Cairaguas

“ Ironically, then, the belief in a just world may take the place of a genuine commitment to justice. For some people, it is simply easier to assume that forces beyond their control mete out justice. When that occurs, the result may be the abdication of personal responsibility, acquiescence in the face of suffering and misfortune, and indifference towards injustice. ” Essay explaining the social psychology concept called The Just World Theory.

Fri Jan 16

Waking up superbugs may destroy their drug resistance

1/16/2009. New Scientist. “The protein that enables some bacteria to become dormant and avoid the effects of antibiotics has been identified – sleep may no longer be an escape option.”

Sat Dec 6

AIDS - A New Disease's Deadly Odyssey

February 6, 1983. New York Times.

This article details the medical knowledge of AIDS in 1983, and its history from its first appearance in 1979. If you want to see the news articles about AIDS before it even had a name, type in “Kaposi’s sarcoma” into the NYT search and start reading oldest first.

Wed Dec 3

“2008 Bailout Costs As Much As Several Large And Famous Government Projects Combined.” The Consumerist. 12/3/2008.

I’m unclear as to how exactly they generated the graphs, but I think they set the radius of the bailout graph (left) to be proportional with respect to the radius of the graph of the other government plans (right).

The other government plans: $3,920,000,000,000 (adjusted for inflation).
The 2008 bailout total as of Nov 2008: $4,616,000,000,000.

The ratio is 1:1.1776, or put another way, the bailout costs 17.76% more than all those other projects put together.

Tue Dec 2

“ The idea of using chemical isotopes to combat ageing may be new, but nature may already be onto that strategy as a way of protecting us against free-radical attack, thought to be a key cause of ageing. Babies and mice are born with much more of the isotope carbon-13 in their bodies than their mothers, and women appear to become unusually depleted in carbon-13 around the time they give birth. ”

“Would eating heavy atoms lengthen our lives?” NewScientist Health. 11/27/2008.

That is weird.

Mon Nov 10

“ Barack Obama, our sexy, hot-lady-marrying, jump-shot-making president-to-be is also a pathetic nerd. Time’s Joel Stein warned against what he termed the “Urkel Effect” in the magazine’s pre-election blitz, the power of those undecided voters who would “walk into the voting booth and suddenly think, I cannot take four years of listening to that giant-eared nerd.” Now that Obama has secured victory, his utter geekdom can safely be revealed. ”

Washington City Paper. “Obama: First Trekkie President.” 11/7/2008.

This article amuses me. :)

Thu Oct 2

Make-Believe Maverick: A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty.

This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.

In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. …

What I wouldn’t give to have half the opportunities they were born with!

Wed Oct 1

Tissue sample suggests HIV has been infecting humans for a century

Nature. 10/1/2008.

“In 1998, researchers reported the isolation of HIV-1 sequences from a blood sample taken in 1959 from a Bantu male living in Léopoldville — now Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Analysis of that sample and others suggested that HIV-1 originates from sometime between 1915 and 1941.”

Thu Sep 25

The methane time bomb | The Independent

‘The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.’

‘The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.’

(via BoingBoing.)

“Imagining the Tenth Dimension.” Flash video explaining multiple dimensions.

Sat Sep 20

metaquotes: On blotched HTML

Is it still a link if it is both invisible and unclickable?
It has linkish qualities.
Could god create a link so invisible, he himself could not click it?
The silicon bosses killed you, Gutenberg. I never died, said he.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our code, but in ourselves.
A proxy server, a proxy server! My kingdom for a proxy server!
Links expire, the archives cannot hold; mere 404 is loosed upon the world.
More: http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/6837988.html

Thu Sep 18

The story behind the Palin e-mail hacking

Sarah Palin’s e-mail was hacked by a 4channer who researched the answers to all her security questions online.