Danny's Pathologically Polymathic: May 2008

California will register gay weddings; New York will recognise them! - MSNBC

a fan page for my book reviews - Facebook

I've succumbed to the lure of social networking publicity...

the US Environmental Protection Agency does the bidding of industry - PLOS

being attacked as a crank and charged with misconduct is now "the norm for toxicologists and environmental investigators"

do you suffer from Motivational Deficiency Disorder? - YouTube - PLOS

low standards in medical news stories - PLOS

150 years on, Pennsylvania's earliest oil-wells are having a revival - Independent

two Australian politicians aren't wowsers - ABC

Bob Brown and Malcolm Turnbull speak up in defence of Henson

finding Wikipedia's centre - TCD [via /.]

where else would you find the sequence "United Kingdom", "Billie Jean King", "United States"?

Imre Kertesz's novel of Buchenwald concentration camp - Fatelessness [review]

an interview with Robert Shiller - Portfolio

Doolittle versus Doolittle on deep phylogeny - ArsTechnica

how significant has lateral gene transfer been?

wedding photos during an earthquake - Xanga [via DPR]

the Phoenix has landed - MSNBC

15 million homes destroyed in China - MSNBC

70,000 more in the latest aftershock

now Australia proposes to ban nude baby ads - Tele [via EFA]

when I put this photo online, I thought I was carrying out a reductio ad absurdum

how stray dogs have adapted to life in Moscow - WSJ [via Barista]

they use the metro and wait for green lights to cross roads

moving beyond "dollar-a-day" poverty lines - Economist

John McCain's preacher Hagee endorses Hitler and the Holocaust - Huffington

2006: ""anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves"

monitoring videos removed from YouTube - YouTomb [via Link]

currently "4508 videos taken down for alleged copyright violation and 13913 videos taken down for other reasons"

Amsterdam is being sanitised - RadioNetherlands [via ProRev]

not only are they shutting down the red light district, but they're getting rid of the cafes and pubs as well

another furor over art with naked children - SMH

and our politicians fall over themselves to prove their prudishness

how temporary will post-Katrina cottages be? - CSM

"a battle brewing between two visions for the Mississippi Gulf Coast"

the Khyber Pass is not safe for trucks - SFG

Pakistan uses Boer-war style "collective punishment" on NWFP villages - Guardian

climbing Mount Roraima - Dinets

adventures in orthographies of New Guinea languages - Far

The extraordinary story of Australian marsupials - A Fragile Balance [review]

Baikal: Sacred Sea of Siberia [review]

a science fiction novelist visits Japan - Stross

"I have to admit that I'm not used to being mugged on the subway by feral English professors and forced to proof-read dictionary entries"

a really dangerous bug in Debian's ssh/ssl key generation - Metasploit

basically, all keys generated using Debian/Ubuntu/etc will need to be revoked and recreated

California's supreme court rules for gay marriages! - LAT [via Kos]

some recent publications on the Fermi Paradox - Stross

however much Obama grovels to the Israel lobby, it won't be enough - Salon

six bombs go off in Jaipur - Guardian

I was there in 1998 - it was a bustling but relaxed city

the OLPC program is a glorious failure - radian [via Link]

Sydney library abandons Palestinian refugee display after police visit - SMH

our counter-terrorism police have nothing better to do than monitor fifty year old photos?

walking Japan, staying in minshuku - WalkJapan - Guardian

these traditional home lodgings seem like a good way to see Japan

UK libel law used to silence dissent in Ukraine - Economist

a history of Israeli literature - Guardian [via CR]

a 25 year old bug in BSD Unix is fixed - OSnews [via /.]

it survived from 4.2BSD (1983) to current OS X versions!

US national intelligence is now outsourced

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/12/0228/93413/655/513965

a map of the US, showing roads and only roads - BenFry [via Cosma]

a new project for me, a directory of Glebe

Glebe Log

if you live in the area and you'd like to contribute, get in touch

the GNU GPL as "green envelope" - Groklaw [via /.]

"if a copyright owner wants a publisher to publish his book in a 'green envelope' (dust jacket), it might seem odd to the publisher, but he can't publish without the green envelope"

the story of a Texas flood - Kuro5hin

reclaiming unused public spaces in London - Guerilla Gardening

the ANZAC connection with Palestine - EI

Macs are tempting corporate users and developers - BusinessWeek - ArsTechnica [via /.]

CCTV cameras do little to prevent crime or catch criminals - ABC

selling pubic lice online?! - BugGirl [via JWalk]

a scam of some kind would be less disturbing...

India's space program is alive and launching - FL

can't pull the wool over their eyes - Guardian

a flock of sheep investigate the murder of their shepherd

community-based tourism in northern Thailand - Guardian

Burmese government admits 10,000 killed by cyclone - Economist

I fear the actual figure could be five times that

does Britain have an adequate Strategic Tea Stockpile? - AFP [via AntiWar]

beware nefarious Iranians bearing photographs - PowerOfNarrative [via AntiWar]

has pasteurization gone too far? - Harpers

should there be bacteria in our milk?

why Brazil loves Linux - Duartes [via /.]

the Chinese government is too weak to protect human rights - LAT [via Far]

an interview with Ursula Le Guin, on writing and anarchism - Infoshop

a novel about a child soldier in West Africa - Allah is Not Obliged [review]

six reasons why I don't want a Kindle - DiveIntoMark [via CT]

why we sleep: the temporal organization of recovery - PLOS

bring on the war crimes trials - GeorgeWashington

is US labour going to wake up? - Cosma

on the list of places I want to visit - Torres del Paine

a comprehensive historical survey - Sheep and Man [review]