Danny's Pathologically Polymathic: August 2009

why incompetence is a plus in Italian academic recruitment - HigherEd [via CT]

struggling to survive in Great Depression Germany - Little Man, What Now? [review]

Manhattan's High Line park - NYROB - High Line

"the incongruous delight of strolling through a leafy glade three stories above the roaring traffic's boom is made more piquant by the omnipresence of buildings crowded close to both sides of the walkway"

a blog about Korean literature in translation - Spunangel

Iceland will pay back its debts at a level it can afford - OneWorld

"If limiting Iceland's debt repayments is right, the same must apply, to an even greater extent, to poorer countries"

Cisco has an unusual internal structure - Economist

"matrix" coordination and collaboration

Lev Grossman on the novel after modernism - WSJ [via @MAOrthofer]

changing Australian views on the death penalty - Crikey

Ian Plimer's "ridiculous compendium of non-science" - RealClimate

the sins of Windows 7 - windows7sins [via FSF]

Plants Don't Drink Coffee [my review]

intertwined stories about insects, rugby, love and carpentry

some Australian abortion laws are stuck in the 1960s - NewMatilda [via @NewtonMark]

Sydney employment dispute settled under Jewish law - Australian

"the case was shifted to the London Beth Din, the Court of the Chief Rabbi"

praise for Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone - Guardian [via RW]

"Reading The Moonstone now, I am impressed by its modernity, its tolerance, and its enthusiasm for weirdness within the constraints of Victorian propriety."

Iceland should default on its debts - InfoClearing

Australia's "housing shortage" is a myth - MoneyMorning

huge failure rates for the Xbox 360 - SeattlePI [via /.]

no wonder it's losing Microsoft money

a blog devoted to photos of catladders - Blogspot [via JWalk]

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations [my review]

it's safer to steal houses than rob banks - Jenman [via @neiljenman]

photo essay: poor migrant workers in Dubai - Viceland [via @epacris71]

Sydney is 70% the area of Oxfordshire

and the Sydney Statistical Division is 450% the area!

I thought the film District 9 was rather good - Wikipedia

it's not very high brow, but it has good fun inverting a pile of sf cliches

documents in the Wyeth "ghostwriting medical science" case - PLOS

a US court has made a pile of discovery materials public

artemisinin-resistant malaria spreading in Cambodia - Independent

Afghanistan is a mess - Economist

in defence of seagulls - Guardian

Texas is facing its worst drought in fifty years - Economist

the role of debt bias and tax distortions in the crisis - IMF [PDF via @JaneHadfield]

is Afghanistan really a dangerous "safe haven"? - FP

visualising large sums of money - InfoBeautiful [via RW]

the theory of Twitter - Epeus [via @epacris71]

sex toy or baby toy? a quiz - sex-toys

how can automated censorship systems cope with this?

the UK Internet is censored by the Internet Watch Foundation NGO - Wired

depopulation and a health crisis in Russia - WorldAffairs

hydrogen sulphide emitting seaweed on Brittany's beaches - Times

why the highest mountains are in the tropics - Guardian

filesystems at Google: an interview - ACM

Joan Baez is still fighting the good fight - Kos

Nassim Taleb on debt and the government's failure to deal with it - CNBC

"I'm not comfortable treating a patient for his headaches when he has lung cancer"

an introduction to classical Chinese poetry - A Little Primer of Tu Fu [review]

common sense on Australian house prices - Crikey [via @neiljenman]

Whitlam Institute: Getting to Grips with the Economy - YouTube

with Gruen, Gittins, Fagan, Quiggin, Keen, Debelle

Suu Kyi visitor gets seven years hard labour - SMH

including "one year for a municipal charge of illegal swimming"

Gmail ads can be turned off with rudeness and woe - Register [via @R_Chirgwin]

are children really a source of happiness? - NewsWeek

an uncrippled iPhone is much more useful - Wired

Australian computer game censorship is broken - SomebodyThinkOfTheChildren

the medieval role-playing game Risen has been Refused Classification

Calcutta is forcibly purging older, polluting vehicles - BBC

Mongolian monastic treasures buried in 1938 are recovered - BBC

Wal-Mart opens a store in Amritsar, India - Time

the average new Australian mortgage is now $354k - $407k in NSW - Age

green shoots or not, I still think this is a disaster waiting to happen

the US has really, really stupid sex offender laws - Economist

review of The Myth of the Rational Market - SteveReads [via Cosma]

new comic strip: Advanced Dungeons and Discourse - DresdenCodak

the official UK citizenship test - UKCT [via Stross]

I scored 13/24 (failed) with no preparation at all, but it's a batshit stupid test

photos of Greenland - Boston [via @stilgherrian]

are some Ponzi schemes legal in Australia? - SMH

Norway rehabilitates Nobel-winning novelist who supported Hitler - Independent

an update on H1N1 in the United States - CDC

McDonalds is obscene without this kind of elaboration - EatMeDaily [via @stilgherrian]

deflation and unemployment up in the eurozone - DW

nearly half of US mortgage-holders are expected to end up underwater - Bloomberg

Against Intellectual Monopoly - UCLA [full text of book]

cucumbers are not munitions - AntiWar

but anyone killed by US or NATO airstrikes is by definition an "insurgent"

unemployment in Australia worse than flat 5.8% headline suggests - TradingRoom - ABS

the aggregate monthly hours worked has now dropped for 12 months running

Israel's religious right and the settlements - CrisisGroup

a critical look at chiropractic therapy - Skeptics [via @seancarmody]

Mongolian pasture productivity is in decline - WorldBank

driven by increasing livestock numbers and proportionately more goats

a portable bicycle lane - NS [via @epacris71]

Bertrand Russell's "In Praise of Idleness" - zpub [via FB]

insecure by design - Cworld [via OSWALD]

"Microsoft Office is a set of security holes that masquerades as an office suite"

I had a fantastic time in Queensland - Carnarvon Station - Heron Island