Late May Link Dump

• 1200 National guard troops sent to Mexican border to watch for illegal entries and drug traffic. The excessive focus on finding and deporting undocumented immigrants detracts from reducing drug demand, building a great nation of hard-working people, and actually finding criminals or terrorists. (article)
• Woman goes into a coma after eating 3 pounds of raw bok choy daily for months as a home cure for diabetes. All health regimens in moderation, please. (article)
• Relieve sleep apnea by strenghtening throat muscles via exercise. "swallowing and chewing motions, placing the tip of the tongue against the front of the palate and sliding it back, and pronouncing certain vowels quickly and continuously" (article)
• Photos of people while they're jumping are immediate and interesting. Try it out. (article)
• Performance artist (Marina Abramovic) sits down all day in the MoMA. People can sit in the chair across from her for as long as they like. A big advance in interactivity from performance art that has typically been very isolated; people are excited to participate. I thought it interesting that everyone who got photo'd across from her looked solemn, thoughtful, or like they were about to cry. Except for a kid who just looked interested. (article)
• Put a server farm in a rural area and you can build a manure processing plant to power it. The manure processing requires lots of heat, which the servers produce in abundance. (article)
• Young people in America are much more open to immigrants and immigration than older people. Contains an excellent graphic - shows top cities where (percentage of adults who are white minus percentage of children who are white) is large. These are areas where adults are likely to feel strongly that they are being invaded while children are likely to see immigration as a fact of life, leading to a large generational gap. (article)
• Basic cotton long pajamas are socially accepted outdoor clothing in Shanghai. Now the Chinese government is trying to ban them. (article)
• US relies heavily on private companies that do their own spying for human intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Daily briefings from these companies to top defense officials, who use the data to plan strikes. Current contract with them $22 million. Hiring private spies is controversial. (article)
• In 2009 in the U.S., data traffic on cell phones was larger than voice traffic for the first time ever. (article)
• Military leader of Madagascar sleeps with a knife and a grenade under his pillow to fight anyone who might try to stage a coup like the one that brought him to power last year. (article)
• Article examining controversy around recent government action to "execute an American-born cleric far from a combat zone, with no judicial process". Man was a US citizen who was living abroad who advocates attacking the U.S. Paradoxically, a court order would be required to listen to tap his foreign cell phone, but no court order is seen to be required to order his assassination. (article)
• State laws requiring adequate nurse to patient ratios save many lives. These laws are not widespread. (article)
• New federal funding for sex ed programs "meant to encourage teenagers to delay sexual activity but to use protection if they are already active — as half of all high school students are. Lessons on healthy relationships, financial literacy and other life skills are also woven into the program, called PREP for Personal Responsibility Education Program" ... "A 2007 study commissioned by Congress found that students in abstinence programs were just as likely as those in a comparison group to have sex over the next four to six years; 49 percent in both groups remained abstinent. Those who had become sexually active had a similar number of partners, whether they had been through abstinence education or not" (article)
• Article on possible biological/genetic and gender factors influencing fidelity in marriage. In addition, simple pre-planning such as "when X opportunity for infidelity occurs, I will do Y to protect my relationship" leads to dramatically better fidelity indicators. Interesting relationship questions: How much does your partner provide a source of exciting experiences? How much has knowing your partner made you a better person? How much do you see your partner as a way to expand your own capabilities? If you're not happy with any of the answers, consider whether you need to improve rather than your partner. Interesting study: The Stony Brook researchers conducted experiments using activities that stimulated self-expansion. Some couples were given mundane tasks, while others took part in a silly exercise in which they were tied together and asked to crawl on mats, pushing a foam cylinder with their heads. The study was rigged so the couples failed the time limit on the first two tries, but just barely made it on the third, resulting in much celebration. Couples were given relationship tests before and after the experiment. Those who had taken part in the challenging activity posted greater increases in love and relationship satisfaction than those who had not experienced victory together. I wonder if artifically doing that regularly with real-life experiences would be beneficial? (article)
• David Belt, innovative experiential artist. Last year he turned large, clean dumpsters into covert party swimming pools in NYC. This year he built a secret installation where you can break bottles prior to recycling by throwing them at a big plexiglass wall (with pressure sensing lights that go off when bottles hit). Your friends, enemies, significant others can stand behind the wall and you can work out some of your aggression if that's your thing. Supposedly very theraputic, even though it's not my style to throw at someone, I'd dig the idea of the throwing in general. (article)
• If the bailout's goal was to help big banks be profitable, it worked. 4 large banks had a usually rare "perfect quarter" where they ended up profitable on every single day of the quarter. If the bailout's goal was to help teh economy overall rather than the specific shareholders and executives of those banks, then it likely didn't succeed as well. (article)
• Discussion about the differencese between food allergies and food intolerance and how many people think they have food allergies even though they don't. (article)
• Interesting sounding documentary on Finland's plans to bury its nuclear waste deep in bedrock for > 100,000 years (3000 generations, twenty times the current age of the pyramids), essentially so long that the place will likely be totally forgotten and any possible warnings we could leave would be misunderstood or destroyed by then. The film team joked that maybe they would dig the big tunnel and find out that someone 100,000 years ago had already buried their radioactive waste and we were just about to find it. It seems like we ought to figure out how to deal with energy-generation by-products before we build more power plants (nuclear fuel, coal pollution, incinerator rock/goo) or go with renewable alternatives that have fewer byproducts (wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric). (article)
• Article showing that tall, slim, attractive people are convicted less often than short, obese, unattractive people. Author seems a bit confused about causality though. (article)
• High-resolution 3D map of NYC based on multiple fly-overs by sensor equipped planes. Plans to use the data for emergency response and environmental planning (including sunlight / shadows from large buildings across seasons, times of day). Plus, it's kind of awesome. article)
• Indoor vertical gardens require lots of attention, but make a wall look stunning. You can buy kits for it. (article)
• Brain + age: Mid-aged brains (40-65) have decreased short-term memory recall and slower processing speed. However, brain is better at many things: "Inductive reasoning and problem solving — the logical use of your brain and actually getting to solutions. We get the gist of an argument better. We’re better at sizing up a situation and reaching a creative solution" ... plus better social expertise and better financial judgments. Physical exercise is the one thing that is a sure-thing to help brain health (less solid evidence for mental puzzles, etc.). Brain continues to grow, change, develop during middle-age unlike previous theories that thought it was just in decline. (article)
• Study correlates more TV time for 2 to 5 year olds with lower grades later in school, less healthy. Controlled for parental education, single-family households, etc. Take-home message is less TV for developing brains. (article)
• Over half of studied university students went tanning and 20% showed classic signs of addiction to their tanning. (article)
• Article on 50 years of birth-control pill, focusing on how its introduction changed the regulatory landscape for medicine. article)
• Missing parts of silent film "Metropolis" found in Argentine film archive, leading to first release of the complete film since it originally played. I'm pretty sure that even having the missing pieces won't make the film make sense for a first-time viewing. (article)
• Location-aware social media software first used to track political violence in Kenya now being used to track the BP oil spill. Eventually, this sort of location/behavioral tracking will be common.(article)
• Children's Tylenol and other meds recalled. (article)
• Ironically, but understandably, the previous generation of immigrants in Britain (including Muslim, black, and Asian immigrants) are likely to oppose new immigration from other EU countries, including Poland. (article)
• Awesome house in Costa Rica. Land cost $72k, construction of the house was $135k. Backyard is primal rain forest. (article)
• Marketing + surveillance / data collection. Web coupons with embedded information about how you found them (sometimes including your facebook info and name) didn't surpise me. Location-targeted ads that show up when you're next to a certain clothing rack also not surprising (although further along than I had thought). Amazon keeping track of everything you've ever bought and everyone you've ever sent something to and everything you've even looked at - not a big surprise. The fact that you can't get a copy of that for yourself or get a copy of your phone transcripts with customer service (they're always recording and they keep the transcript), or your flight history or your book purchases using your discount card except for legal reasons was a bit more interesting. The fact that all data collection is essentially unregulated also more interesting (most regulations are suggestions at this point). Most surprising: that stores routinely track your movements through the store, what you look at, how long you stand where, and everything you touch. Whoa. (article)
• Proliferation of vending machines for non-typical items: beauty products, hair straighteners, gold coins, Proactiv skin medicine, Bestbuy / Apple products, movies (redBox). Takes the self-checkout at the grocery store to a new level. Minimal human staff and footprint keep costs very low. They also have less theft than traditional stores. They can be easily moved. Customers like that they don't have to interact with any humans to buy things. Also, the fancy displays can lure customers and improve the user experience by tracking what is typed / clicked. Predict the trend that these will become much more prevalent. Each machine costs between $3k and $20k+. Japan has one vending machine per 23 people. (article)
• New study shows that it's not how much you actually exercise that impacts how well you sleep, but rather whether you think you are exercising enough or a lot. (article)
• Article on truly good pretzels vs. meh pretzels. (article)
• List of tips for refunds / compensation based on poor quality: Take and show pictures, discuss the issue with the manager in private rather than screaming, list your complaints but don't offer a remedy - the manager will usually offer something more than you'd request, have your credit card company stop the charges if you've been outright cheated, stay on the line with phone reps - they usually can't hang up on you and are tracked based on # calls completed, ask phone rep for advice on how they would do it to get useful tips, call or write the CEO or other high-level people. (article)
• Horrific account of violent attack suggests running, fighting, screaming rather than cooperating with some attackers (avoid this article if you don't want to read the detailed, specific account of the attack) (article)
• Too much time on your hands when: you follow a celebrity's tweets and then criticize them for grammer / spelling. (article)
• Paying for goods / services via cellphone(article)
• Extreme adventure races, this time by "Tough Mudder" include $100 race across 7-mile obstacle course of "muddy hills, cold water, and flaming bales of straw" (article)
• Why many D.O.D officials hate / ban powerpoint. What's accurately identified as bad: when people use it to address a problem only on the surface or focus on things that don't clarify the situation, or when it displaces discussion. Where I think they overlook benefits: Breaking down a very complex situation into a more basic, understandable concept allows you to then build back up to complexities. My opinion: train people how to use powerpoint better (and generally communicate better) rather than banning it altogether. article)
• Saving endangered world languages: by talking to immigrants in NYC(article)
• Some of the difficulties associated with electronic medical records(article)
• Slushies lower your core temperature, allowing you to endure exercise longer. Apparently, one major cause of exhuastion is the heart working extra hard to cool the skin AND power muscles after the core warms up too much. Slushies rather than cold water since they can be below freezing due to the extra sugar, although the general idea is just to lower your core temperature before the race / exercise. (article)
• Decreasing pay for cultural / art executives (article)
• Paying low-wage humans to defeat the anti-bot pictures on web pages called captchas. (article)
• Museums going into schools rather than the other way around. Done via traveling programs, video conferences, internet. (article)
• First steps in dealing with poverty in Japan after years of believing in lack of inequality(article)
• More details on December network attack on Google - one target was the source code for their password / authentication system. (article)
• Immigration, radicalization, and tough legislation as a way to force moderates out or to the right.(article)
• "The world's largest long-term study of the health of children aims to track 100,000 babies [from before delivery] until they turn 21."(article)
• Some Palestinians advocating non-violent protest for their cause. I'm in favor.(article)
• Photo-documenting everything you eat. I admit to having taken pictures of food before, but in moderation please. And don't disturb the other patrons. (article)