The new Radiolab (definitely worth a listen) includes a story about a Michigan fireman killed in the Mack Lake Fire–a prescribed burn of a few acres that quickly got out of control and burned 24,000 acres. The burn was designed to regenerate habitat for the nearly extinct Kirtland’s Warbler that requires young jack pine forests [...]
Knowing that I love rural newspapers, a great friend of mine sent me a couple from the west coast of BC. They’re chock full view points that don’t get into fancy city newspapers, weird stories and, best of all, letters to the editor. On the left, is an excerpt from the Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down section [...]
I know I posted about Ariely yesterday, but I get fixated on people and ideas. I’m a serial idea monogamist. But here’s Ariely with a list of 7 habits of highly ineffective people. Here’s one I’m definitely guilty: 4) Checking email too much. If it seems that there’s too much about email on this list, [...]
So, what is the ideal crime? Which activity is difficult to detect, involves many people, has plausible deniability, can be supported by an ideology and affects many people just a bit? Yes, I think you know the answer, and it does involve banks… Dan Ariely is one of the star figures of a field called [...]
15km wide and the width of the entire African continent. Now that’s what I call a piece. I have seen a lot of treeplanting contracts but this is one beyond anything I’ve ever seen. According to the BBC, African leaders plan to plant a belt of trees 15 km wide from Senegal to Djibouti that [...]
…and work is too hectic for me to write anything.
I’ve wondered before if David Byrne is my long, lost brother because we seem to have similar taste in music, prefer going places on bike rather than by car and enjoy coming up with strange ideas and thinking them through to their ends. Notice there’s no link to Byrne’s strange ideas in the last part [...]
I don’t know enough about the debate over wind power to weigh in on this subject. I mean, I know a little bit but not enough that I feel qualified to try and change anyone’s mind. But this read, How bad science stifles rational debate about wind power, is interesting nonetheless because it references the [...]
Anybody who’s put a few beers in me and even approached saying the word economics knows that I launch into a rant about how free-market economics aren’t the answer to everything. My tag line is: free-markets economics are really good at making sure that each laptop I buy is cheaper than the last but, at [...]
We brought you three ways to feel really small and one way to feel really big. Next up, a way to feel really short. It’s an infographic at ouramazingplanet.com, it’s to scale and it depicts the height and depth of everything worth knowing starting at 30,000 feet in the air and ending 36,000 feet under [...]
