Sunday, July 03, 2005

How many people died of malaria because of a ban on DDT? First, there has been no such ban. While some aid agencies and NGOs have discouraged DDT spraying, the reality is less brutal than polemics sometimes suggest. Tim Lambert has an overview of the evidence. Here is a good follow-up post called Eritrea cuts malaria rates by switching away from DDT. (Via Marginal Revolution.) 5:31:30 PM    comment []

Google Map links for Unesco World Heritage Sites This is just amazing, links to Google maps for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Get ready to spend a lot of time looking at this stuff. 5:24:45 PM    comment []

Shorter Max Boot Shorter Max Boot: Torture at Gitmo? Ask the Mau Mau A careful search of the historical record reveals several murder-torture regimes that the Bush administration is not nearly as bad as. comment (Via Busy, Busy, Busy.) 5:14:45 PM    comment []

The Top 25 Great Scientific Questions The academic journal Science is celebrating its 125th anniversary by publishing 125 questions not yet answered by science. Among them: What is the Universe made of? What is the biological basis of consciousness? How does Earth's interior work? Are we alone in the Universe? How and where did life on Earth arise? Science editors will winnow the list down to the top 25 questions. Leave your suggestions here. (Via In the Agora.) 1:28:36 PM    comment []

U.S. CREATING NEW SECRETS AT RATE OF 125 A MINUTE NY TIMES - Driven in part by fears of terrorism, government secrecy has reached a historic high by several measures, with federal departments classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information." A record 15.6 million documents were classified last year, nearly double the number in 2001, according to the federal Information Security Oversight Office. Meanwhile, the declassification process, which made millions of historical documents available annually in the 1990's, has slowed to a relative crawl, from a high of 204 million pages in 1997 to just 28 million pages last year. The increasing secrecy - and its rising cost to taxpayers, estimated by the office at $7.2 billion last year - is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification. (Via UNDERNEWS.) 1:23:27 PM    comment []

Near-realtime images from DeepImpact (Nasa via Nas ... Near-realtime images from DeepImpact (Nasa via NasaW) (Via robot wisdom weblog.) Last night in my backyard, I spotted Tempel in my binoculars and small scope, just before some fog rolled in. Hope I can see it again tonight! And a good roundup of all the web sources for pictures, etc. is here. 11:09:49 AM    comment []

WoW War of the Worlds makes it as huge spectacle. The first hour is great, the extended scene with Tim Robbins runs a bit long and has a silly denouement. I always hated the ending of the original Welles piece and all its descendants, and here it's made worse. Still, it was a wild ride, and a lot of fun. It really shows up shit like Independence Day from a few years ago for the crap it was. In Spielberg, the people are more or less real, the attention to detail pays off, and some images are unforgettable. So there's a lot to complain about, but it was a fun movie. (But not up to Land of the Dead standards for creativity points, or excellence of political message; see it before you see WoW.) 10:30:11 AM    comment []

World's 50 worst beers (list) (RateBeer via linkfi ... World's 50 worst beers (list) (RateBeer via linkfilter) (Via robot wisdom weblog.) 10:24:28 AM    comment []

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