Another surfin' safari

Entrepreneur or con man? I admire this guy's industry and creative spirit, but it seems that he's a magnet for trouble too. [Seattle Times]

American Caste: A critique of Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, by Kay S. Hymowitz [City Journal]. Single mother-based families just are not able to make a go of it in post-industrial America.

"Solid-state revolution: in-depth on how SSDs really work" [Ars Techica] SSD's reduce latency between the CPU and the data storage tier.

Washington, D.C. city government needs to stop being a one-party monopoly if it wants to make any progress on its problems says Colbert I. King @ the Washington Post. I've been saying the same thing about Ann Arbor for a while now myself and largely for the same reasons as King.

Dogs use humans as their tools [Scientific American]

Weblog

Black men safer, healthier in prison than outside (Reuters)
Bottom line: Less alcohol, drug, tobacco use, and less violence; better diet and access to medical care. That is sad.

Lying liars tend to lie to you (James Brovard, American Conservative)
"Politicians nowadays treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer’s patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued."

The University of California is cutting back on many things, but not on its diversity programs (Heather Mac Donald, City Journal, via the iSteve blog)
"The main purpose of the UC Berkeley Initiative for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion seems to be to buy for the academic identity racket the respectability that no amount of campus mau-mauing has yet been able to achieve. 'Area studies such as ethnic studies, queer studies and gender studies tend to be marginalized and viewed as less essential to the university than such fields as engineering, law or biology,' glumly noted the press release."

Salt cravings may be the origin of all human addiction behavior (Tim Barribeau, io9)
"All humans crave salt once in a while. The desire is hardwired into an ancient part of our brains, the hypothalamus, because we need it to keep our bodies working properly. Now it looks like some of the more addictive drugs out there could be co-opting this neurological system — which means our desire for salt is what underlies our cravings for everything from heroin to coffee."

Some thoughts on the higher-education bubble and the unemployment rate (Survival Blog)
"Combine those easy student loans with state-sponsored universities which create fluffy degrees in order to attract more debt-leveraged students, and you have a job market that will never recover. The student loan bubble will burst. And it will burst on the backs of young families just trying to survive."

The science of fanboyism (Slashdot)
Our brains unconsciously develop an affinity for products we choose over similarly attractive alternatives.

Mexican drug cartels now building their own military-style assault vehicles (John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, Small Wars Journal)
"Known alternatively as 'narco-tanks' (narcotanques), 'Rhino trucks,' and 'monster trucks' (monstruos), the crude armored vehicles emerging in Mexico’s cartel war are evidence of a changing tactical logic on the ground. 'Narco-tanks' are better characterized as improvised armored fighting vehicles (IAFVs)—portending a shift in the infantry-centric nature of the cartel battlespace."

weblog

You are your brain - Reason.com/ (video)
People don't really have free-will or act rationally. We should take that fact into account in our legal system too Baylor University neuro-scientist David Eagleman says; "...free will only exists in philosophy textbooks."