Ypsilanti neighborhood degenerating into violence, chaos (Tom Perkins, annarbor.com/)
Sleazy liquor store surrounded by abandoned cars and houses two blocks from public housing. What could go wrong?
Flint-area Goodwill store customer finds full funeral urn for sale on their shelves (David Harris, MLive/Flint Journal)
Sad and funny at the same time, eh?
Disgraced Rep. Wiener won't resign; He needs the paycheck (Chuck Bennett, New York Post)
Likely the first honest thing Wiener has said about himself to date and esp. on this matter.
Senators target Bitcoin currency, citing drug sales (Don Reisinger, Cnet)
Senators Shumer and Manchin just can't stand people being able to spend money that the government can't trace, control or regulate. Can't have that much liberty now can we?
The HK416—The gun that (probably) killed bin-Laden (Joe Pappalardo, Popular Mechanics)
Typical of high-end German engineering. Precise, efficient, perfectly executed and very expensive. Just like their cars.
Iceland's citizens are writing its new constitution online (Clay Dillow, Popular Science)
It will be interesting to see how this works out. However Iceland has some distinct advantages. No racial/ethnic or religious minorities. A single homogenous group will likely work out better assuming this can be done at all. All previous attempts at constitution drafting have been done by constituent assemblies, well connected local elites or imposed by a foreign power.
Outgoing US SecDef castigates NATO countries for not pulling their weight in global security ops (Matt Welch, Reason)
Bottom line: "It might be worth beginning to consider whether intervening in far-flung civil wars really qualifies as 'defense'." Indeed.
Extra Gene Copies May Trigger Some Cases of Autism (John Timmer, Ars Technica)
"Overall, the new studies strengthen the argument that autism is primarily a genetic disorder, and help explain why it has been so hard to identify the genes: most mutations are rare or completely unique to the affected individuals."
