lionheart and Winston Churchill were fictional - ABC
and Sherlock Holmes and Biggles were real people
dirty trucks will pay £200 to enter London - SMH
a new look at footbinding - ChinaReview [PDF, via Far]
not the Orient Express - Far
the traumas of the overnight train to Romania
the French gendarmerie are moving 70000 desktops to Ubuntu - AFP [via OSWALD]
Saudi Arabia: Power, Legitimacy and Survival [review]
understanding why scratching an itch is so pleasurable - MedNewsToday
the UN's terrorist blacklist is unaccountable - Economist
can ultracapacitors replace batteries? - Economist
Sam is not happy that John Edwards is out - ProRev - more
Ann Coulter will vote for - even campaign for - Clinton against McCain?! - YouTube [via RW]
"google" is a verb in Telugu too - Slashdot

<< January 2008 | March 2008 >>

Pathologically Polymathic (blog) << Danny Yee