Danny's Pathologically Polymathic: August 2011

Australian High Court stops refugees being sent to Malaysia - Guardian

even discussing inequality brings down the wrath of the rabid - SamHarris [via Heidi]

"an obsession with limited government produces impressive failures of wisdom and compassion in otherwise intelligent people"

betting against US treasuries hasn't worked so well - Money

"the trading floors of the world are littered with the bodies of traders who have shorted Japanese government debt"

Linus Torvalds was born in the same year as Unix - RW

it seems bankers aren't subject to the law - RollingStone

evidence-based medicine evaluates superstition - WorldJSurg

twenty years ago, Linux Torvalds posted to comp.os.minix - Usenet [via LWN]

hard going for bookshops - Guardian

three of Oxford's look like closing this month

the limitations of twin studies - Slate

"not a road map" for Python - BoredomLaziness [via LWN]

a grocer is standing for election as Cambridge Uni's chancellor - Guardian [via @MadeleineCule]

the Australian debate over bicycle helmet laws - Conversation

possible 3.4 billion year old fossils found - SciMag [via /.]

water may be Afghanistan's biggest long-term problem - TNR

one Republican presidential candidate stands up for science and reality - Grist

but he's long-odds against winning the nomination

A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present - Empires of the Silk Road [my review]

visiting Charles Darwin's home - a Down House visit

Britain is the worst country in the developed world to be a child in - AdBusters

Edzard Ernst vs the Prince of Wales - Tele - Trick or Treatment

helmet laws kill bike-sharing programs - Grist

"Dublin has 450 bikes versus Melbourne's 600, but its fleet clocks 5,000 trips per day, while Melbourne's barely manages 70"

a new biography of Deng Xiaoping - HarvardMag

China's banks aren't banks as we know them - MacroB

personal mag-lev as a transport solution? - Mule

eventually any depiction of a child will be illegal - SMH

rehabilitating orphaned elephants is a social process - NatGeo [via Heidi]

$32 for a short review of Dr Seuss' The Lorax?! - Nature

a carbon tax will boost jobs and growth in Sydney - SMH

Victorian government endorses medical quackery - BetterHealth

reminiscences on Linux at 20 - LIW

they discovered Usenet by mistyping "rn" for "rm"

Witold Gombrowicz' mad modernist novel from 1937 Poland - Ferdydurke [my review]

more fact-free "science" from the Australian - Deltoid

Schooling in Western Europe: A Social History [my review]

being declared dead is no fun at all - Money

Sydney now 7th most expensive city - SMH

outdone only by Tokyo and a few Swiss and Scandinavian cities

3% mortgage deposits to prop up Australia's bubble - NineMSN

Montessori education and open source software - OpenSource

household electricity consumption in NSW has declined 2% per year for four years - ABC

tips on picking a northern Thailand trek - TravelFish

an entomologist rates insect bites for pain - ArkInSpace [via @UnlikelyWorlds]

anyone want to do an intro to AI course? - IEEE [via Mish]

wind turbines that work collectively, like schools of fish - BBC [via @grist]

"Can Jeremy Grantham Profit from Ecological Mayhem?" - NYT

"One of the few studies that provides such evidence was conducted in Matlab, a region of Bangladesh..."

an easy misparsing from a recent issue of Science

anyone want to join me for some walking trips? - Oxford Blog

still clearing Israel's cluster bombs from southern Lebanon - Guardian

aesthetic noise in typesetting - Flickr [via @vaguery]

a 1981 review of the original IBM Personal Computer Model 5150 - V3 [via OxLug]

Nokia's MeeGo N9 won't be released in the US or UK - Honline [via LWN]

"Microbial Genomics and Infectious Diseases" - NEJM [via @MicrobeWorld]

Religions of the Silk Road [my review]

David Cameron and Nick Clegg know all about vandalism - FT - Telegraph [via Tapley]

evidence that plesiosaurs gave birth to live young - BBC [via Camilla]

another extraordinarily boring top 100 sf/fantasy list - NPR

I think Verne is the only non-English writer in it

is decentralised gas cogeneration the future for Australian power? - ClimateSpectator

disclaimer: I have a significant investment in Ceramic Fuel Cells (ASX:CFU)

I can skip writing my own review of A Dance With Dragons - LizBatty

moral decay at the top as well as the bottom of UK society - Telegraph

and this is the chief political commentator of the most conservative of the broadsheets

which is more overvalued: UK or Australian housing? - MB

Warren Buffet reiterates call to tax rich more - Times

a mobile librarian in Northern Ireland - The Bad Book Affair [my review]

a day trip from Oxford - Dorchester Abbey + the Wittenham Clumps

why does Top Gear get to break BBC rules on accuracy and impartiality? - Monbiot

travelling with children - Guardian

negative interest rates in the US - Bloomberg

"BNY Mellon will charge clients 13 basis points, or 0.13 percentage point, on “excess amounts of cash"

Tony Abbott has abandoned economic rationalism as well as science - CanberraTimes [via Hidden]

homeopathy: extremely diluted logic - Cosmos

anthropogenic CO2 emissions exceed volcanic CO2 by two orders of magnitude - RealClimate - EOS [PDF]

denialists like Plimer will never retract their lies about this, though

I'm pretty sure I'm just collateral damage , but there's a sneaking fear that maybe Google is right and I'm not writing anything useful

getting rid of the credit rating agencies is not so easy - Slate

An Historical Atlas of Oxfordshire [my review]

one use for armoured vehicles: keeping cycle lanes clear - Storyful [via CyclOx]

JK Galbraith on post-Keynesian economics - Kos [via Stable]