Archive for October, 2010
Super Soaker Inventor May Hold the Key to Affordable Solar Power
October 13th, 2010Take this graph into consideration as you read the piece below. Via: The Atlantic: From his childhood in segregated Mobile, Alabama, to his run-ins with a nay-saying scientific establishment, the engineer Lonnie Johnson has never paid much heed to those who told him what he could and couldn’t accomplish. Best known for creating the state-of-the-art […]
DARPA Wants Automated Counterintelligence Magic 8 Ball
October 13th, 2010Via: DARPA Solicitation: Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales (ADAMS): Each time we see an incident like a soldier in good mental health becoming homicidal or suicidal or an innocent insider becoming malicious we wonder why we didn’t see it coming. When we look through the evidence after the fact, we often find a trail – […]
The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives
October 13th, 2010I personally know someone who recently got a tenure track position in a French department. Yes! It’s true. (I exhale deeply and lean back in my chair with sense of awe and wonderment at his achievement.) Of course, he might simply be fired after four to eight years—increasingly, this is how alleged tenure track jobs […]
Google to Invest in Offshore Wind Power Project
October 12th, 2010Via: AP: Google is investing in an extensive network of deepwater transmission lines worth billions for future wind farms off the East Coast, the company said Tuesday. The transmission lines, which could cost up to $5 billion over the next 10 years, would run as far as 20 miles offshore from Virginia to New Jersey. […]
China Stakes Claim to South Texas Oil, Gas
October 12th, 2010Via: Houston Chronicle: State-owned Chinese energy giant CNOOC is buying a multibillion-dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields, potentially testing the political waters for further expansion into U.S. energy reserves. With the announcement Monday that it would pay up to $2.2 billion for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy assets, […]
Screen Time Linked to Psychological Problems in Children
October 12th, 2010Via: University of Bristol: Children who spend longer than two hours in front of a computer or television screen are more likely to suffer psychological difficulties, regardless of how physically active they are. The PEACH project, a study of over a 1,000 children aged between ten and 11, measured the time children spent in front […]
The Coming Middle-Class Anarchy?
October 12th, 2010Via: Gonzalo Lira: Brian and Ilsa—the nice upper-middle-class retired couple, who always follow the rules, and never ever break the law—who don’t even cheat on their golf scores—even when they’re playing alone (“Because if you cheat at golf, you’re only cheating yourself”)—have decided to give their bank the middle finger. They have essentially said, Fuckit.
Incarceration’s Impact on Society
October 12th, 2010Via: McClatchy DC: You won’t need a calculator, but get ready to decipher a bunch of numbers — data that ought to make Americans feel both sadness and shame. … While the costs of housing prisoners — $50 billion annually for state correctional costs alone — should be enough to cause us to rethink our […]
New Book Looks at Connection Between Mobile Devices and a Host of Health Problems
October 12th, 2010Is this partially why so many men are shooting blanks? And what is the compelling evidence to suggest that cellphones might be tied to sterility in men? In 2008, researchers found that men with the lowest sperm counts were significantly more likely to keep their phones on their bodies all the time. And it’s been […]
