Danny's Pathologically Polymathic: August 2015

on Bjorn Lomborg's status as a scientist - RealClimate

"apart from one paper in 1996, Lomborg has never published anything in any field of science that was interesting or useful"

Python overtakes French as the most popular language in UK primary schools - InformationAge [via Mertz]

Reductionism in Economics: Causality and Intentionality in the Microfoundations of Macroeconomics - SSRN [via Cosma]

representative-agent reasoning is "analagous to a physicist attempting to model the macro-behavior of a gas by treating it as a single, room-size molecule"

it's going to be easy to lose your Australian citizenship - NewMatilda

spiders capable of controlled-gliding found - Smithsonian

the Crown Princess of the Netherlands on her first school run - Twitter

gutting the UK's bus network is an attack on the poorest and most vulnerable - Guardian

universities pressure staff to pass incompetent students - Telegraph

a broader look at the Pope's Laudato Si' encyclical - NYROB

how cycling infrastructure enables the elderly and disabled - Streets

use engineering and design to enforce speed limits, not policing - AsEasyAsRiding

"tend-and-befriend" rather than "fight-or-flight" - PubMed - full PDF

Nature story about use of p-values got their definition wrong! (see "clarification" at end) - Nature

Dutch cities introduce an unconditional basic income - CityLab

(or at least get rid of the paperwork for social assistance)

facing up to the reality of Israeli apartheid - Haaretz

"I want to know, I want to know, I want to know why" - BostonGlobe

ever wanted to run an Oxford college? - SecretGames

the myth of absent black fathers - Kos

Dublin's cycling infrastructure is a step in the right direction - CycleSprog

a followup on our NCT parents' group - Oxford Blog

the problems with African development statistics - DevelopmentDrums [via GivingWhatWeCan]

octopuses have large genomes with unusual structures - Nature

"autistic people have always been here, whether diagnosed or not" - Discover

cycling as everyday transport - City Cycling [my review]

Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese [my review]

Helen and I visit Oxford's Story Museum - Oxford Blog [@TheStoryMuseum]

ginseng and the Jesuits - BeyondRicci

thirty new bacterial phyla - Quanta

the Indian government hates Greenpeace - Guardian

a 15th pentagonal tile has been discovered - Guardian

myths about migrants to Europe and the UK - Guardian

the Swedish Church is adapting and surviving - ChurchTimes

Australia has indefinite copyright for unpublished works - SMH

200 years of illustrating the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm - BrainPickings

"front bottom", vulva, or "snippa"? - Guardian

the freedom a bicycle brings - AliceWriting

an introduction to outcast revolutionary Victor Serge - Atlantic

don't spend a fortune on fancy "shared space" designs, just remove the motor traffic - @AsEasyAsRiding

simplying the India-Bangladesh border - WP

"Dahala Khagrabari was part of India, surrounded by a Bangladeshi enclave, which was surrounded by an Indian enclave, which was surrounded by Bangladesh"

"Our Comrade the Electron": technology and politics (and Lev Sergeyevich Termen) - IdleWords

a garden metaphor for handling migrants - CommentIsFree [via @beztweets]

Beatrix Potter was a keen mycologist (she studied fungi) - BrainPickings