You needn’t know anything about horses, nor horse racing, nor even the damn Kentucky Derby to get sucked into “Breakdown,” a horrifying New York Times investigation into horse injuries and deaths at race tracks across America.
Award-winning reporters Joe Drape and Walt Bogdanich spent months analyzing three years of race reports — 150,000 in all — and their findings, laid bare in the ongoing, multi-story series, have prompted at least one state to take a closer look at its lack of law and order regarding horse doping.
A dolphin’s ‘sonar’ or echo-location is rare in nature and is far superior to either the bat’s sonar or human-made sonar. – Provided by RandomHistory.com
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“Social Jet Lag” Widening Waistlines
Following a different sleep schedule on weekdays and weekends disrupts circadian rhythms and could lead to weight gain. A recent study found that people with different weekday and weekend sleep schedules were significantly more likely to be overweight. There was also a correlation between the magnitude of sleep schedule discrepancy and body mass index. Sleep researchers are calling the discrepancy between the demands of one’s social schedule and the desires of the body’s internal clock “social jet lag” and compare the effects of irregular weekend sleep patterns to flying from Paris to New York on Friday nights only to make the return trip on Monday mornings. More …
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“Doc” says Steve “I want to be castrated”.
“What on earth for?” asks the doctor in amazement.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time and I want to have it done” replies Steve.
“But have you thought it through properly?” asks the doctor “It’s a very serious operation and once it’s done, there’s no going back. It will change your life forever!”
“I’m aware of that and you’re not going to change my mind so either you book me in to be castrated or I’ll simply go to another doctor”.
“Okay okay” says the doctor “But it’s against my better judgment!”
So Steve has his operation, and the next day he is up and walking very slowly, legs apart, down the hospital corridor with his drip stand. Heading towards him is another patient, who is walking exactly the same way.
“Hi there” says Steve “It looks as if you’ve just had the same operation as me”.
“Well”, said the patient “I finally decided after 37 years of life that I would like to be circumcised”.
Steve stared at him in horror and screamed, “Shit! THAT’S the word!”
Muffin tins are great for lots of things, not just making muffins, and the folks at America’s Test Kitchen have one more use for them that we love: pop in your muffin papers, and serve out single scoops of ice cream into each cup before covering them with wrap and putting them in the freezer. This way you have quick, single-scoops of ice cream ready to go when you want one, without waiting for a whole tub of ice cream to warm up enough to scoop some out.
We’ve talked about using muffin tins to make taco bowls, make cookie cups, and store stock, but this trick hits that instant gratification spot when it’s warm outside and some ice cream would hit the spot. When you want a scoop, just take a liner out of the tin, cover it back over, and put the ice cream into a bowl. No scooping, no fuss, no waiting.
Before you cry “this is why people are fat,” you might also consider using this tip to manage portions of ice cream—when you only have six scoops in one container, it’s easier to go and eat one scoop at a time, instead of serve a ton of ice cream out of a large container just because you’ve been waiting for it to get soft enough to scoop.
“Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers took control of four commercial airliners en route to San Francisco and Los Angeles from Boston, Newark, and Washington, D.C. At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 was crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower, followed by United Airlines Flight 175 which hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. The death toll of the attacks was about 3,000, including the 19 hijackers. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.” – Provided by Wikipedia
September 11, 2001, Documentary Project “The September 11, 2001, Documentary Project, from the Library of Congress, captures the heartfelt reactions, eyewitness accounts, and diverse opinions of Americans and others in the months that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93. Patriotism and unity mixed with sadness, anger, and insecurity are common themes expressed in this online presentation of almost 200 audio and video interviews, 45 graphic items, and 21 written narratives.”
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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana
In the early days of the web, as internet explorers anonymously scoured its provincial nooks, a cartoon appeared in the New Yorker that would be its most reproduced illustration, business-to-business, for the next decade. A dog sits in front of a computer, talking to another dog by its side: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Almost 20 years later, a lot has changed. The web has become obsessed with working out who we are, and serving us accordingly. Amazon wants to predict the books we should read. Facebook’s algorithms toil to introduce us to new friends. Adverts for things we have considered buying stalk us across the web.
The internet wants to help. It wants to create a bespoke, recognisable experience when we are online. But in doing so is it shrinking, rather than broadening, our horizons? A growing school of thought thinks so. A recent article in Intelligent Life magazine warned against the web’s assault on serendipity. “Google has become so good at meeting our desires that we spend less time discovering new ones,” moans the article’s author, Ian Leslie. As I read to the bottom of the piece online, an advert pops up. After 1,500 words on how the internet is killing serendipity by serving up an infinite stream of more of the same, I am asked: “Do you want to read more like this?”
This is the wise web at work: bored by being a facilitator, it wants to second-guess us at every turn. Log on, read more, email this to a friend, like, buy, click, click, click. But how good is its advice? There is only one way to find out. For one day, I will aim to do what the internet tells me, and wherever it points me, I will follow.
So, yes, I do want to read more like this. I click the link and am taken to a sign-up page for a $24, six-month subscription to Intelligent Life. I begin typing my name into the info boxes, but I am only at “Be …” when it completes my details for me. And so, for the next six months, a copy of Intelligent Life will be delivered to my ex-girlfriend in the flat we used to share. Bad start.
I go to Amazon in search of reading material that knows where I live, but the first 10 items it suggests are all Lego Star Wars figures. First up is a miniature Sandtrooper. Amazon, it seems, has never got over the fact that I bought my nephew some Star Wars Lego for his sixth birthday last summer. I drop it in my basket, grit my teeth and within three clicks have handed over £12.99. I email my sister to show off my act of unprovoked generosity and Gmail tells me to “consider including” my mum and my other sister. So I do. Mum, a psychotherapist, emails back. She thinks if I do everything the internet tells me to, it will “probably do your head in”.
Science Daily “Breaking science news and articles on global warming, extrasolar planets, stem cells, bird flu, autism, nanotechnology, dinosaurs, evolution – the latest discoveries in astronomy, anthropology, biology, chemistry, climate and environment, computers, engineering, health and medicine, math, physics, psychology, technology, and more – from the world’s leading universities and research organizations.”
The state of Wyoming is the deadliest state for drinking and driving, with just over 13 drunk-driving fatalities for every 100,000 people occurring each year. New York experiences the least amount of drunk-driving fatalities, with only 2.06 per 100,000 residents. – Provided by RandomHistory.com
This sprawling Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is a Connecticut-sized zone of prairie and poverty, where the have-nots are defined less by the money they lack than by suffocating hopelessness.In the national number line of inequality, people here represent the “other 1 percent,” the bottom of the national heap.Pine Ridge is a poster child of American poverty and of the failures of the reservation system for American Indians in the West. The latest Census Bureau data show that Shannon County here had the lowest per capita income in the entire United States in 2010. Not far behind in that Census Bureau list of poorest counties are several found largely inside other Sioux reservations in South Dakota: Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Crow Creek.
ScienceDaily (May 9, 2012) — A detailed description of development of the first practical artificial leaf — a milestone in the drive for sustainable energy that mimics the process, photosynthesis, that green plants use to convert water and sunlight into energy — appears in the ACS journal Accounts of Chemical Research. The article notes that unlike earlier devices, which used costly ingredients, the new device is made from inexpensive materials and employs low-cost engineering and manufacturing processes.
Daniel G. Nocera points out that the artificial leaf responds to the vision of a famous Italian chemist who, in 1912, predicted that scientists one day would uncover the “guarded secret of plants.”
Based in Nantes, France, the street theatre company Royal de Luxe performs around the world, primarily using gigantic, elaborate marionettes to tell stories that take place over several days and wind through entire cities. Puppeteers maneuver the huge marionettes — some as tall as 12 meters (40 ft) — through streets, parks, and waterways, performing their story along the way. Gathered here are images of several recent Royal de Luxe performances, from Belgium, Mexico, Germany, Chile, and England. [38 photos]
The Future Will Be More Religious and Conservative Than You Think
Population change is reversing secularism and shifting the center of gravity of entire societies in a conservative religious direction.
As the 2012 presidential election grows closer, voter demographics will grab ever more airtime. In a finely balanced electorate, switching parties is less common, making internal growth of party bases more important. Getting the vote out is one aspect of this; population change another. Three or four decades ago, most Americans had trouble specifying which party was conservative or liberal, or matching them to issue positions. No longer. What’s more, as Robert Cushing and Bill Bishop observe in The Big Sort, partisanship affects where people choose to live. Robert Putnam and David Campbell add that politics often determines where they go to church. Thus NPR’s Ray Suarez relates that a scout leader he met moved from the Episcopalians to become a Mormon because he didn’t want to be associated with a “fag church.” Over time, though, switching declines and battle lines solidify. As theology, ideology, and political party line up, switching becomes less important and the religious and political market is driven more by population shifts. This is not only true in the United States, but in a growing number of societies around the world.
A traditional Chinese delicacy, the so-called thousand-year-old egg may look and smell ancient but nowadays is actually ready to eat after just a few months. Preparing the dish involves coating a clean egg in an alkaline mixture of ash, lime, and salt to preserve it and then rolling it in rice hulls for storage. Over time, the egg white turns into a dark brown gel and the yolk turns green and develops a strong smell of sulfur and ammonia. How was it supposedly discovered during the Ming Dynasty? More…
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Kidnapped by Pirates at Sea? Here’s How Economics Can Save You
Lessons from Plutarch to Planet Money, including the First Rule of kidnapping insurance: Don’t tell anybody about your kidnapping insurance
Gabriel Rossman — Sociologist at UCLA. His work applies economic sociology to media industries. He blogs at Code and Culture and is the author of Climbing the Charts
A couple years ago NPR’s Planet Money podcast had an episode about Somali pirates. (The pirate part starts at 9:35). There was all sorts of interesting stuff about division of labor, allocation of shares, pirate venture capital, etc. Some of this paralleled early modern piracy (as given a scholarly analysis in Peter Leeson’s work and a romantic perspective in innumerable books and movies since Treasure Island) but in other respects it’s very different. In particular, whereas early modern piracy was mostly about seizing cargo and the crews were left alone if they surrendered promptly, Somali piracy is more similar to piracy in antiquity in that it’s basically maritime kidnapping. The typical instance of Somali piracy isn’t that different from what a young Julius Caesar experienced when he was kidnapped by pirates and held for ransom on his way home from political exile in Asia Minor. One interesting detail in Plutarch’s report is that, “When these men at first demanded of him twenty talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not understanding the value of their prisoner, and voluntarily engaged to give them fifty.”
The Murky Ethics (and Crystal-Clear Economics) of the Unpaid Internship
Unpaid internships are on the rise. Tell us your stories — and your opinions — about working for no pay
My name is Derek, and I was an unpaid intern.
I begin with a confession, because the unpaid internship has become something of a dishonor, if not a scandal. And, as New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse wrote his blockbuster take-down of the institution in 2010, I might have helped various companies conspire to break the law — even if it’s the murkiest, most broken law in the country.
Of the 10 million students at four-year colleges in the U.S., more than 75% have at least one internship before graduating. We don’t know how many of those internships are unpaid, but Ross Perlin, the author of Intern Nation, estimates that it’s up to one-third. “It’s the only major category of work that I know of that is not tracked at all by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Perlin said.
NOT PAID, NOT LEGAL?
If you’ve ever had an unpaid internship, there is a distinct chance that you participated in unlawful activity.
The Labor Department has strict guidelines for unpaid interns, and every year, thousands of companies dutifully flout them. Technically speaking, internships must resemble an education rather than a job. Interns cannot work in the place of paid employees. Nor can their work be of “immediate benefit” to an employer.
Over the past 40 years, the quantity of plastic waste floating in the northeastern Pacific has increased 100-fold, affecting marine life in myriad ways. One issue that has received much attention is the ingestion of tiny, broken down plastic particles by marine organisms. However, researchers also recently uncovered another consequence of the increased presence of plastic—it is making it easier for certain marine insects to reproduce. Halobates sericeus requires a hard surface on which to lay its eggs, and the hundreds of millions of plastic particles now floating in the Pacific Ocean are providing them with ample breeding ground. More …
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History contains all sorts of useful warnings and lessons. And, says the former IMF chief economist, today’s economic policymakers would do well to heed them
In choosing these books, you mentioned you were interested in whether economic history, or books about it, can influence policy and help convince people about the future. Can it?
The problem for economics is that to a lot people it’s kind of boring. Particularly if you write about analytical economics, there’s no narrative that draws you in like a novel or even other social science books can. If you’re talking about big macro themes, it’s hard to write an anecdotal history in a compelling way. I’ve chosen books that are intended to add those dimensions, to talk about historical experiences in such a way that you can say, “Oh yes, I get that, I understand the story.” Then you can think about how to apply that story to the modern predicament and what policy could be in the future.
But what if awareness of economic history leads you in the wrong direction? For example, at the start of the recent crisis Ben Bernanke was a big expert on the Great Depression which meant that for him, letting some of these big banks go bankrupt was a complete no-no. I wondered if that put him in a weaker bargaining position. Perhaps he could have negotiated better deals with, say, JP Morgan, if he had been a bit less aware of the history.
Flying from Europe to India, we pass overhead Odessa, Ukraine. Odessa, they say, is home to the most beautiful women in the world. Then across the Black Sea to Azerbaijan and the gorgeous barren landscapes of Georgia. Next comes the ink-dark Caspian, and then the long desolate outback of northwestern Iran. (The controllers down in Tehran are courteous and professional, their English impeccable — easier to understand than most Scottish controllers.)
From there it’s directly overhead the apocalypse of Karachi, followed by a turn southbound, out across the Arabian Sea toward Mumbai.
It’s true about the smell. At around 10,000 feet the airplane begins filling with the rank bouquet of India: a soupy waft that tastes of putrefaction and exhaust fumes. As if, somewhere below, the world’s largest garbage dump has been set on fire. It’s a smell that burrows into your clothes and your hair and right through the concrete bunker walls of your five-star hotel.
Dalí was a Spanish painter whose striking images and eccentric personality made him the world’s most recognized surrealist artist. Influenced by the theories and dream studies of Sigmund Freud, he painted nightmarishly absurd scenes in precise, realistic detail, creating worlds in which everyday objects are deformed or metamorphosed in strange ways. In his most famous work, The Persistence of Memory, limp watches melt in an eerie landscape. Which candy brand’s logo was designed by Dalí? More…
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The Nazi Origins of the Olympic Flame Relay
Though dressed up as an ancient Greek tradition, the torch relay ceremony was originally designed to further Hitler’s nationalist propaganda.
Adolf Hitler hadn’t wanted to host the Olympics. They were “an invention of Jews and Freemasons,” he’d said, a celebration of the internationalism and multiculturalism he loathed. But he loved propaganda, the lavish shows of German power and prestige, and by 1934 Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had convinced him of the Olympics’ value in the greater Nazi mission. “German sport has only one task: to strengthen the character of the German people, imbuing it with the fighting spirit and steadfast camaraderie necessary in the struggle for its existence,” Goebbels said in April 1933.
The 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics were to be, according to Arnd Krüger and William J. Murray’s history of “The Nazi Games,” a means of furthering Hitler’s ethnic and nationalist messages, a tool of Nazi soft power. Few aspects of the bizarre and highly political ’36 games exemplified Hitler’s propaganda mission better than the Olympic torch relay and ceremony. Though propagandists portrayed the torch relay as ancient tradition stretching back to the original Greek competitions, the event was in fact a Nazi invention, one typical of the Reich’s love of flashy ceremonies and historical allusions to the old empires. And it’s a tradition we still continue today, with this morning’s lighting of the flame in Olympia, the birthplace of the original games circa 776 B.C., from which it will be carried by a series of relay runners to the site of the games, in this case London.
Few stories have the power to captivate us more than those that remain unresolved. Codes, puzzles and cryptic public art tease us with their intrigue: Why is their message coded? What great secrets might they hide? Despite the efforts of our most learned historians, cleverest cryptographers and most determined treasure hunters, history is replete with riddles that continue to confound us today. Fictional tales like those featured in “The Da Vinci Code” and the movie “National Treasure” have got nothing on these real-life puzzles. Here’s our list of 10 of the world’s most cryptic unsolved mysteries and codes. (Text: Bryan Nelson)
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