Swans on Tea

Over at incoherently scattered ponderings, there’s a post on safety at academic labs, which links to an article at Slate about an explosion at a lab which killed a worker, and discusses the difference in safety standards for students vs workers, and academia vs industry.
Why the difference between industry and academe? For one thing, the [...]

It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado
I had no idea water rights apply/applied to rainfall.

Nuke ‘em
Ground Zero II
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city? With Google’s Maps framework and a bit of Javascript, you can see the outcome. And it doesn’t look good.

I read The Devil Is in the Digits, an analysis of the Iranian voting results, and something doesn’t feel quite right about it. (And it’s not that these two political science student authors are being touted as mathematicians in some of the blogs linking to the story) Disclaimer: there seem to be [...]

A risk you run with in the digital age is that if you do something stupid, it will almost certainly be recorded in a quasi-permanent way, in contrast to the ephemeral nature of a spoken conversation. You don’t even have the “I was misquoted” excuse when you’ve removed the human being from the equation. [...]

John Hodgman at Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner
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via

Ralph Nader with a slim jim.
The Ultimate Lock Picker Hacks Pentagon, Beats Corporate Security for Fun and Profit
Thinking like a criminal is Tobias’ idea of fun. It makes him laugh. It has also made him money and earned him a reputation as something of the Rain Man of lock-breaking. Even if you’ve never heard of [...]

America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making
Breaking down the $2 trillion in deficit since 2000. For all the hysteria about recent events, I find this tidbit interesting (summarized in this graphic):
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. [...]

How to Teach a Child to Argue
And let’s face it: Our culture has lost the ability to usefully disagree. Most Americans seem to avoid argument. But this has produced passive aggression and groupthink in the office, red and blue states, and families unable to discuss things as simple as what to watch on television. Rhetoric [...]

why you should honor thy scientists
[I]t’s not just zealots who will equate scientific methodology with theistic dogmatism. In an attempt to appear completely objective and beyond any charge of bias, some writers will give equal importance to every opinion with seemingly no regard for whether it’s right or wrong. They think that by giving a [...]

News IQ quiz
You correctly answered 11 out of the 12 possible questions, which means you did better on the quiz than 82% of the general public.
Couldn’t remember where the DJIA has been hanging out recently.
You can check out nationwide results by age, gender and education level.

Obama’s green guru calls for white roofs
One of the many things about politics and political reporting that I find annoying is the eagerness with which the reporters will “interpret” what was said, and this story appears to be no exception. It’s hard to say for sure, because precious little of what Chu actually said [...]