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MetaFilter
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A new branch in the Tree of Life (Feb 17 2006 23:57 GMT) - A monstrous discovery suggests that viruses, long regarded as lowly evolutionary latecomers, may have been the precursors of all life on Earth. "We haven't even begun to scratch the surface. The numbers are mind-boggling. If you put every virus particle on Earth together in a row, they would form a line 10 million light-years long. |
A blog doesn't need a clever name
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Grameen Covers the Monopoly Board. ... (Feb 17 2006 23:57 GMT) - Grameen Covers the Monopoly Board. The Grameen Foundation, which gained visibility with the Village Phone project, is expanding into the provision of electricity and water using the same village entrepreneurial model. Created by inventor Dean Kamen, the village power and village water devices will be low-cost, low-maintenance, low-complexity methods of providing critical utilities to people in the developing world. The electric generator is powered by an easily-obtained local fuel: cow dung. |
Dynamist Blog
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It's Not "Eminent Domain," But Is It Legal? (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - Southern Methodist University (where Prof. Postrel teaches) is the front-runner for the GW Bush presidential library, much to the chagrin of short-sighted faculty who don't like the president. In fact, a presidential library would be a huge research coup for... |
Dynamist Blog
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Images of Muhammad (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - Contrary to what many Muslims believe, Islam has not universally prohibited portraits of Muhammed. In fact, classic art from the Muslim world includes respectful portraits of the prophet. Unlike the devotional images of Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu art, however, these... |
Dynamist Blog
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Progress As Far as the Eye Can See (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - In The Future and Its Enemies, I use contact lenses to exemplify open-ended progress. By the 1950s, the basic problem had been solved: to correct vision without damaging the eye. But that wasn't the end of innovation. Instead we got... |
Dynamist Blog
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Should Cheney Resign? (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - I've never been a Cheney hater. In fact, back before he disappeared from public view, I actually liked the guy. Unlike his boss, he was both straight-talking and articulate, and he had small-government instincts on social and economic policy. But,... |
Dynamist Blog
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Good Books: February Edition (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - After my January post on what I'd been reading, a lot of readers asked for more. Some people read science fiction to immerse themselves in other worlds. I read history and old books (and, occasionally, science fiction too). Here are... |
Dynamist Blog
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"Dark Matter" and the Standard of Living (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - I've long believed that economic statistics dramatically mismeasure actual well-being, understating real gains in the standard of living. (Examples here, here, and here.) For understandable reasons, government statisticians put a premium on consistency over time. But the economy has an... |
Dynamist Blog
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Is "Old Europe" Doomed? (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - In the new issue of Cato Unbound, Theodore Dalrymple considers the question, with some insights into how stasis feeds more stasis. Replies will follow from Charles Kupchan, Timothy B. Smith, and Anne Applebaum. What exactly is it that Europeans fear,... |
Dynamist Blog
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Generic Backlog (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - I suspect this WaPost article was planted by FDA employees looking for a bigger budget, but it raises an interesting issue: Why is it taking so long to approve generic drugs? Marc Kaufman reports that the current backlog, more than... |
Dynamist Blog
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Print Neatly Please (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - According to this LAT report by Seema Mehta, kids aren't learning penmanship anymore: Educators say the days of primary school students hunched over desks and painstakingly copying rows of cursive letters are waning. There are many culprits: computers, a rejection... |
Dynamist Blog
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Book Tracking (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - A new site for obsessed authors and their loved ones. (Thanks to reader Jeremy Bencken.)... |
Dynamist Blog
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The Right to Satirize (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - My response to this nonsense is to wonder why Muslims don't grow up. If your co-religionists are going to take political stands, and blow up innocent people in the name of Islam, political cartoonists are going to occasionally take... |
Dynamist Blog
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Scrapbooking Cont'd (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - Reader Eric Akawie writes in response to the item below: I think another, somewhat unconscious motive behind Scrapbooking is the deprecation of the physical status of photographs. I remember as a child, photographs were absolutely sacred – we never threw... |
Dynamist Blog
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Suburban Industry (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - Stephanie McCrummen of the WaPost reports on a hobby I was utterly unaware of until I moved to Dallas: the creation of elaborately decorated scrapbooks by suburban moms documenting their family's life. With devotion, and, some say, obsession, they have... |
Dynamist Blog
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Movie Talk (Feb 17 2006 23:55 GMT) - In the buildup to Oscar, Steve Kurtz has posted his "Film Year In Review--2005," which is much smarter and more fun than the Oscars. Like Steve, I'm sorry that theater attendance is down. I like to see movies in a... |
Ecademy
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Markets Can't Lie - Britain Has Joined The Euro - Thankfully So! [Maurizio Morabito] (Feb 17 2006 23:53 GMT) - Investors treating euro and pound as parallel By Rodrigo Davies Bloomberg News THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006 LONDON The British pound is increasingly trading as though Britain has already joined the euro, according to Morgan Stanley. [...] in the currency markets, volatility in the pound's exwas at the lowest level since 2002, suggesting that the two are moving in lockstep. |
Ecademy
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Markets Can't Lie - Britain Has Joined The Euro - Thankfully So! [Maurizio Morabito] (Feb 17 2006 23:53 GMT) - Investors treating euro and pound as parallel By Rodrigo Davies Bloomberg News THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006 LONDON The British pound is increasingly trading as though Britain has already joined the euro, according to Morgan Stanley. [...] in the currency markets, volatility in the pound's exwas at the lowest level since 2002, suggesting that the two are moving in lockstep. |
Ecademy
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Markets Can't Lie - Britain Has Joined The Euro - Thankfully So! [Maurizio Morabito] (Feb 17 2006 23:53 GMT) - Investors treating euro and pound as parallel By Rodrigo Davies Bloomberg News THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2006 LONDON The British pound is increasingly trading as though Britain has already joined the euro, according to Morgan Stanley. [...] in the currency markets, volatility in the pound's exwas at the lowest level since 2002, suggesting that the two are moving in lockstep. |
Cre8asite Forums
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djsfive: http://lirys. mine. nu/homegw1. (Feb 17 2006 23:52 GMT) - Color scheme is nice.Home page text could use some headers above each paragraph, to allow readers who scan to get the gist of the site quickly, without reading all of the text (a shame, I know, but a harsh reality). The headers will also help with search engines (or so the tutorials on cre8asite say!)Dan |
Ecademy
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British History Lesson [Maurizio Morabito] (Feb 17 2006 23:51 GMT) - From a 1956 articleThe history of hanging in Britain, in fact, is one of the most grisly in human annals - in strange contrast to the remarkable standard of British justice, considered a model of fairness throughout the world. But when justice is decided and punishment meted out, the story is far different. Little more than a century ago, there were no fewer than 220 offenses for which a man - or woman or child, for they hanged children above seven in those days - could be executed in th |
Ecademy
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British History Lesson [Maurizio Morabito] (Feb 17 2006 23:51 GMT) - From a 1956 articleThe history of hanging in Britain, in fact, is one of the most grisly in human annals - in strange contrast to the remarkable standard of British justice, considered a model of fairness throughout the world. But when justice is decided and punishment meted out, the story is far different. Little more than a century ago, there were no fewer than 220 offenses for which a man - or woman or child, for they hanged children above seven in those days - could be executed in th |
Ecademy
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British History Lesson [Maurizio Morabito] (Feb 17 2006 23:51 GMT) - From a 1956 articleThe history of hanging in Britain, in fact, is one of the most grisly in human annals - in strange contrast to the remarkable standard of British justice, considered a model of fairness throughout the world. But when justice is decided and punishment meted out, the story is far different. Little more than a century ago, there were no fewer than 220 offenses for which a man - or woman or child, for they hanged children above seven in those days - could be executed in th |
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