Links (IV)
- Obesity isn't well understood. Perhaps it is caused by an environmental contaminant?
- ... but if that's true it can't be the whole story, because gastric bypass surgery and some drugs effectively lower people's weight by significant amounts.
- Is the rise and fall of civilizations caused by cyclical patterns in the birth rates of different subpopulations?
- Most scientifically literate people are aware of entropy as a measure of complexity, but energy rate density is more useful in many ways works at all time and length scales.
- A plausible story about how religion evolved. The part on ritual and why it must be costly is particularly interesting.
- “In 1973, I invented a ‘girly drink’ called Baileys”
- The guy who wrote this essay is very wise. I had to go through a similar learning process. So much of what we're taught is wrong and has to be unlearned.
- Maybe online advertising doesn't work as well was as we assume?
- Two nice speeches from Admiral Rickover, one on management and one on choosing what to do in life.
- Now that manufacturing has been outsourced, outsourcing product design and development is the logical next step.
- No current or proposed nuclear fusion reactor is anywhere close to "breakeven".
- A paean to the rural way of life that used to exist in America.
- Why do community banks still exist?
- “Neither Fred, empty Becks bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome.”
- Can beauty be explained by a small number of properties?