Danny's Pathologically Polymathic: September 2009

Ofcom should not let the BBC DRM free-to-air television - Guardian

should Australia be emulating Dubai's Internet censorship? - Twitpic [via @coljac]

when it comes to religion, Ireland is still medieval - Blasphemy.IE

Malaysia patents shadow puppets and gamelan? - Viva

in some US states, parents can get away with killing their children - PewForum

"When an exemption clearly and specifically protects the practice of faith healing, parents have been successful in using [it] to defend against criminal charges, even in cases in which the child has died."

From Charlemagne to the Cirque du Soleil - The Story of French [my review]

prison sentence for homeopathy - SMH

financial incentives don't work: a TED video - Mule

stupid bureaucracy for pensioners in Australia - Crikey

thankfully I should never have to deal with this

have you seen this telegraph pole? - DarlinghurstNights

improvements in car safety are real - AutoBlog [via /.]

crashing 1959 and 2009 models together

fertility declines don't reverse with development - Mule

a Nature paper has totally bogus statistics

religious groups in Victoria are allowed to discriminate - SMH

but only against gays, the unmarried, and single mothers

the real cost of US health care - WP

"average health-care coverage for the average family now costs $13,375"

Frank Schaeffer on Christian fundamentalists in the US - YouTube

"You cannot reorganize village life to suit the village idiot"

religious groups oppose ethics in NSW schools - SMH

"mobile money" in the developing world - Economist

I didn't even know there was a Luis Goytisolo! - CR

can dead salmon understand human emotions? - Wired

evidence that television causes brain damage? - Economist

Posner on Keynes - NewRepublic [via CT]

sample houses from the US crash - Phoenix - Sacramento

photo gallery: food advertising versus the reality - Guardian

a dysfunctional family thread - ML

"white phosphorus provides its own context" - RealisticDove [via MW]

Robert Blincoe: A Life That Illuminates a Violent Age - The Real Oliver Twist [my review]

against Armstrong on atheism - GretaChristina

Kim Stanley Robinson on sf's ghettoization - Guardian [via ekumen]

Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences - Telegraph [via @stilgherrian]

UK trade unions vote to boycott and sanction Israel - EI

skeptical about Lourdes - Nugent

Ken Livingstone interviews Iain Banks - NewStatesman [via CR]

time-lapse/video of glacial calving and retreat - ClimateProgress

an entire subpixel type family?! - TYPOPHILE [via RW]

this only works on LCD monitors, obviously

war crimes in Gaza - Economist

tax havens may need to start charging taxes - Guardian

another piece on Hyman Minsky - Boston

"There is no solution that can be transformed into a catchy phrase and carried on banners."

"structural separation" in action already? - SMH

major outages in Sydney CBD after Telstra fibres cut

"On the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress" - Stiglitz-Sen-Firtoussi

recession: a ghost fleet off Singapore - DailyMail

"The cost of sending a 40ft container from China to the UK has fallen from £850 plus fuel charges last year to £180 this year."

a review of the Clay Sanskrit Library - TLS [via Chapati]

I've only read one CSL volume so far, Much Ado About Religion

V for Vendetta is "prohibited content" under Australian Net censorship - Whirlpool

so ACMA has forced Apple to remove its "Gift this Movie" functionality in Australia!?!

Japanese home prices at 24-year low - Bloomberg

residential land values are about half what they were at the height of the bubble

IBM tries to move a third of a million employees to OpenOffice - LinuxMag [via /.]

Stiglitz on measuring wellbeing better than GDP - FT

"Our economy is supposed to increase our well-being. It is not an end in itself."

the economic downturn in Mongolia - BusinessMirror

do fertility rates really rise with very high levels of development? - Economist - StubbornMule

static analysis at endpoints fails to capture the dynamic history

20% tips are now normal in US restaurants?! - Atlantic

a historical survey - Martyrdom in Islam [my review]

the average Australian property loses money - SMH

so many investors are relying on capital gains...

how marijuana has effectively been legalised in the US - CNN

"medical cannabis sales [in California] are approaching $2.5 billion, generating taxes of around $220 million"

the unspoken truth about managing geeks - Computerworld

Sydney Uni management really need to read this

brief but glowing review of Bolano's novel 2666 - Independent [via CR]

I think I'm going to have to read this

UK government apologises for treatment of Alan Turing - number10 [via @rbersten]

Britain's banks less sound than Burundi's?! - Telegraph

They Might Be Giants "Here Comes Science" kids' album - BB

deleveraging: US consumer credit dropping rapidly - PlanetMoney

"modern copyright law is utterly and completely incompatible with the right to privacy" - Calgary [via @R_Chirgwin]

I'm looking forward to being able to vote for the Pirate Party when I'm in the UK

67 terabyte build-your-own storage array - backblaze

Peter Norvig keynote "What to demand from a scientific computing language?" - Archive

many Australian homes eligible for $1600 of free ceiling insulation - InsulationRebate

Russia is seriously pushing free software in schools - profy [via OSWALD]

60,000 teachers to "learn Linux by the end of 2009"

the social and psychological damage of US unemployment - CalculatedRisk

only $618 million left in Aus government's mortgage purchase fund - AOFM

carbon capture and storage is still a pipe dream - SMH - ABC

but that won't stop the Australian government giving money to the coal industry

Israel's government launches a new racial purity campaign - Haaretz

"hopes the campaign will spur the public to commit to the cause of preventing marriage to non-Jews"

the insanity of Storm Financial and their bankers - BusinessDay

people with $45,000 salaries had $1,480,000 margin loans

the Walled World: 73% of the income, 14% of the people - TDarch [via IIB]

telephones in thriller/mystery films - Guardian [via RW]

Choice looks at options trading (and spruiker seminars) - Choice

"In general, I think about amateurs trading options pretty much what I think about amateurs doing brain surgery, with high explosives."

a new kind of electric bicycle - DailyMail [via /.]

photo essay: what the world eats - Time [via GHPC]

will the US allow Latin America to end the war on drugs? - Guardian

hard to track down even a high profile Snow Leopard photo - PDN [via @Beyerstein]

survey has Australian unemployment 2% higher than RBA figure - RoyMorgan

Goytisolo turns down Libyan prize - Independent

I recommend starting with The Marx Family Saga

Quebec requires teaching of comparative religion - Freethinker [via @seancarmody]

Yochai Benkler on open-source economics - YouTube [via @Vaguery]

Swedish central bank pays negative interest on commercial bank deposits - FT

Iranian election protest videos on Australian Internet blacklist - Orzeszek [via STotC]

"Michael Jackson died a long time ago, and it's taken years for anyone to notice" - NYROB

forget Disney and Marvell, give me Studio Ghibli any day - Ponyo

"Invasion of Poland began this morning. Warsaw bombed." - OrwellDiaries

forgery, reconstruction and restoration at Knossos - NYROB