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MonthSeptember 2009

Wall Street Gambles on Old People Dying

September 9, 2009 /

Emphasis mine:

What’s very amusing about this New York Times article is that, while describing this, there is no passage that reads anything like, “This utterly insane plan, which will condemn all those involved with it to an eternity of elaborate torment in the afterlife, is ironically being promoted by the very institutions that only just recently tried to destroy the world by creating similar casino-like gambits based on home ownership.” […]

What the fuck??? This feels like financial innovation as practiced by Josef Mengele meets the Zucker Brothers; not just evil, but wacky evil. I don’t even want to think about what happens when Goldman Sachs suddenly has a large financial stake in the premature deaths of a bunch of old people. Where are the crazy police? Where is the crack federal crazy squad with the big butterfly net? I don’t know about betting on anyone’s life expectancy, but I think I’d like to bet on whether or not this idea ends well.

Matt Taibi: Wall Street Gambles on Old People Dying

Will conservatives protest Wall Street death panels?

Common good is best achieved through rewards, not punishment

September 9, 2009 /

To promote the common good, should helpers be rewarded, or should free riders be punished? Although the bulk of previous research has fingered punishment as the best enforcer, a new study published online today in Science found that rewards are more effective. […]

He and his team used a classic public goods game to study how groups of volunteers encouraged the best outcome for the most people. In a series of monetary interactions, individuals decided how much money to contribute to a common pot, and they could then decide whether to reward good contributors or punish bad—both of which would entail spending money.

Previous public goods studies had focused on one-time interactions and found that people were more likely to swindle or punish others. But in situations where interactions were repeated, people found greater success in reward-based structures—in which those that contributed were rewarded and those who didn’t were ignored—than those in which costly punishment was doled out to those who didn’t contribute.

Scientific American: Common good is best achieved through rewards, not punishment

(via Relevant History)

Could Salmonella Bacteria Kill Tumors?

September 8, 2009 /

Scientists from Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research are researching how salmonella kill tumours. Salmonella are regarded as bad guys. Hardly a summer passes without severe salmonella infections via raw egg dishes or chicken that find their way into the media. But salmonella not only harm us – in future they may even help to defend us against cancer. The bacteria migrate into solid tumours and make it easier to destroy them. Furthermore, in laboratory mice they independently find their way into metastases, where they can also aid clearance.

Science Daily: Could Salmonella Bacteria Kill Tumors?

Panel Urges Engineering Be Added to Curriculum

September 8, 2009 /

Engineering studies, or lessons on how products are designed and built, have the potential to bolster student engagement and understanding in math and science, despite the topic’s relatively modest and undefined presence in the nation’s schools.

That’s the conclusion, outlined in a study unveiled today, of an expert committee charged with evaluating the status of engineering lessons in K-12 schools and judging their effectiveness.

Education Week: Panel Urges Engineering Be Added to Curriculum

(via Appropedia)

Parenthood makes moms more liberal, dads more conservative

September 8, 2009 /

Parenthood is pushing mothers and fathers in opposite directions on political issues associated with social welfare, from health care to education, according to new research from North Carolina State University.

“Parenthood seems to heighten the political ‘gender gap,’ with women becoming more liberal and men more conservative when it comes to government spending on social welfare issues,” says Dr. Steven Greene, an associate professor of political science at NC State and co-author of the study. Greene and Dr. Laurel Elder of Hartwick College used data on the 2008 presidential election from the American National Election Studies to evaluate the voting behavior of men and women who have children at home. Parents who have grown children were not part of the study.

“Basically, women with children in the home were more liberal on social welfare attitudes, and attitudes about the Iraq War, than women without children at home,” Greene says, “which is a very different understanding of the politics of mothers than captured by the ‘Security Mom’ label popular in much media coverage. But men with kids are more conservative on social welfare issues than men without kids.” Men with kids did not differ from men without kids in their attitudes towards Iraq.

PhysOrg: Study: Parenthood makes moms more liberal, dads more conservative

(via Chris Arkenberg)

Blackwater Contractor Saw Killing Iraqis as 9/11 Payback – Justice Department

September 8, 2009 /

For sport, they rolled through the streets of Baghdad hurling frozen oranges and water bottles at civilians and nearby vehicles, trying to smash windshields and injure bystanders. Convoying through the city in armored vehicles, the contractors fired their weapons indiscriminately. One member of the Blackwater security team known as Raven 23 regularly bragged about his body count and viewed killing Iraqis as “payback for 9/11.”

These allegations are contained in court records [PDF] filed on Monday by Justice Department lawyers prosecuting five Blackwater contractors for the September 2007 shooting frenzy in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that killed 14 Iraqis and wounded 20 others. Anticipating that lawyers representing the contractors will argue that they were acting in self defense, the prosecution is seeking to introduce evidence that “several of the defendants had harbored a deep hostility toward Iraqi civilians which they demonstrated in words and deeds.” The charges are similar to those that recently emerged in civil lawsuits against Blackwater, stemming from the Nisour Square episode.

Mother Jones: Justice Dept.: Blackwater Contractor Saw Killing Iraqis as 9/11 Payback

(see also: Blackwater founder accused of murder)

How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade

September 8, 2009 /

From a Silicon Valley office strewn with bean-bag chairs, a group of twenty-something software engineers is building an unlikely following of terrorist hunters at U.S. spy agencies.

One of the latest entrants into the government spy-services marketplace, Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks. The software’s main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn’t do. That means an analyst who is following a tip about a planned terror attack, for example, can more quickly and easily unearth connections among suspects, money transfers, phone calls and previous attacks around the globe.

Wall Street Journal: How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade

(via Alex Burns)

Lost world of fanged frogs and giant rats discovered in Papua New Guinea

September 7, 2009 /

A lost world populated by fanged frogs, grunting fish and tiny bear-like creatures has been discovered in a remote volcanic crater on the Pacific island of Papua New Guinea.

A team of scientists from Britain, the United States and Papua New Guinea found more than 40 previously unidentified species when they climbed into the kilometre-deep crater of Mount Bosavi and explored a pristine jungle habitat teeming with life that has evolved in isolation since the volcano last erupted 200,000 years ago. In a remarkably rich haul from just five weeks of exploration, the biologists discovered 16 frogs which have never before been recorded by science, at least three new fish, a new bat and a giant rat, which may turn out to be the biggest in the world.

Guardian: Lost world of fanged frogs and giant rats discovered in Papua New Guinea

(via Disinfo)

Forty Percent of Working-Age Californians Unemployed

September 7, 2009 /

Another sobering statistic to brighten your Labor Day:

It’s been said that official unemployment numbers undercut the true unemployment numbers, with many dropping off the radar as their unemployment benefits expire, and with many taking jobs that “underemploy” them. Still, this study comes as a shock, saying that 2/5 of Californians of working age are out of work.

The report, “In the Midst of the Great Recession: The State of Working California 2009,” by the California Budget Project, states that less than 3/5 of California’s working age adults had jobs in July 2009.

That contrasts to the official unemployment rate, which says that California’s jobless rate is 11.9%.

Huliq: Forty Percent of Working-Age Californians Unemployed

Surpressed GQ article on Putin now available online and in Russian

September 7, 2009 /

Gawker has published the full text the GQ article that article Conde Naste decided to hide and its been translated into Russian by volunteers:

In an act of publishing cowardice, Condé Nast has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent Russians from reading a GQ article criticizing Vladimir Putin. As a public service, we’re running it here and ask for your help in translating it.

[Saturday afternoon update: Just over 24 hours after we asked for your help, you’ve given us a pretty much complete Russian translation of the story.

Find it at Gawker

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