May 2015

killing gets easier: the rules of engagement in Gaza - NYROB

India's heatwave as a warning for the future - Guardian

when giant spiders and tiny frogs share lodgings - TetZoo

a nice overview of how Dutch cycling infrastructure works - Pushbikes [via @DavidHembrow]

Tony Abbott wants to be able to make Australians stateless, by ministerial fiat - SMH

Maya Lin on the making of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - NYROB

(I hadn't known she was an unknown undergraduate who won the public design competition.)

Australia takes money from science, research; funds small business coffee machines instead - Bloomberg

why some kids go to prison and others go to college - Alternet

a nice foreword (free PDF) introduces Erasmus and The Praise of Folly - PUP

tech perspectives on screen time vs play time - Guardian

a survey of the benefits of coffee - NYT

Homeschoolers Anonymous: from apologetics to debunking - DailyBeast

mapping the ocean's viruses - Quanta

"the Tara Oceans survey leaves Sullivan confident that the total number of ocean viruses will only be in the thousands"

break into a house, smash up a crib holding a baby - no offence if you do it using a car - StreetsBlog

Roko's basilisk, akrasia and acausal trades - Slate - LessWrong [via Cosma]

how successful was the Eastern European transition to capitalism? - GlobalInequality [via Cosma] - ForeignAffairs

an accessible overview of systematics + biology - Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History [my review]

forget cycle lanes, some towpaths have duck lanes - TreeHugger

Taleb versus Pinker: fat tails and violent warfare - Medium

the importance of visual priority for cycle paths - AltDeptForTransport

black swans and climate change - ThenTheresPhysics

"the parameter space for unexpected events having a damaging impact is significantly greater than for positive impacts"

poverty taxes the mind; scarcity begets scarcity - HarvardMag

it was Winston Churchill who pushed for the European Convention on Human Rights - Guardian

lead poisoning in the US: a political and scientific scandal - NYROB

not only should pre-school not be like school, school shouldn't be like school - Slate

Hope Mirrlees' striking 1926 fantasy novel - Lud-in-the-Mist [my review]

ten books that changed my life - Oxford Blog

giraffes are not a cycling hazard in the UK, thankfully - Road

debates over the use of computers in mathematics - Quanta

London has roads where a 4-year-old can cycle safely! - @BikesAndBabies

what a real cycling network looks like - ViewFromCyclePath

the different histories of cycling in the UK and the Netherlands - ScienceDirect