First, an example of how our democracy isn't working properly. Reuters: New homes burn faster, but states resist sprinklers

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In Scottsdale, Arizona, any new home must come equipped with fire sprinklers, a decades-old rule lauded by fire safety advocates nationwide. But 12 miles away in Phoenix, city officials are not even allowed to discuss adopting a requirement like Scottsdale's, because of a state law passed last year.

The same is true in Texas, Alabama, Kansas and Hawaii, where in the past four years state governments have enacted bills forbidding cities and towns from requiring sprinklers in new homes. A dozen have forbidden statewide building code councils from including the requirement in their guidelines.

[article continues]

Second, an Ursula Vernon short story: Bluebeard's Wife

She really hadn’t known.

No one believed her, of course. The more sympathetic among her friends said “Oh, poor Althea, you must have been terrified, of course you couldn’t tell anyone.” Her detractors—her sisters foremost among them—all said “Of course she knew. She just didn’t care. Those poor women.”

No one had actually suggested that she might be involved in the murders, of course. Once the bodies had been identified, it was obvious that she had still been in the nursery for most of them. The youngest of the lot had been dead for several years before Lord Bluebeard moved into the neighborhood, so no one could imply that she was a murderess herself.

Still, she’d kept silent, went the whispers, and that made her an accomplice, didn’t it?

She caught herself wishing that her husband were still alive, so that she could talk to him about it.

[story continues]

This caught my eye the other day.

For-profit colleges sue Dept of Education over new rule

(Reuters) - An association of for-profit colleges in the United States has sued the Department of Education to block the implementation of a controversial rule, saying the rulemaking process was flawed and the agency was overreaching in its capacity to frame such rules.

The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU), representing more than 1,650 colleges, filed a lawsuit in the federal District Court in Washington DC seeking to block the department's final 'gainful employment' regulations.

In June, the department finalized the rule which threatens to cut off federal aid -- a key source of revenue -- to colleges if they do not meet certain student debt criteria.
The final version of the rule is a much softer one than the draft published earlier as the industry fought back the strict rules through lobbying.

The rule is part of a larger package of regulations framed by the Obama administration to reduce student debt at for-profit colleges and make them more accountable for the taxpayers money they get to fund student loans.
[snip]

Context:
Frontline television program about how some for-profit colleges use federally funded loans to pay for students' sub-standard curricula

siege just linked to this old article, and I thought it was worth sharing more widely. It's originally from the New Yorker, but to get it directly from their site you need a subscription. The writer is the author of The Tipping Point and Blink, among other books.

"Million-Dollar Murray"
by Malcolm Gladwell

...if you totted up all his hospital bills for the ten years that he had been on the streets—as well as substance-abuse-treatment costs, doctors' fees, and other expenses—Murray Barr probably ran up a medical bill as large as anyone in the state of Nevada.

"It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murray," O'Bryan said.

Got this link from one of my relatives.

New York Times: The Saturday Profile
Party Elder Still Jousts With China’s Censors
By Sharon LaFraniere and Jonathan Ansfield
Published: October 17, 2009
"Du Daozheng, 86, the former head of the Chinese government’s censorship efforts, now spends his days pushing shunned topics into the public domain."

This is not really news, being a month old, but it is amusing:
Otto the octopus wreaks havoc
A octopus has caused havoc in his aquarium by performing juggling tricks using his fellow occupants, smashing rocks against the glass and turning off the power by shortcircuiting a lamp.

Staff believe that the octopus called Otto had been annoyed by the bright light shining into his aquarium and had discovered he could extinguish it by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction.
( details )

"Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better — much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants."

(The aquarium has some commentary on the news article: apparently the light was not annoyingly bright.)

---

We drove up to the mountains last Saturday, some 100 miles north of here I guess, and went hiking for a couple hours. We followed a trail, making things easy on me. I don't care much for bushwhacking, and steep grades make me afraid of slipping. The terrain was similar to around here, rocky and beige, but there was more greenery — actual wild trees, if small ones, and more large shrubs. We had a picnic lunch on a boulder with a beautiful view.

It's clear that the mountainside there gets more moisture than here, even on the little mountain near us, because I saw a few spots of moss on the shady side of rocks, and plenty of ferns, even growing near to cactuses. There was lichen, not just the pale sea-green color I'm most accustomed to, but also lime green, rusty orange, and yellow. In fact, we crossed a little brook along the way, which fell into a steep ravine.

There were lots of grasshoppers in varying colors: dull grey-brown, black with scarlet wings, brown with yellow wings, bright green, even one with multicolored bands. I think we saw nearly as many lying dead as we did live ones. I guess it's the season when they die; temperatures probably drop below freezing at night there. Besides a couple of squirrels, a few birds, and two stray cows we met on the drive in, we didn't see any other animals. There were some really strange bird calls, though, like laughter or whooping. And herbivore droppings along the trail that seemed too small to be from horses or cattle. I know there are feral oryx in the region....

We did see a coyote a week previous, two Sundays ago. It ran across the road when we were driving to find lunch. It's nice to think we have a little wilderness around us, even if the animal probably dined on garbage.

Reuters: Pope sees physicist Hawking at evolution gathering

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict told a gathering of scientists including the British cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Friday that there was no contradiction between believing in God and empirical science.
Benedict, who briefly met the wheelchair-bound physicist at an event hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, described science as the pursuit of knowledge about God's creation.
"There is no opposition between faith's understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences," the pontiff said.
[...]
The Catholic Church teaches "theistic evolution," which accepts evolution as scientific theory. Proponents see no reason why God could not have used an evolutionary process in forming the human species.
[...]

Nice to know.

AP: Scientists aim for origami space flight (via Yahoo! News)

KASHIWA, Japan - Japanese scientists and origami masters hope to launch a paper airplane from space and learn from its trip back to Earth.

It's no joke. A prototype passed a durability test in a wind tunnel this month, Japan's space agency adopted it Wednesday for feasibility studies, and a well-known astronaut is interested in participating.

A successful flight from space by an origami plane could have far-reaching implications for the design of re-entry vehicles or space probes for upper atmospheric exploration, said project leader Shinji Suzuki, a professor at Tokyo University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
[...]

In a test outside Tokyo in early February, a prototype about 2.8 inches long and 2 inches wide survived Mach 7 speeds and broiling temperatures up to 446 degrees Fahrenheit in a hypersonic wind tunnel — conditions meant to approximate what the plane would face entering Earth's atmosphere.

Having survived the 12-second test with no major damage or burns, the tiny plane theoretically could get back to Earth because re-entry from outer space involves passing through several layers that last only a few seconds each, said Osamu Imamura, a scientist who works with Suzuki.
[...]

Suzuki and Toda use origami paper made of sugar cane fibers that are resistant to heat, wind and water. They spray a special coating onto the paper and then fold it into shuttles about 8 inches long and 4 inches wide that weigh about 1.05 ounces. How many shuttles will be released has not been decided.
[...]

Only problem is they have no way of knowing where or even if the paper shuttles land. I wonder if they could stick on a tiny radio transmitter?

AP: Marriages fall victim to Kenya violence

( Read more... )

We watched "Hotel Rwanda" a few weeks ago. I simply don't grok hatreds like these.


And now the cool stories.

Reuters: Australian girl changes blood group, immune system

( Read more... )

AP: Photo clues lead to camera's owner

( Read more... )

There's no passage I can quote to summarize neatly the way they tracked down the camera's owner. Suffice to say, it took some doing, but they succeeded.

AP: 'Goose Whisperer' bonds with park birds - Yahoo! News

[..snippage..]
At age 23, Martin Hof has developed an unusual approach to managing urban geese populations that is gaining adherents in the animal-friendly Netherlands — the first country in the world with an animal rights party in parliament.

"It's all about respect for the geese," he says.

The main problem at the Hof van Delft and most parks is that the birds have been allowed to overbreed and are clashing with the humans whose territory they share. But rather than destroying them, Hof finds new homes for the geese, dividing them along family lines to reduce the trauma of the move.

On the other side of the equation, he works with the humans who consider the geese as either pets or pests. That means discouraging feeding the birds and educating city workers on preventing the animals from overbreeding in the first place.

[..snippage..]

Gerard Zwart of the Amsterdam's public health agency, which has hired Hof's company for several projects, says the city has been so influenced by his thinking it plans to rename its "Vermin Control Service" to the "Nature Management Service."

The cost of using Hof's service is about the same as the old eradication program, he says. A typical job of relocating 30 geese would be about $2,000-$3,000.
[..snippage..]

I think the most important point of this article is that the more humane method of controlling the geese population is just as cheap as the conventional method.

A few months ago, the large park across the street from where I work had some people with shelties or border collies (are those the same thing?) chase away the geese from the pond, and the geese stayed away for several days, but the dogs were only there for one week, and the geese are back now.

AP: Simulated trip to Mars is planned

...the European Space Agency ... is looking for 12 volunteers for a simulated mission to Mars that will last up to 520 days in "extreme isolation and confinement."
[snip]

Unlike the adventurous spirits attracted to the desert island prospects of reality TV, only the "serious" need apply for this simulated interplanetary voyage, the space agency said. The payoff is likely less glamorous, too. Remuneration is "in line with international standards" for clinical studies, is all it would say.

The Paris-based agency, known as ESA, is working on the Mars500 project with the Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow and the simulated mission will be conducted there and include Russians.
[snip]

The experiment will emphasize psychological factors, including stress resistance. The goal is to test how the volunteers hold up in nearly a year-and-a-half of close confinement, in cramped quarters with others and when communications with Earth can take 20 minutes to reach their destination — each way.

[snip]
..."Except for weightlessness and radiation, the simulations will be as close to a real Mars mission as possible," the ESA said in its call for candidates.

The living quarters will include 30-square-foot rooms for each crew member, a kitchen-dining room, living room — and one toilet. No shower is included, and water supply will be limited.
[snip]

Hmm. I vaguely remember reading that Biosphere 2 was not able to grow enough food to be self-sustaining, and also developed a cockroach infestation. If all 12 volunteers last the full 520 days, kudos to the ESA.