December 2010
Dec 31st
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Dec 31st
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Dec 31st
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Dec 31st
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The New Voodoo - Paul Krugman →
Krugman calls the GOP hypocrits as they call for tax cuts and fiscal austerity. Schizophrenic sociopaths might be more apt.
Dec 31st
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Trade and Border Disputes Widen India-China Gulf Mr. Wen did secure business deals, announce new trade goals and offer reassurances of friendly Chinese intentions. But the trip also underscored that many points of tension between the Asian giants — trade imbalances, their disputed border and the status of Kashmir — are growing worse. And the Indian foreign policy establishment, once reluctant...
Dec 30th
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Why We Shouldn't Trust (Most) Economists
A long piece that collates research showing the economists are untrustworthy, selfish ideologues, in general: William Mitchell,  We always knew it – their brains are thinner! We already know that economics teaches students to be non-cooperative, more selfish and less honest. We learn that “students of economics are indeed much more likely to free-ride in experiments that called for private...
Dec 30th
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Dec 30th
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Dec 30th
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Dec 30th
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Inaction and Delays by New York as Storm Bore Down... →
What went wrong? Everything. Clearly, the city should have moved to a snow emergency as soon as the National Weather Service stated that a blizzard was likely, around 4pm Chritsmas Day. It wasn’t until 11am Sunday that the transportation authority and sanitation departments started to accept they had a blizzard on their hands. The subtext is that the city is economizing, and took great...
Dec 30th
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“It is the most remote island in the world.”
–  Bouvet Island - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dec 29th
French Unions in National Strike on Pensions - NYTimes.com The pension problem in France is real. Under the current law, the number of pensioners will increase 47 percent between now and 2050. The French state pension system today is running a deficit of $14 billion; by 2050, it will be $131 billion, about 2.6 percent of projected economic output. The change to 62 from 60 for a minimum...
Dec 29th
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$2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US... →
More than 100 American cities could go bust next year as the debt crisis that has taken down banks and countries threatens next to spark a municipal meltdown, a leading analyst has warned. Meredith Whitney, the US research analyst who correctly predicted the global credit crunch, described local and state debt as the biggest problem facing the US economy, and one that could derail its...
Dec 29th
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He's Got A Gregarious Physiology
I have long maintained that the Dunbar Number — we supposedly can only maintain a small number of close relationships, and only remain connected to 150 people in total — isn’t a constant: it’s a variable. I have been on the look out for research that supports this premise, and something new has come to light. Lisa Feldman Barrett, working with a team at Mass General...
Dec 29th
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He's Got A Gregarious Physiology
I have long maintained that the Dunbar Number — we supposedly can only maintain a small number of close relationships, and only remain connected to 150 people in total — isn’t a constant: it’s a variable. I have been on the look out for research that supports this premise, and something new has come to light. Lisa Feldman Barrett, working with a team at Mass General...
Dec 29th
“The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right.”
–  Henrik Ibsen
Dec 29th
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Dec 29th
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The price of love? Losing two of your closest... →
Falling in love comes at the cost of losing close friends, because romantic partners absorb time that would otherwise be invested in platonic relationships, researchers say. A new partner pushes out two close friends on average, leaving lovers with a smaller inner circle of people they can turn to in times of crisis, a study found. The research, led by Robin Dunbar, head of the Institute of...
Dec 29th
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“But if the Net is so crucial, what happens if the Net goes down? It may have to...”
–  Stewart Brand
Dec 29th
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The Cost Of China's Growth
The ecological consequences of China’s unsustainable growth are becoming more obvious, and even the country’s leaders are dismayed by the possibilities of ecological collapse there: China counts £130bn cost of economic growth in ecological damage China’s economic growth is inflicting more than a trillion yuan’s [$170B] worth of damage on its environment each year,...
Dec 29th
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Dec 29th
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Dec 29th
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“Question: Are liberals more intelligent than conservatives? Satoshi Kanazawa:...”
– Why Liberals Are More Intelligent Than Conservatives | Satoshi Kanazawa | Big Think 
Dec 29th
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Dec 28th
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“The most important part about tomorrow is not the technology or the automation,...”
– R. Buckminster Fuller (via azspot)
Dec 28th
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Dec 28th
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Dec 28th
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Dec 28th
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Dec 28th
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“Back in 1990 Boulder rejected the concept of widening roads and constructing...”
– Moving Traffic to the Trail: Boulder’s Multipurpose Greenway « City Parks Blog (via landscapearchitecture)
Dec 28th
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“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us...”
– - Ira Glass (via hyperallergic) The 10,000 hour rule, again.
Dec 27th
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Dec 27th
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Fox Spews The Most Misinformation
Misinformation and the 2010 Election Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that: ƒmost economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely) most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points) ƒ the economy is getting worse (26 points) most scientists do not...
Dec 27th
“Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than...”
– Misinformation and the 2010 Election 
Dec 27th
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“After buying data on more than 23,000 publicly traded companies, Bettencourt and...”
–  Jonah Lehrer, A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation
Dec 27th
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“We have been gradually disempowered by a corporate state that, as Huxley...”
– - Chris Hedges (via azspot)
Dec 27th
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Dec 27th
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“It’s when West switches the conversation from infrastructure to people that he...”
–  Jonah Lehrer, A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation
Dec 27th
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“Every fundamental law has exceptions. But you still need the law or else all you...”
–  Geoffrey West, cited by Jonah Lehrer, A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation
Dec 27th
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“After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these...”
–  Jonah Lehrer, A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation
Dec 27th
“In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss.”
–  Eric Ravussin (a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.), cited by Gretchen Reynolds, Weighing the Evidence on Exercise - NYTimes.com
Dec 27th
Dec 27th
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Dec 27th
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Dec 27th
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Dec 27th
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“You can easily be completely anonymous online, or utterly revealed, but it is...”
– The Hazards of Nerd Supremacy: The Case of WikiLeaks - Jaron Lanier - Technology - The Atlantic (via simplyann)
Dec 27th
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Dec 27th
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“According to Proust, one proof that we are reading a major new writer is that...”
– Adam Kirsch (via ironicheroine)
Dec 27th
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“I think living walls have become a substitute for having any ideas.”
–  Sean Griffiths, cited by Steven Alton, SUSTAINABILITY MISGUIDED: ARCHITECTS AND GREENWALLS
Dec 27th
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