Brian Gongol
A checklist for what one can build in Dubai
"Contempt for logic", as Cracked puts it, seems to be the most important requirement. On one hand, Dubai serves as a good example of just how quickly free markets can turn a place with no substantial resources into a place where great wealth accumulates. On the other hand, its absurdities also stand as compelling evidence of how things can go very, very wrong when people with enormous egos have access to unreasonably cheap labor. The parallels between the construction of the pyramids of ancient Egypt (either by slave labor or by a workforce paid by a government that took great advantage of slave labor) and the construction of giant, absurdist skyscrapers by low-paid foreign workers should be apparent to a reasonable observer. Related: Archaeologists are finding buried sites they didn't know about in places like Rome and underwater in places like Alexandria.
If trends keep up, today's kids should have life expectancies beyond 100 years
But thanks to government regulations prohibiting payments, almost none of the Canadian kids will be born from sperm donors
Balloons and $150 in parts get a camera to the edge of space
A couple of MIT students figured out how to launch a weather-style balloon carrying a hacked digital camera up to about 93,000 feet above the surface of the Earth. Ingenuity can overcome a lot of other expenses. Perhaps some of that ingenuity can be used to figure out how America will get people into space after we retire the Space Shuttle program next year.
Tufts Daily editorial: Rest of world needs to grow up about "no sex in dorms" policy
Pork producers are losing money right now
India's having its worst drought in almost 40 years
The emergent universe
Interesting site that highlights the need to understand that things behave differently when they are singular than when they are grouped
41-year Des Moines radio host dies
Dic Youngs spent 41 years at KIOA; that kind of longevity at a single station is extraordinary
