Danny's Pathologically Polymathic: March 2012

are heads of state allowed to plagiarise? - Economist

PLSO Computational Biology starts publishing Wikipedia pages - PLOSCompBiol

bike mechanic bleg: what diagnosis for a three-speed (SA hub) that's squeaking in first gear?

Krugman versus Keen on Minsky - RWER

Irish residential property prices are still falling - PropertyWire - Independent

I hope petrol hoarding doesn't lead to any fires - Guardian

Paul Vixie on cleaning up after DNS Changer and other mass security compromises - CircleID

Breytenbach's dream fables and surreal paintings - All One Horse [my review]

solar power is eating traditional utilities' lunch, ending the mid-day price peak - RenewEconomy

political rumours abound in China - BBC

Dick Cheney should be given a presidential pardon - CT

my term for Freakonomics-style economics - "drive-by regression"

in Florida, it's legal to shoot people with the wrong skin colour wearing the wrong clothing - Atlantic

do your students indulge in parrot phrasing? - LL

when physicists get old - SMBC [via Cosma]

the white saviour industrial complex - Atlantic

an overview of its politics - Pakistan: A Hard Country [my review]

running a car in the UK has got cheaper over the last 20 years - RAC

UK tax changes look pretty regressive to me - Guardian

thinking about upgrading my netbook to an 11.6" ultrabook - Asus UX21, Samsung Series 9, Macbook Air, ... any reccommendations?

I want something robust, lightweight, with a long battery life; CPU and SSD need to be better than my Aspire One, but aren't so critical

the rise of Mormon feminists - Guardian

"on her 30th birthday she did the wildest thing she could think of: she ordered a cup of coffee... within a few months she had sex"

Australia's carbon tax needs to be high enough to stop brown coal development! - Age

Dorothy Sayers' classic mystery set in an Oxford college - Gaudy Night [my review]

Doonesbury explains the Republican abortion laws - GoComics

Taibbi looks at Bank of America - RollingStone

the Australian "State of the Climate" - CSIRO

what happened to _why: learning about Ruby - Slate [via RW]

no more printed Brittanica - Guardian

the radical roots of polyamory - Slate [via @RoseanneB]

it's like having a flat-earther present a geography show - MM

How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day - Portfolios of the Poor [my review]

dubious books: "Be Bold With Bananas" - BookRiot

Mongolia and its mining boom - UBpost

the complexities of dragonfly mating - NatGeo

Karl Ove Knausgaard on writing about his family - Guardian

(I have a copy of A Time for Everything waiting to be read)

background on Uganda and Invisible Children - AfricanArguments

failing to reform Australia's classification/censorship system - GeordieGuy

Norforce: the largely Aboriginal army defending northern Australia - Independent

Sydney-siders should come to sunny - and mostly dry - England - SMH

Terry Tao on Elsevier and the cost of knowledge - TT

so many stupidity and obfuscation by climate change deniers - NYROB

the Gates Foundation does some dodgy things - TechRights

too late, the mainstream press calls the Canadian housing bubble - MacLeans [via MB]

historical comparisons for current ocean acidification - Wired

conflicts in a bourgeois family in 1930 Korea - Three Generations [my review]

online backups for the truly paranoid - tarsnap

graphical representation of the history of science fiction - BiblioKlept [via Cosma]

book review is decent intro to nonlinear time series - Cosma

Raspberry Pi and teaching computer science - Guardian

an interview with Chinese intellectual Ran Yunfei - NYROB

dear deer in Scotland - Monbiot

the modern history of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - The Caucasus: An Introduction

meetings are bad for your IQ - Guardian

but where does one find a marmoset?

a look at the UK's most visible payday lender - Guardian