Danny's Pathologically Polymathic: August 2013

things to consider before intervening in Syria - ECFR [via Informed]

a defective manifesto or a defective personality? - SMH

class warfare in Australia - SMH

a history of IRC - haxx

the Bristol bus boycott of 1963 - BBC [via JonE]

a cycle trip to Wheatley Windmill and Bishop Edward King chapel - Oxford Blog

five scientists split a restaurant bill - MathWithBadDrawings

the Episcopal Church's struggles over gay marriage - c-ville [via ThinkingAnglicans]

macho extractionism drives UK fracking support - Guardian

the chilling effects of PRISM - Groklaw

complexity and the limits of mathematics - Meta Maths: the Quest for Omega [my review]

a week on Britain's canal network - NewStatesman

how high a priority should we place on reducing the risk of human extinction? - EffectiveAltruism

UK abusing anti-terrorism powers to intimidate critics - Guardian

software engineers are now essential in research - TimesHigherEd

Daily Telegraph still totally fraudulent on Arctic sea ice - RealClimate

Andrew Wilkie should hold Denison in the Oz election - Tallyroom

but could he have won a senate seat?

the social and medical history of a disease - Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis [my review]

things not to do in email - Oatmeal

Supreme Court Jusice Oliver Wendell Holmes' 1919 dissent - Atlantic

an introduction to Polish science fiction writer Stanslaw Lem - Litro

handedly handling the baby - Oxford Blog

the political worlds of Tintin and Asterix - RedWedge [via Mohanraj]

lack of genetic diversity means there's no bringing back the mammoth - Monbiot

two hundred five-page essays - A New History of German Literature [my review]

all the hand-waving of all the theoretical physicists in the world has (probably) not generated a single graviton - Baez

going hungry in the UK - GirlCalledJack - a year later

homosexuals are Russia's new Jews - BuzzFeed [via @JustineLera]

"take me home to Willesden Green" - Guardian

Bruce Sterling on Assange, Manning, and Snowden - Medium

genderflips and the double standard - Junkee [via AndrewPam]

the social-educational limitations of MOOCs - CT

huge micron-long Pandoraviruses - NatGeo

Israeli soccer fans boo their own players when they score - Nation

a history of the German Greens - NewLeftReview

"The harmless memory of a dissident past now serves as an inexhaustible source of legitimacy, not just for their own actions, but for German power and the state apparatus itself."

a history of the vitamin supplement myth - Atlantic