These are my links for September 21st 2009 through October 2nd 2009:

• Subliminal advertising really does work, claim scientists – Telegraph – "Subliminal advertising really does work, claim scientists who found that people subconsciously respond to flashed messages – especially if they are negative. "
• Ratchet-like genetic mutations make evolution irreversible | Eureka! Science News – "A University of Oregon research team has found that evolution can never go backwards, because the paths to the genes once present in our ancestors are forever blocked."
• Dan Brown swaps pseudohistory for pseudoscience | Salon Books – With "The Lost Symbol," his "Da Vinci" follow-up, Brown spins a wild Freemason conspiracy — then never solves it
• Brunel, Locke and Stephenson: the engineering giants who shaped our world – Telegraph – "Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Joseph Locke and Robert Stephenson are past giants of engineering whose legacy remains one hundred and fifty years on"
• Superstitions stay with us from childhood | COSMOS magazine – "Superstitious beliefs we hold as adults may be a by-product of the processes we use to make sense of the world around us as children, according to a novel hypothesis."

These are my links for September 9th 2009 through September 14th 2009:

• Carrots Are Better Than Sticks For Building Human Cooperation, Study Finds – Rewards go further than punishment in building human cooperation and benefiting the common good, according to research published this week in the journal Science by researchers at Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics. While previous studies have focused almost exclusively on punishment for promoting public cooperation, here rewards are shown to be much more successful.
• BBC NEWS | Health | Antibiotic resistance clue found – US scientists have uncovered a defence mechanism in bacteria that allows them to fend off the threat of antibiotics.

  It is hoped the findings could help researchers boost the effectiveness of existing treatments.

  The study published in Science found that nitric oxide produced by the bacteria eliminates some key effects of a wide range of antibiotic

• Kurt Vonnegut explains drama | Derek Sivers – Brilliant visual explanation of drama from Kurt Vonnegut.
• Morality Play / Science News – Universal concerns, not cultural values, may shape kids’ developing notions of right and wrong
• Dance Parties That Start (and End) Early, for Folks With Day Jobs – NYTimes.com – Great article on the rise of day-time and early evening clubs for ageing ravers.

These are my links for September 3rd 2009 through September 9th 2009:

• A Mugging on Lake Street – Chicago magazine – September 2009 – Chicago – "A veteran investigative reporter looks into his own beating and finds himself confronting harsh and lingering questions of race" .
• Edge: ECONOMICS IS NOT NATURAL SCIENCE By Douglas Rushkoff – "We must stop perpetuating the fiction that existence itself is dictated by the immutable laws of economics. These so-called laws are, in actuality, the economic mechanisms of 13th Century monarchs. Some of us analyzing digital culture and its impact on business must reveal economics as the artificial construction it really is. Although it may be subjected to the scientific method and mathematical scrutiny, it is not a natural science; it is game theory, with a set of underlying assumptions that have little to do with anything resembling genetics, neurology, evolution, or natural systems."
• David Denby goes on the hunt for snark, abuse in a public forum | Books | The Guardian – "What is snark? Abuse in a public forum of a particular kind – personal, low, teasing, rug-pulling, finger-pointing, snide, obvious, and knowing….It is sly, knowing and often downright nasty. Politicians and celebrities are its prey. And it attacks, under the guise of wit, without proof or reason…[It] is invading all modern discourse from gossip sites to newspapers"
• BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Huge ‘sky explosion’ investigated – Nukes over Ireland or just another exploding Russian military satellite?
• Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb? – NYTimes.com – Interesting article on the power and effectiveness of game theory in real-world scenarios.
• World Affairs Journal – Twice Branded: Western Women in Muslim Lands – "That’s the way it was in Cairo—and still is. Local women are of such negligible importance that they can be viewed as prey. On the other hand, foreign women are in a wholly different category: wild and yet easy, so menacing and just plain available they are invariably treated as prey. The foreigner without a murderous uncle by her side or a veil over her face is a communal dish."

These are my links for September 1st 2009 through September 3rd 2009:

• Boston Review — Noam Chomsky: Crisis and Hope – ""If I want to get home from work," observes Noam Chomsky, "the market offers me a choice between a Ford and a Toyota, but not between a car and a subway".
• Female sexual abuse: The untold story of society’s last taboo – Taboos & Tolerance, Love & Sex – The Independent –
• Single-sex schools influence who you fancy – Telegraph – "Single-sex schools not only influence your marks but also who you find attractive, claim scientists, as they find female students surrounded by other girls are more attracted to feminine looking boys, like High School Musical's Zac Efron. "
• Book Review: ‘The Third Man Factor’ – WSJ.com – "Survivors of extreme situations—on Everest and elsewhere—credit the help of a 'third man' who is not there."
• How To: Run an ‘Honesty Trace’ to Counter Roadside Bombs | Danger Room | Wired.com – "Changing up routes is standard in military operations, but creating “honesty traces” (a term borrowed from the British in Northern Ireland, who did the same thing with tracing paper) can help troops avoid falling into unexpected — and potentially deadly — patterns."
• Gel could block HIV like a condom | COSMOS magazine – Scientists have created a gel that could prevent the transmission of HIV by physically stopping the virus in its tracks. The 'molecular condom' was designed by scientists at the University of Utah in the United States. If it passes clinical trials, it will enable women to protect themselves against HIV without approval from their partners.

These are my links for August 25th 2009 through August 31st 2009:

• Creationists, now they’re coming for your children – Times Online – "People who reject the theory of evolution should be placed on a level with Holocaust deniers, argues an author in his controversial new book"
• Findings – Guilt and Atonement on the Path to Adulthood – NYTimes.com – Guilt in its many varieties — Puritan, Catholic, Jewish, etc. — has often gotten a bad rap, but psychologists keep finding evidence of its usefulness.
• Porn and Mirror Neurons : The Frontal Cortex – "But how does porn work? Why do humans (especially men) get so excited by seeing someone else have sex? At first glance, the answer seems obvious: watching porn triggers an idea (we start thinking about sex), which then triggers a change in our behavior (we become sexually aroused). This is how most of us think about thinking: sensations cause thoughts which cause physical responses. Porn is a quintessential example of how such a thought process might work.

  But this straightforward answer is probably wrong. Porn does not cause us to think about sex. Rather, porn causes to think we are having sex. From the perspective of the brain, the act of arousal is not preceded by a separate idea, which we absorb via the television or computer screen. The act itself is the idea. In other words, porn works by convincing us that we are not watching porn. We think we are inside the screen, doing the deed."

• Mu (negative) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – Most famous meaning is "unask the question".
• Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why. – The placebo effect is getting stronger, forcing the cancellation of new drugs that "cross the futility boundary".

These are my links for August 21st 2009 through August 25th 2009:

• World faces hi-tech crunch as China eyes ban on rare metal exports – Telegraph – "Beijing is drawing up plans to prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybrid cars and catalytic converters, to superconductors, and precision-guided weapons. "
• What you don’t know about your friends – The Boston Globe – "A growing body of experimental evidence suggests that, on the whole, we know significantly less about our friends, colleagues, and even spouses than we think we do. This lack of knowledge extends far beyond embarrassing game-show fodder – we’re often completely wrong about their likes and dislikes, their political beliefs, their tastes, their cherished values."
• Welcome to Facts on Toxicity – FactsOnToxicity.com – Fascinating but scary presentation on the real underlying cause of chronic illness.
• Wish you weren’t here: The devastating effects of the new colonialists – Nature, Environment – The Independent – A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, says Paul Vallely, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs
• Maternal, Paternal Genes’ Tug-of-war May Last Well Into Childhood – An analysis of rare genetic disorders in which children lack some genes from one parent suggests that maternal and paternal genes engage in a subtle tug-of-war well into childhood, and possibly as late as the onset of puberty.
• Why men in ads are dumb, goofy or completely inept – The Globe and Mail – Targeting women by targeting men is standard practice. But is it smart marketing?

These are my links for July 19th 2009 through August 11th 2009:

• THEM THANGS – Extraordinary pictures from J Blyth. (NSFW)
• Orion Shall Rise – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – Classic sci-fi from Poul Anderson
• Total Anonymity – A List of VPN Service Providers | –

These are my links for July 9th 2009 through July 13th 2009:

• Among Many Peoples, Little Genomic Variety – washingtonpost.com – "There is a simplicity and all-inclusiveness to the number three — the triangle, the Holy Trinity, three peas in a pod. So it's perhaps not surprising that the Family of Man is divided that way, too…. All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made — the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens….One group is the African. It contains the descendants of the original humans who emerged in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. The second is the Eurasian, encompassing the natives of Europe, the Middle East and Southwest Asia (east to about Pakistan). The third is the East Asian, the inhabitants of Asia, Japan and Southeast Asia, and — thanks to the Bering Land Bridge and island-hopping in the South Pacific — of the Americas and Oceania as well. "
• The Technium: Triumph of the Default – "One of the greatest unappreciated inventions of modern life is the default. "Default" is a technical concept first used in computer science in the 1960s to indicate a preset standard. Default, for instance, as in: the default of this program assumes that dates are given in two digit years not four. Today the notion of a default has spread beyond computer science to the culture at large. It seems such a small thing, but the idea of the default is fundamental to the technium. "
• 100 Essential Skills for Geeks | GeekDad | Wired.com – As Geeks we are expected to have a certain set of skills that the majority of the population does not possess. This list is by no means complete, but I think it is a good sample of the skills required to be a true geek. I won’t pretend to have all the skills listed here. I even had to Google a few of them.

  Like all good Geeks you should be able to utilize resources to accomplish any of these things. Knowing where to look for the knowledge is as good as having it so give yourself points if you are certain that you could Google the knowledge necessary for a skill.

• Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail by Richard Bentall review | Non-fiction book reviews – Times Online – "“Psychiatry,” he writes, “has been profoundly unscientific and at the same time unsuccessful at helping some of the most distressed and vulnerable people in our society.” "
• The Mistakes That Argue for Evolution – TierneyLab Blog – NYTimes.com –
• BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity ‘link to same-sex parent’ – There is a strong link in obesity between mothers and daughters and fathers and sons, but not across the gender divide, research suggests.
• Ruse of war – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – A ruse of war (from the French, ruse de guerre) is an action taken by a belligerent in warfare to fool the enemy in order to gain intelligence or a military advantage against an enemy.
• Closed minds stifle science | The Australian – Cognitive misers make science communication a hard sell by relying heavily on mental shortcuts, values and emotions, often in the absence of knowledge

These are my links for July 2nd 2009 through July 8th 2009:

• George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior @ Foundations Magazine –
• Woodstock concert’s undercover lovers, Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, 40 years after summer of love – The iconic couple under a blanket at Woodstock are still together, 40 years later.
• To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with | The Spectator – Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme
• Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply: Scientific American – This underappreciated resource–a key component of fertilizers–is still decades from running out. But we must act now to conserve it, or future agriculture could collapse
• Not Every Child Is Secretly a Genius – ChronicleReview.com – Multiple Intelligences theory turns out to be untrue, or at least, unproved.

These are my links for June 27th 2009 through July 2nd 2009:

• A Return to Yeomanry – By Phillip Longman | Foreign Policy – Break out your mulching fork: Jeffersonian farmers are back!
• Prime Numbers: Sex Matters – By Malcolm Potts and Martha Campbell | Foreign Policy – Low birthrates aren't the result of economic growth and political stability; they're a prerequisite.
• Think Again: Asia’s Rise – By Minxin Pei | Foreign Policy – Don't believe the hype about the decline of America and the dawn of a new Asian age. It will be many decades before China, India, and the rest of the region take over the world, if they ever do.
• B92 – News – Business & Economy – "Right time for Diaspora to invest" –
• Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky – "For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity."