The Fount of Useless Information
Your place for useless information that just might possibly be interesting.
El Niño Was Unusually Active In The Late 20th Century Possibly Due To Climate Change
http://www.ibtimes.com/el-nino-was-unusually-active-late-20th-century-possibly-due-climate-change-1329255#
I talk about “global warming” off and on here, mostly complaining about the inability for our society to have a conversation discussing …
The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis
It’s long been suspected that ratings agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s helped trigger the meltdown. A new trove of embarrassing documents shows how they did it
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-crisis-20130619
In this case, the …
Vitamins: Too much of a not-so-good thing?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/19/health/vitamins-offit/index.html?hpt=hp_c4
This is an interesting issue. Much like the flu vaccine having dubious efficacy (where ‘dubious’ is being kind) over the last couple of decades mega doses of vitamins have been increasingly shown …
Opinion: Alternative healing or quackery?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/18/health/alternative-medicine-offit/index.html?hpt=hp_bn13
I particularly like this introduction…
…It used to be called “fringe” or “unconventional” medicine — or simply quackery. Today, it’s called “alternative,” “complementary,” “holistic” or “integrative.”
And it has moved into the mainstream. Hospitals
U.S. top court bars patents on human genes unless synthetic
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/13/us-usa-court-genes-idUSBRE95C0PW20130613
It has always stuck in my craw that the simple act of sequencing a gene could possibly be considered ‘novel, useful and non-obvious’, yet we have (had) thousands of …
Employment is still near a 30-year low
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/06/news/economy/employment-rate/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Using the most generous measurement of employment in the article (for workers ages 25 to 54 — those who should be in the prime of their careers) there is an employment rate …
TSA drops effort to allow small knives on planes
http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2013/06/05/tsa-knives/2393139/
As if more proof were needed of the anti-science attitude of the US population, the TSA, in a laudable effort to reduce (however slightly) the security theater that it is …
Potemkin Stimulus: One Way to Offset Austerity
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/potemkin-stimulus-one-way-to-offset-austerity/
How far away are we from doing this? I doubt it is very. At the moment we rush around and spend huge dollars replacing broken things (like bridges, cities; generally with borrowed …
Is It Better to Walk or Run?
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/is-it-better-to-walk-or-run/
I wonder if there is a confounding factor in that runners have generally more healthy behaviors than walkers (clearly both have better behaviors than couch potatoes) which could explain the weight discrepancy. …
Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/immigration-reform-dossiers/
I think what bothers many people is that 1984 was in the past and they expected it to stay that way. However, Big Brother just needed some more time …