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• pidgin-facebookchat - Google Code - "This is a Facebook chat plugin for Pidgin and libpurple messengers. It connects to the new Facebook Chat IM service without the need for an API key. Currently the plugin can log into the Facebook servers, grab the buddy list, send/receive messages, add/remove friends, receive notifications, search for Facebook friends and set your Facebook status."
• Mind Hacks: Shaking the foundations of the hidden bias test - "The doctors who scored higher on the bias test were less likely than the other doctors to give clot-busting drugs to the black patients, according to the researchers, who suggested addressing the problem by encouraging doctors to test themselves for unconscious bias. The results were hailed by other psychologists as some of the strongest evidence that unconscious bias leads to harmful discrimination. But then two other researchers, Neal Dawson and Hal Arkes, pointed out a curious pattern in the data. Even though most of the doctors registered some antiblack bias, as defined by the researchers, on the whole doctors ended up prescribing the clot-busting drugs to blacks just as often as to whites. The doctors scoring low on bias had a pronounced preference for giving the drugs to blacks, while high-scoring doctors had a relatively small preference for giving the drugs to whites — meaning that the more “biased” doctors actually treated blacks and whites more equally."
• Cosmopolitanism, Blackness, and Utopia a conversation with Paul Gilroy | Transition Magazine - "The Lincoln Center-type model of the history of jazz was a rather morbid thing. The elevation and transformation of jazz tradition to classical tradition is really just dancing on the grave of that extraordinary creativity. Not dancing on the grave, actually, but sitting quietly on the grave in a corporate-sponsored seat, your arms folded [TS laughs], listening to a standard repertoire. So I think all is not well. And I’ve tried to suggest that music now occupies a very different place in the lives of people, does a very different job in relation to their education. One of the reasons that we engage these forms of art is because they educate us. And I don’t want to be too conservative about this, but listening to bad music makes you stupid. And that’s true of hip hop, too. I don’t think it’s letting our side down to admit these issues."
• Lenski affair - RationalWiki - "The Lenski affair was a poorly conceived stunt by Andrew Schlafly to denigrate the groundbreaking research of National Academy of Science member Richard Lenski. The stunt backfired completely and led to one of the best responses to Schlafly, to date. On June 9, 2008, the New Scientist website published an article describing preliminary results of a long-running experiment started by Lenski.[1] Lenski and his team had taken a single strain of the bacterium E. coli, separated its descendants into twelve populations,[2] and proceeded to observe their mutations over the course of twenty years (a process discussed on Lenski's website). At one point, one of the populations demonstrated a dramatic change, and evolved to become capable of utilizing citrate, a carbon source in their flasks that E. coli cannot normally use. Thus, evolution had been visibly observed, with an exquisite amount of evidence establishing the timeline along the way."
• H-Alter - GLOBALIZACIJA OBRAZOVANJA I SOCIJALNA PRAVA - "Protiv školarinâ i komercijalizacije školstva treba se boriti sada, dok još nije sve otišlo tako daleko, isto kao što je upravo sada vrijeme da se borimo protiv privatizacije zdravstva, smanjenja radničkih prava, podčinjavanja našeg gospodarstva Europskoj Uniji i ostalih neoliberalnih ideja koje pokušava progurati naša gospodarsko-politička elita u suradnji i pod pritiskom zapadnih elitâ."
• H-Alter - Opet Superhik - "Štednja bogatih uzimanjem od siromašnih, kako smo vidjeli, nije nikakva novost. Novost koju obznanjuje hrvatska Vlada jest da je upravo to put izlaza iz krize. Po hrvatskoj ekonomsko teorijskoj inovaciji, iz krize se izlazi smanjivanjem kupovne moći stanovništva. Dizanjem, ali ne prihoda siromašnih, nego daljnjim dizanjem od onih koji ionako imaju malo. Već odavna podplaćenom stanovništvu treba zamrznuti plaće, pa na tako zamrznutu kupovnu moć još dodati namete na zdravlje, pušenje... a bit će takvih dosjetki vjerojatno i više. Ne treba oporezivati visoke prihode od svih vrsta imovine – pa samo oni nas drže na životu! Ne treba strateški regulirati poslovanje banaka tako da im se koncesije na hrvatsku platežnu sposobnost uvjetuju domaćim plasmanima visokih profita – pa one su obećale da će biti dobre! [...] Bolje je spašavati inozemni izvoz, to jest uvoz roba u Hrvatsku a inozemno reinvestiranje profita iz Hrvatske."
• YouTube - MontyPython's Channel - "For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands. We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube."
• Meditating on consciousness : Article : Nature - "What does science get from such an exchange? At the least, it encourages alternative ways of thinking about reality. Yet there is one area in which dialogue between Buddhists and scientists could lead to genuine advances in understanding: the study of consciousness. Here, Buddhism offers something that science lacks — a tried and tested way of observing and altering, through careful attention to meditation, the subjective workings of the mind. Neuroscientists can show how the practices used by meditators result in physiological changes in the brain, but as several of the Dharamsala conference participants attest in the book, neuroscience does not yet have the tools to explore the various states of consciousness they experience. Buddhism seems to offer a kind of science of introspection."
• Europa Film Treasures - "Film Treasures safeguarded by important European film archives are finally on the net!"
• Jóhann Jóhannsson | Fordlândia - "...one of the threads running throughout the album is the idea of nature slowly reclaiming territory previously lost to human industry, as in the image of the jungle slowly growing back over the ruins of Fordlândia. Another is this collision of mysticism and rocket science in the work of Parsons and Heim. There is also the image of the God Pan running throughout, the "first god", the god of forests and the embodiment of paganism. For me the album is like a film with two separare story lines that at first don't seem to have lot to do with each other, except in a poetic sense."
• Damn Interesting » The Ruins of Fordlândia - "Workers' discontent grew as the unproductive months passed. Brazilian workers– accustomed to working before sunrise and after sunset to avoid the heat of the day– were forced to work proper "American" nine-to-five shifts under the hot Amazon sun, using Ford's assembly-line philosophies. And malaria became a serious problem due to the hilly terrain's tendency to pool water, providing the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. [...] Henry Ford's losses in Fordlândia and Belterra are equivalent to $200 million in modern dollars. Certainly he was unable to buy his way into rubber royalty, and his efforts to spread his American "healthy lifestyle" were met with resentment and hostility… but history has repeatedly shown that obscene wealth gives one the privilege– perhaps even the obligation– to make bizarre and astonishing mistakes on a grand scale. From that perspective, Fordlândia could not have been more successful."
• Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good - ""A natural flavor," says Terry Acree, a professor of food science at Cornell University, "is a flavor that's been derived with an out-of-date technology." Natural flavors and artificial flavors sometimes contain exactly the same chemicals, produced through different methods. Amyl acetate, for example, provides the dominant note of banana flavor. When it is distilled from bananas with a solvent, amyl acetate is a natural flavor. When it is produced by mixing vinegar with amyl alcohol and adding sulfuric acid as a catalyst, amyl acetate is an artificial flavor. Either way it smells and tastes the same. "Natural flavor" is now listed among the ingredients of everything from Health Valley Blueberry Granola Bars to Taco Bell Hot Taco Sauce. A natural flavor is not necessarily more healthful or purer than an artificial one."
• Frieze Foundation | Talks | The Culture of Denial - "Influential writer, broadcaster and lecturer Judith Williamson gave a keynote lecture on the skewed relationship between what we known and what we do, examining how the gulf between knowledge and behaviour shapes contemporary culture. "
• パリの貸し自転車システム(08/11/13) | NIKKEI NET 日経Ecolomy：連載コラム - デュボワのeco methode - "こんなに便利なサービス、いろいろな利点が挙げられます： １）公共交通機関の利用で生じるストレスから開放されて、街の景色を楽しみながら移動できる ２）公害を発生しない ３）適度な運動になる（街に住んでいる人には特に必要なものかも？！）"
• Visual Science - How Termites Live on a Diet of Wood - NYTimes.com - "Wood is indeed convertible to useful chemicals, because termites do it every day, causing $1 billion of damage every year in the United States. But to live on a diet of wood is challenging, not least because wood contains so little nitrogen. So how do termites do it? [...] The trick lies in a cunning triple symbiosis, a team of Japanese scientists report in Friday’s issue of Science. In the termites’ gut lives an amoeba-like microbe called a protist, and inside each protist live some 10,000 members of an obscure bacterium. [...] The overall process whereby this troika of species makes a meal of wood is shown in the graphic at left: the termite chews the wood into particles that are absorbed by the amoeba. The amoeba breaks down the cellulose of the wood and gets the nitrogen it needs from its bacteria. The net result is that the two microbes digest wood into sugars and other nutrients of use to the termite."