Dr. Hansen, who has been doing research on obese monkeys for four decades, prefers animals that become naturally obese with age, just as many humans do. Fat Albert, one of her monkeys who she said was at one time the world’s heaviest rhesus, at 70 pounds, ate “nothing but an American Heart Association-recommended diet,” she said./via Monkeys Fattened Up to Study Human Obesity - NYTimes.com.
One example — before the action was taken, JC Penney held the number one spot for the search term ‘living room furniture,’ and after it stood at number 68 — is enough to show the awesome power Google holds over the results it delivers, but the story also serves to show how truly broken search is, as well as Google’s seeming nonchalance about the issue./via NYT uncovers the tawdry, seedy tale of the SEO games of J.C. Penney — Engadget.
Those who propose the United States somehow adopt an approach of “noninterference” should remember that silence will be interpreted as complicity by Egyptians. America, after all, far from a bystander, is the Egyptian regime’s primary benefactor. The billions it has given Egypt in economic and military aid means that the United States, more than any other country, enjoys significant leverage with Egypt. Now is the time to use it./via Pharaoh’s End - An FP Round Table | Foreign Policy.
Google might want WebM to become the dominant web video standard, but H.264 is set to remain the dominant video standard for years to come, and WebM is never going to achieve that same status. Web browsers can either handle that standard natively (maximizing both user convenience and quality), or they can stick their head in the sand and ignore it, forcing users and site operators alike to transcode video into other formats./via Google’s dropping H.264 from Chrome a step backward for openness. Preach on, Ars.
While Jacobs could only speculate on the value of our urban interactions, West insists that he has found a way to “scientifically confirm” her conjectures. “One of my favorite compliments is when people come up to me and say, ‘You have done what Jane Jacobs would have done, if only she could do mathematics,’ ” West says. “What the data clearly shows, and what she was clever enough to anticipate, is that when people come together, they become much more productive.”via A Physicist Turns the City Into an Equation - NYTimes.com.
Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a “Maximum Custody Detainee,” the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him./via The inhumane conditions of Bradley Mannings detention - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com. This more than most things makes me think the libertarian stance of not voting makes sense. I don’t want to be responsible in any way for this.
The rot set in back in the 19th century, when the US legal system began recognizing corporations as de facto people. Fast forward past the collapse of the ancien regime, and into modern second-wave colonialism: once the USA grabbed the mantle of global hegemon from the bankrupt British empire in 1945, they naturally exported their corporate model worldwide, as US diplomatic (and military) muscle was used to promote access to markets on behalf of US corporations./via Invaders from Mars - Charlie’s Diary.
“We thought that political temperament may moderate the magnitude of gaze-cuing effects, but we did not expect conservatives to be completely immune to these cues,” said Michael Dodd, a UNL assistant professor of psychology and the lead author of the study. Liberals may have followed the “gaze cues,” meanwhile, because they tend to be more responsive to others, the study suggests./via Look: What your reaction to someone’s eye movements says about your politics. Or, another way, conservatives are high-functioning autistic. :)
Corpulence used to signify the prosperity of a few but has now become a marker of poverty. Obesity has risen as the income gap has widened: more than a third of U.S. adults and 17 percent of children are obese, and the problem is acute among the poor. While obesity is a complex problem—genetics, environment, and activity level all play a role—a 2008 study by the USDA found that children and women on food stamps were likelier to be overweight than those who were not./via What Food Says About Class in America - Newsweek. The writer of this is basically disgusting, but there is a real problem under it all. There is a range between a quarter pounder with cheese and “quinoa porridge sweetened with applesauce and laced with kale flakes”, or whatever fad you are doing this week. that range is, you know, most of America. It would have been a little more impactful with more science and less park slope foodie fads.
Frankly, it’s hard for me to imagine any expert in any subject who wouldn’t feel it an imperative public duty to talk to Gov. Palin if asked. Instead she turns to a journalist with no formal training in economics and no experience in public finance./via Palin Preps on Europe’s Debt Crisis | FrumForum.
