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Submitted by David on Mon, 2010-10-11 17:08
Water, Water Everywhere: So why should I worry about wasting it?
As the report notes, not all water usage is the same. Typically where water is treated and then returned to the source (e.g. diversions from a river vs. water evaporating after being sprayed on a lawn), it's not as bad. While water can be returned to rivers with relative ease, it's difficult to return it to aquifers (i.e. groundwater). You may now thank me for my commitment to the environment by refraining from washing my car on a regular basis. Water management actually can account for a large percentage of energy consumption as well - I've heard figures as high as about 20% in the past, but I'm feeling to lazy to try to dig up some more sources on that at the moment.
Congratulations to Peter Diamond on Winning the Nobel Prize in Economics
Why is it that I so often hear stories similar to the following?
Diamond often would fall asleep in seminars, often for large chunks of time. What was amazing, however, is that he would open his eyes and then make by far the most insightful comment of the entire seminar!

How many of these are true, and how many are simply legend? Or is falling asleep in talks a key to academic success?

Study: Girls Do Understand Math, but We Don't Want Them To
A lot of the arguments about why there are relatively few women in sciences seem to revolve around distributions of male and female intelligence having a similar mean, but the male intelligence distribution having a larger standard deviation [i.e. more male idiots and more male geniuses]. However, apparently in some other countries math scores for girls have similar variation as in boys, suggesting that this is more of a cultural issue. (Note: this comes via Fox News... feel the ever over-hyped conservative bias. Once you separate pundits from news, I don't really find them worse than any others)
Fox primary: complicated, contractual
Here's a crazy quote: "With the exception of Mitt Romney, Fox now has deals with every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office." (i.e. beware the pundits... but that's the same with pretty much any place out there)

Comments

Sarennah

Tue, 2010-10-12 02:08

Don't tell me you believe that you can put on a tape while you sleep and wake up speaking another language? :) I wish it was that easy! Do you think there's a grain of truth to it?