Ten things you didn't know about comets; Why people are so cynical about the rest of humanity; Mark Twain's unrequited platonic love; real-life stare-out competitions; play makes us human; what the volcano says about the nature of human networks.

Reason why you dream discovered; psychiatrist is concerned by how little time his fellow psychiatrist set aside to actually listen to patients' problems; attention, and why it's diminishing these days; those Hitler/Downfall parodies, and what they mean; should we circumcise males?; and the odd parallels between the UK election of 1924 and the UK election of 2010.

Are 1 in 4 people really mentally ill?; what Darwin got right; peak phosphorus, and why it's potentially more dangerous than peak oil; how our brains make memories; Don Watson on the ANZAC myth; and did Alcoholics Anonymous start because someone was hallucinating because of a hallucinogenic drug?

The 'commonplace book' of Jefferson and Locke and the iPad; why probability theory confuses our brains; John Gray on AC Grayling; how charisma can turn off the part of your brain that analyses; the times, they changed - why 60s student activism is not going to happen today; India's criminal tribes.

why fans buy 'product' . a bit simplistic and makes some grand assumptions but whatever

i'm a bit slow, hillsong. it looks like you linked to the second page of the peak phosphorus article. though it wasn't too hard to find the ''view as one page'' link. probably not worth fixing. just a bit befuddling for a bear of very little brain.

just wanted to prove i'm still paying attention.

cheers tiny, fixed now.

be wary of anecdata in seductively well-written think pieces; why Madagascar's tapeworms matter to you; how chimps deal with death and dying; Krugman and Wells on how the GFC may have a nasty sting in its tail; the US military and powerpoint; people more likely to believe in ESP if told that scientists think it's rubbish.

Intrepid female reporter has orgasm inside fMRI machine for science; genes that slow bloodflow have been found in yeast, which is weird because yeast doesn't even have blood; the Baltimore drug criminal murder spree story that makes the more absurd stuff in the Wire seem normal; impostor syndrome - successful people who are convinced they're frauds despite all the evidence to the contrary; the making of and legacy of Exile On Main Street; and the CSI effect, where juries think real life is like TV.

Saturday morning funtimes!

Baroness Moura Budberg was a Russian aristocrat, writer, spy and double agent. Among her many lovers were H. G. Wells and Maxim Gorky. She is said to have spied for both British Intelligence and the Soviet Union, and in the early 1920s she was considered by our man in Moscow to be “a very dangerous woman”.

The world's worst immigration laws

(less funtime, but very interesting) Though it has not pleased everyone, the recent consensus on development spending has been pro-life, or at least neutral on abortion, and pro-contraception -- the position that Harper has taken and that Clinton has attacked. Challenging either of these commitments may scratch an ideological itch, but it is likely to divide a movement, which could impose a cost on the poor and the sick that no one intends.

Challenging either of these commitments may scratch an ideological itch, but it is likely to divide a movement, which could impose a cost on the poor and the sick that no one intends.

What a load of cobblers. This American fetish for bipartisanship is just plain weird. There's nothing wrong with a good old stoush. In this case, there's no doubt that Clinton is right on the facts. Why shouldn't she argue for that?

Because the price of this stoush is not paid for by US and Canadian citizens, it is paid for by the recipients of [yes, limited] maternal health care. There may be better policy spaces to have this debate than over development.

ALTHOUGH, if north americans value domestic social progress (or regression, if you're a conservative) over others' health, then this could be a very low cost way of achieving it, as the north american citizenry bears little of these costs.

I don't buy it. You could make a similar argument against fighting for anything; all fights have costs.

I was away from a computer on the weekend, but am back with way too many articles.

Non music links at O-Song: Living your life based on data; the inescapable community in Chile founded by a German postwar exile pedophile torturer; the history of debt is much much more interesting than you would think; power breeds hypocrisy; the story of Gaile Owens, who is due to be the first woman in Tennessee executed in 200 years; and how Mendel got things mostly wrong, but got the method very very right.

Music links at The Vine: An affecting profile of Rufus Wainwright; the science of ABBA getting stuck in your head; the Joni Mitchell interview where she called Dylan a fake has other much more interesting bits; the fascinating creative process of The National; The schoolteachers of the xx, Joanna Newsom, and Muse reflect on their pupils' progress; PopMatters' in depth analysis of Blood On The Tracks; and trying to play in tune.

The NFL quarterback, nicknamed 'roboquarterback', who could have been one of the greats, but wasn't; why do so many women have depression?; how soap operas could save the world; why democracy is always unfair; psychopaths and rational morality; and there are as many endangered languages alive in NYC as in the rest of the world.

Malcolm Gladwell on the game theory of espionage; blind men feeling up mannequins for science; people who can't move one hand without also moving the other hand because of genetics; the woolly mammoth's antifreeze blood; the history of vibrators; in a world full of video-recording cell-phones, third world military juntas shouldn't rape women in stadiums in broad daylight.

Oh Mr Chimp, are you just dropping leaves, or are you pleased to see me?; how humanity survived its darkest hour; why we should learn the language of data; the history and legacy of the pill; what we have Thomas Paine to thank for; and time doesn't actually slow down in a crisis.

Stephen Fry on voting; the difference between complicated and complex; when Obama was at Harvard Law School; nobody gets embarrassed anymore; where porn stars come from; and a short history of Noah's ark discoveries.

Finding other criminals to work with is one of the hardest parts of being a criminal; why we like to support the underdog; powerful weed killers usually just leave us with newly-evolved even-more-powerful weeds; babies have some sense of morality even at the earliest ages; the extent to which Big Pharma has infiltrated academic medical research is mindboggling; to be the best, learn from the rest.

We are 1-4% Neanderthal; what virginity means to teenage girls; bedbugs in upper class New York; how technology makes people a little more schizophrenic; Stephen Hawking on how to build a time machine; and should you say arse or ass?

The evolution of handedness; how dependent are we on coal?; the way we think about dolphins, and how they actually are; how people actually watch television, compared to how they say they watch television; your office chair is killing you; why are conspiracy theories so prevalent?

No one read the above link?

well, ''the worst story i ever heard'' honestly doesn't sound that enticing.

Artists tend to flock to big cities where their art can be bought and appreciated, but economic hard times are sending artists fleeing towards cheaper rents on homes and studio space.

''Where can artists find arms welcoming enough to provide a chance to sustain their careers? Well, as it happens, perhaps sensing an opportunity in the leveled fields of the current economy several of America’s bleakest, and most economically depressed, cities—Detroit, Baltimore, and Cleveland, among others—have begun making their case to become the next American artistic epicenter. All of these places have begun offering incentives like housing allowances (or otherwise cheap housing options), grants and other competitive awards, and other support to artists, even as they promise at least some of the cultural amenities—museums, arts events, and the like—that one can find in the Big Cities.''

US Midwest is making a comeback

Get that NBN up and running in Australia and the same might be said here

Autism research is getting surprisingly advanced and science-fictiony; how New Caledonian crows are so smart; cracking the scratch lottery code; the extent to which the Daily Mail lies; how Facebook makes you feel sadder; you make different moral judgements when your eyes are closed.

NiteShok - that story looks really interesting, but I haven't gotten to it yet!

utterly strange - witch house electronica genre - a lexical darknet. i think the message has overtaken the music?

someone should do a similar study in australia. my bet is that wherever mattphoenixoxoxoxo is will be no.1

we learn that the UK government has responded to a question about how the Digital Economy Act might increase the price of internet access. The government's response? Yes, the Digital Economy Act might price poor people out of the internet, and that's ''regrettable,'' but somehow necessary. Huh? So it's more important to protect the profits of a few obsolete record labels, than to help get more people connected to the internet? Remember, this is the UK, where it's already been determined -- by the music industry's own numbers -- that the music industry has grown quite a bit over the past few years. So there's no need for the Digital Economy Act to help the music industry. The only parties it really helps are a few record labels who refuse to adapt to the changing market. So, the only clear meaning of this statement from the government is an admission that protecting some obsolete businesses is more important than getting poor people online.

now go read the comments

From Crikey, a report on US climate change discussions:
Representative Joe Barton (Texas), who is competing for the position of chairman of the Congress Energy and commerce Committee states: “Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.”

long but interesting article on social networking etc. from GQ: the viral me.

Long but interesting tale of murder and corruption at the highest level of govenment in Guatemala. Reads like spy fiction.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/97672.html

I find the sentiment of the writer quite confusing. Hypocritical, even.

Confessions of a Glastonbury drug dealer.

Nine ounces of 95% pure Colombian cocaine, into which we cut an ounce of babies teething powder, creating an ounce of Charlie for ourselves and other ‘important’ people (280 grams of coke for the weekend felt about right.) 500 very strong E’s (speckled doves if you must know) 200 hits of acid. Two kilos of weed (origin unknown, possibly Catford) 18 ounces of skunk. 9 ounces of Indian Hash. 2 ounces of base amphetamine (when cut makes about 500 £10 wraps) 5 bottles of Chivas Regal Whiskey Four crates of Stella. 400 Marlboro Lights 20 packets of Rizzla. Digital scales. 500 little plastic bags. Toilet paper, (10 rolls.) Chewing gum. Tin foil. Bicarbonate of soda. Citric. A spoon. Some other ‘stuff’ neither of us admitted to having.

Claims to have set up his tent in the VIP area, 150 feet from the main stage, thanks to festival workers ''Keith the Bastard'' and ''Reg''.

Awesome.

Here Be Monsters

A crewman on a commercial tuna-fishing boat was the first to spot it: something shiny and metallic in the water off the ship's bow. The crewman alerted the navigator, and the 280-foot San Nikunau slightly altered course to avoid a collision. As the ship came closer, the object revealed itself to be a small boat, an aluminum dinghy. It was late in the afternoon on November 24 of last year. The New Zealand–based San Nikunau was in open water, a couple of days out of Fiji, amid the vastness of the southern Pacific—an expanse the size of a dozen Saharas in which there are only scattered specks of land.

The dinghy, fourteen feet long and low to the water, was designed for traveling on lakes or hugging a shoreline. There was no way it should've been in this part of the Pacific. If the San Nikunau had passed a quarter mile to either side, likely no one would have noticed it. Anyway, it appeared empty, another bit of the ocean's mysterious flotsam. But then, as the big ship was approaching the dinghy, something startling happened. From the bottom of the tiny boat, emerging slowly and unsteadily, rose an arm—a single human arm, skinny and sun-fried and waving for help.

There were, as it turned out, three people on the boat. Three boys. Two were 15 years old and the third was 14. They were naked and emaciated. Their skin was covered with blisters. Their tongues were swollen. They had no food, no water, no clothing, no fishing gear, no life vests, and no first-aid kit. They were close to death. They had been missing for fifty-one days.

My god, that is an incredible story.

Wow. Just wow.

For some reason I'm also intrigued that two of them are probably just living fairly regular lives as schoolkids in Australia now.

A Prehistory of Industrial Music

From hillsonghoods' tumblr.

Area 51 Uncensored: Was It UFOs or the USSR? by Annie Jacobsen (NPR): So, if you watched the X-Files, you’ve probably heard of Area 51, the secret military base in Nevada. Why was it so secret? Aliens, say the rumours. But, according to Jacobsen’s sources, the truth may be much stranger than aliens - one claims that people saw genetically mutated midgets from the USSR piloting Nazi-masterminded vehicles rather than aliens. Ahem. There’s also some less wild stuff explaining what they were most likely actually doing in there in the 1950s.

Been listening to the story. That is amazing. ''Amazing'' in the Amazing Spiderman kind of crazy comic book sci fi way. I tired to sum it up further in text here just now but it just sounds too out there compared to when they said it and revealed more and more over the course of the radio programme.

jkj

jkj?

I figure I should post here and remind you all this still exists, though it's not quite as daily as it was. Most recent one:

Sex exists because we have to fight off parasites; the history of how people have thought about breasts and milk; what we know about the giant squid; Frank Rich on Obama's faults - most notably being too enamoured with people with ivy league educations; if nothing really makes humans different from other animals, why are there skyscrapers?; why a touch on the arm is so persuasive.