Oh, the weather outside is frightful

[conuly]

But I still have to pick up the CSA. And in case I freeze on the way, articles, articles, articles!

It's too cold to lyricize right now.

~~~~~~

A Cherokee Tribe's Basic Income Success Story

http://bit.ly/1imO1rs

Thanks to the GOP, 5 Million Americans Won't Get Health Insurance

http://thebea.st/KGkrxX

Lauded for growing an entire forest over thirty years, Jadav Payeng shows the way forward to afforestation.

http://aje.me/1e629kt

Gay-straight alliances in schools reduce suicide risk for all students

http://bit.ly/Kzs9d9

What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? How much volume would they take up and what would they look like?

http://what-if.xkcd.com/80/

Women in China Are Really Into Gay Sherlock Fan Fiction

http://bit.ly/KmyaKk

This Firefighter Is Writing Google Glass Apps to Help Save Lives

http://bit.ly/1aKKStv

Scientists Discover Water in Stardust and It Suggests We're Not Alone

http://bit.ly/1eydpGs

Twitter storm in Russia over Sochi Olympics twin toilet

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25830617

Pakistan's Polio Crisis Poses Wider Threat

Local Strain of Largely Eradicated Virus Turns Up in Syria; Domestic Cases Increase as Islamists Target Health Workers

There are two reasons given for attacking the aid workers giving out shots against polio. One is that vaccinations are "unIslamic", which is stupid. The other is that the CIA used fake polio vaccinations to do genetic testing on people to locate terrorists, which is... even more stupid. Of the CIA. When will people learn that pretending to be a doctor is a bad idea?

http://on.wsj.com/1dN157v

Student shortlisted for one-way ticket to Mars

Danielle Potter, 29, is shortlisted for a place on the Mars One project, which hopes to create a colony on the red planet in 10 years

Well, if this thing ever really gets off the ground I'm sure they're going to die in space (that's a safe bet, given there's no return trip, even if they surprise me by having long-term success. Just call me Delphi), but still, it's pretty cool.

http://bit.ly/1dU4NdM

Comments

[redbird]

Ethan Siegel, an astronomy blogger, says that the likely outcome of the Mars 1 missing, if it gets off the ground at all, is that the crew will die attempting or right after the landing. He notes that at this point we (as a species) have gotten moderately good at getting spacecraft most of the way to Mars, and Mir and the ISS are examples of shielding against cosmic rays and solar flares, but we still aren't very good at landing on Mars. (Total successful landings: 8, if you count the one that failed 15 seconds after landing.) And what we do know about landing on Mars is for robots that can handle higher accelerations: humans are more fragile, and the craft is too heavy for current tech.

On the other hand, I suspect some nontrivial number of the people who applied not only would take a one-way ticket to Mars, they'd take one where they expected to die within 48 hours after landing.

[conuly]

Well, that sucks. I guess they're hoping we will improve by then?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Stay warm; hang in there!

Great links as always; I ganked some, as you will have seen. I'm not even looking at the most-recent comments on the ones I ganked last week, sheesh! because I have more productive things to do than get sucked into futile debate with people whom no amount of logic, evidence, or even appeal to their own advantage will ever convince.

More and more, the working/middle class supporters of the GOP remind me of the spouses of rampant narcissists in so many pointed particulars that I can't even really stay mad at them, despite the undeniable harm they've denied, excused and enabled, because I see all too well how they've been set-up from the beginning, and it's really rather tragic. There's going to be a backlash indeed, once they realize just how egregiously they've been manipulated. What I fear is that they'll go crazy, like the loving, trusting spouses of narcissists often do when they realize just how callously their loved and trusted one has been fucking them over, and try to settle by violence what needs to be settled by rule of law.

[conuly]

That's what worries me about the economy nowadays. It only takes a few miserable idiots to really make things worse.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

We already HAVE miserable idiots really making things worse. Miserable idiots with guns (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/nine-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/). The GOP's whole anti-gun-control thing is because they expect civil unrest to result from their economic policies.

All those survivalists think the government is going to collapse, and they'll finally get to be tragically forced to shoot a lot of desperate refugees who want them to share their hoarded food. The truth is that long before the government collapsed, martial law would be declared, weapons and stores would be confiscated, citizens would be evacuated, and resistance would be futile. The firebomb-from-helicopter method of 'urban pacification' has already been field-tested (https://www.google.com/#q=philadelphia+police+fire+bomb) in the US; there is also much to be said for the Israeli's earth-mover method.

However, keeping the fear of being over-run by the lawless alive in the hearts of the gun-buying populace means there'll always be plenty of guns around for the lawless to steal. The more crime there is, and especially the more fear of crime there is, the easier it is for the rich to keep the poor and the middle at war with each other.

[conuly]

"The GOP's whole anti-gun-control thing is because they expect civil unrest to result from their economic policies. "

Yeah, well, so do I. I just don't think that any civil unrest is ultimately going to benefit the GOP. Get enough of that stuff and no amount of force is going to control it.