Our Amazing World

A few things that have made this year Amazing (so far).

-a baby was cured of HIV (NYT)

-LED light bulbs are now less than $10 (TechReview)

-a meteorite was filmed by a lot of people (AtlanticWire)

-you can order a drone that fits in your hand (Wired)

-a person had 75% of their skull replaced via 3D printer (SydneyMorningHerald)

-anything can be 3D scanned and then 3D printed (Verge)

-two rats had their brains connected across the Internet (Wired)

-teleportation across a lake (Ars)

Science Of Interest

[Recent links of scientific interest, and by recent I mean since March, 2011]

-SciAm: Bison versus Mammoths: New Culprit in the Disappearance of North America's Giants

-NewSci: Vikings' crystal clear method of navigation

-NPR: New 'Giant' Species Of Crayfish Found In Tennessee Creek

-Wired: Shark Teeth Found Stuck in Ancient Ammonite Shell

-80Beats: Scientists Find First Evidence That Weather Affects Movement of Tectonic Plates

-SurprisingScience: Gigantic Plume Beneath Yellowstone Now Even More Gigantic

-The Rach 3 recordings page

-Wired: Gut-Bacteria Mapping Finds Three Global Varieties

-80Beats: Ancient Stone Structures Herded Gazelles to Mass Slaughter [like Lake Huron?]

-SciAm: How Science Stopped BP's Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

-Time: More Proof That Vikings Were First to America

...a small group of Icelanders — roughly 350 in total — carried a lineage known as C1, usually seen only in Asians and Native Americans.

-PhysOrg: New theory proposed to explain Pioneer probe gravitational anomaly

-Wired: Lava Lamp Action Helped Create Grand Canyon

-USGS: US Topo – A New National Map Series

-Dr. Jeff: America's Achilles' heel: the Mississippi River's Old River Control Structure

-Spacenews: U.S. Weather Satellites Saw Tornado Swarm Coming 5 Days Out

-TR: Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake

-Wired: Hot, Rocky Pancake Formed Hawaiian Islands

-Wired: Humans Could Have Geomagnetic Sight

-SciAm: The Behavioral Immune System

-EarthSky: Discovery of new force driving Earth’s tectonic plates

-BBC: Gravity satellite yields 'Potato Earth' view

-EarthSky: MIT discovery: A drug to cure nearly any virus

-SciAm: Solar System Likely Once Had Another Gas-Giant Planet

-Wired: Recent Human Evolution Detected in Quebec Town History

-Wired: Ozone Gas May Signal Coming Earthquakes

-EarthSky: Was a fifth gas giant ejected from our solar system?

-Wired: Multicellular Life Evolves in Laboratory

-PhysOrg: Anthropologists clarify link between Asians and early Native-Americans: A tiny mountainous region in southern Siberia may have been the genetic source of the earliest Native Americans, according to new research by a University of Pennsylvania-led team of anthropologists.

-WaPo: Radical theory of first Americans places Stone Age Europeans in Delmarva 20,000 years ago

-Smithsonian | Surprising Science: Clovis People Hunted Canada’s Camels

-EarthSky: Correlation between tornadoes and activity recorded by seismographs
[very interesting that seismographs picked up noise before the tornadoes formed]

-Atlantic: Superweeds: A Long-Predicted Problem for GM Crops Has Arrived

-PhysOrg: How religion promotes confidence about paternity [in other words, the world's major religions were founded to keep control of women's sexuality]

-PhysOrg: Research finds Stonehenge was monument marking unification of Britain

-Wired: Spectacularly Preserved Fossil Suggests Most Dinosaurs Were Feathered

-Discover/80Beats: Star Formation is Coming to a Close

-Wired: Top Scientific Discoveries of 2012

-Ars: No absolutes: How shifting plates completely remake the Earth

-SciAm: The Most Fascinating Human Evolution Discoveries of 2012

Recent Long And Interesting Reads

-Outside: The Workout that Time Forgot [about MovNat camp; or adventure playgrounds for adults]

-FoodInJars: A Field Guide to Jars

-CanadianBusiness: Decades later, a Cold War secret is revealed [backstory on the KH-9 satellites]

-NYTMagazine: How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body
[reminded me of a line from 'Born To Run' - “Forget yoga. Every runner I know who does yoga gets hurt.” Also, CNN did a segment on the article and interviewed a former classmate of mine]

-NYTMagazine: Carrie Brownstein Starter Kit
[not surprised that we are both KITH fans]

-Smithsonian: The Most Terrible Polar Exploration Ever: Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic Journey

-NYT: Spirit of a Racer in a Dog’s Blood

-GQ: The Gary Oldman Story That Almost Wasn't

related interview with Charlie Rose from 2/22/2012

-Wired: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

-Prospect: Wolves to the Slaughter
This applies to deer hunting in Michigan too:

What the elk-hunting industry wants... is hunting that requires no effort and little skill, a kind of vanity hunting.

-Outside: On the Trail of the White Horse | Searching for Caballo Blanco

-NYT: Caballo Blanco’s Last Run: The Micah True Story

-FC: The Lost Steve Jobs Tapes

-Smithsonian: Matt Groening Reveals the Location of the Real Springfield

-GQ: The Man Who Hacked Hollywood

-Crain's Chicago: Sears – where America shopped [the story of the decline of Sears]

-NYMag: Born This Way: The new weird science of hardwired political identity

-NYT: As Bison Return to Prairie, Some Rejoice, Others Worry

-TheAtlantic: How Vegetable Oils Replaced Animal Fats in the American Diet

-NaturalRunningCenter: Bill Bowerman, His Wife’s Waffle Iron, Nike’s Early Days and Birth of the Modern Running Shoe

-NYT: Finding the First Americans

-NakedCapitalsim: Malcolm Gladwell Unmasked: A Look Into the Life & Work of America’s Most Successful Propagandist [I've always found MG a good writer but a less than convincing theorist]

-Fortune: The truth about the Fast and Furious scandal

Irony abounds when it comes to the Fast and Furious scandal. But the ultimate irony is this: Republicans who support the National Rifle Association and its attempts to weaken gun laws are lambasting ATF agents for not seizing enough weapons—ones that, in this case, prosecutors deemed to be legal.

-Slate: Why YKK? The mysterious Japanese company behind the world’s best zippers.

-FastCoCreate: Wes Anderson Maps Out The Peculiar Genius Of "Moonrise Kingdom"

-VF: Investigation: Mitt Romney’s Offshore Accounts, Tax Loopholes, and Mysterious I.R.A.

-ProPublica: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Voter ID Laws

-Reuters Special Report: How Washington went soft on childhood obesity

-The Daily Traveler Interview with Alton Brown: Alton Brown on Flying, Airplane Food, and Why Frosting Is Definitely Not a Gel  and  Alton Brown on the Importance of Slow Travel and Staticky Radio

-AdWeek: 'Good Eats' Host Gives Adweek the Dish on His Media Habits

-Smithsonian: Why Are Jim Thorpe’s Olympic Records Still Not Recognized?

-Wired: Biophysicist Opens Genomic Black Box, Finds Ramen Noodles

-Prospect UK: Why are languages so different—and disorderly?

-RS: Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital

-Zagat: Alton Brown on Next Iron Chef: Redemption, How Food TV Has Changed and More

-FP: The Nudgy State: How five governments are using behavioral economics to encourage citizens to do the right thing

-NYT: Snow Fall: The Avalanches at Tunnel Creek [beautiful use of HTML5 too]

-Atlantic: When the Nerds Go Marching In: How a dream team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google built the software that drove Barack Obama's reelection