Rotundus.com

An interesting comic from Doghouse Diaries. Not that I know anything about procrastination of course...

The big problem with vehicles that run on natural gas: methane.

Cites one study as concluding that"when methane is considered, the total global warming impact for natural gas vehicles could be greater than current diesel buses." The article also notes that "In April 2011, researchers at Cornell published a study that concluded that if methane leaks are considered, natural gas contributes more to global warming than oil or coal" but noted "an emerging consensus that containing the leaks is neither difficult nor expensive"

Baltimore researchers turn carnivorous fish into vegetarians

"In 2009, Watson set out with a NOAA grant to demonstrate that cobia could live without eating meat. With the help of Place and Barrows, he sought to show that a veggie diet would also reduce the amount of contaminants ... absorbed by wild fish feeding in polluted waters"

The other slave trade

"Europe used to export slaves to the non-European world. Such a statement would astonish most people today, even among the university-educated. Surely, those slaves were few in number, certainly fewer than the African slaves taken across the Atlantic. And surely all of that happened long before the Atlantic slave trade. Well, no and no."

You May Now Kiss the Computer Screen

"in a twist that underscores technology’s ability to upend traditional notions about romance, people are not just finding their match online, but also saying “I do” there. These are called proxy marriages, a legal arrangement that allows a couple to wed even in the absence of one or both spouses. They date back centuries"

Take a look at the following extract of a Guardian article, Fort Hood shooting suspect will cross-examine survivors of attack:

Thirteen soldiers died in the attack, and a further 32 were injured. One of the survivors, staff sergeant Alonzo Lunsford is expected to testify on Tuesday as one of the first witnesses in the case. The now-retired service member was shot in the head and body. He played dead briefly, but was shot again in the back when he exited the building. Quoted in a New York Times article over the weekend, Lunsford said: "I will be cross-examined by the man who shot me." "You can imagine all the emotions that are going to be coming up," he added.

Compare to rape shield laws which prohibit this sort of thing in such cases. While it would still definitely suck to have to testify in such a case, does facing cross-examination by someone who shot you multiple times, leaving you blind, and who you saw kill some of your friends and/or coworkers sound any better? Special extemptions for one type of case (which don't include, at a minimum, this sort of situation) seems rather inconsistent.

On the topic of inconsistencies it also seems worth noting that this incident was classified as workplace violence rather than terrorism. What does that mean?

It denies these victims cost-free VA health care for five years, as they would receive for combat injuries. It denies them cost-free counseling and critical mental health services. It denies them tax-free disability benefits and Combat-Related Special Compensation. It denies them eligibility for the Purple Heart and its related benefits.

That said, I still find legally separating out both "terrorism" and "hate crimes" for special distinction rather dubious.

Biological Gender Differences, Absenteeism and the Earning Gap

From the paper's abstract: "In most Western countries illness-related absenteeism is higher among female workers than among male workers. Using the personnel dataset of a large Italian bank, we show that the probability of an absence due to illness increases for females, relative to males, approximately 28 days after a previous illness. This difference disappears for workers age 45 or older. We interpret this as evidence that the menstrual cycle raises female absenteeism. ... We find that higher absenteeism induced by the 28-day cycle explains 11.8 percent of the earnings gender differential."

Ideology, Motivated Reasoning, and Cognitive Reflection: An Experimental Study

From the abstract of the cited paper: "First, the study presents both observational and experimental data inconsistent with the hypothesis that political conservatism is distinctively associated with closed-mindedness: conservatives did no better or worse than liberals on an objective measure of cognitive reflection; and more importantly, both demonstrated the same unconscious tendency to fit assessments of empirical evidence to their ideological predispositions. Second, the study suggests that this form of bias is not a consequence of overreliance on heuristic or intuitive forms of reasoning; on the contrary, subjects who scored highest in cognitive reflection were the most likely to display ideologically motivated cognition."

Debatable: Is the Christian Church a 'Hate Group'?

"On August 15, [2012,] 28-year-old Floyd Lee Corkins II walked into the Family Research Council (FRC) and shot the group's unarmed security guard in a downtown D.C. office. ... The next day, FRC president Tony Perkins accused the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of fostering the climate that allowed the crime to occur. Perkins says that while he holds Corkins solely responsible for the shooting, he believes the SPLC must also be held accountable for its 'reckless' labeling of the FRC as an anti-gay 'hate group' in 2010." An exploration of and arguments against the SPLC's argument's for classifying the Family Research Council as a hate group