The interesting and informative links and resources thread.

[Thought]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100506/ts_afp/astronomyspaceherschelsatelliteeuropestars

The rate of star-birth has significantly slowed... but, on the up side, due to new tech we are able to discover this and gain a better understanding of life, the universe, and everything.

[Lord J Esq]

Migrating birds clog the weather radar!

http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2010/05/there-is-bird-in-my-radar.html

This is interesting, and I didn't know a thing about it until now. The idea is that migrating birds can show up on weather radar during clear weather; they show up so well that their migrations can be tracked.

[Thought]

Is the British Banger Dangerous?

Besiders learning that a "banger" means sausage, that article is particularly interesting for it discussion on statistics. And the crazy thing is that even 42% might not be statistically significant, depending on the margin of error.

[Lord J Esq]

It doesn't sound like the claim about supposed health effects of eating the extra sausage has been separated out from the underlying statistics. Some of the population already eats sausage; obviously whatever health effects do exist, if any, will already manifest in the current rates! For these raw numbers to apply, the entire population would have to start eating an extra sausage a day on top of whatever they already have--and the claims about sausage would have to be correct (and you can expect I have my reservations).

[Thought]

A rather pleasurable article on the pleasures of the imagination: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Pleasures-of-Imagination/65678

I'd highly recommend this for anyone who fancies themselves an entertainer of some description.

[Lord J Esq]

Ah, you had me excited for a minute, there, Thought! But it turns out that they lumped together abstract imagination with things like watching television and playing video games--which ruined the conclusions. But, for a minute there, I had cause to wonder whether my observations all these years had been incorrect, whether the kind of daydreaming I do is in fact a commonplace activity among people from all walks of life. Most people seem to go out of their way to avoid having to spend time with their own minds; it was gratifying to consider, for a minute, that that might not actually be true.

[Lord J Esq]

This is the latest ranking of the U.S. presidents:

http://www.siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/parents_and_community/community_page/sri/independent_research/Presidents%202010%20Rank%20by%20Category.pdf

What do you all think? I, personally, would keep FDR at number one, move Washington up to number two, keep Lincoln at number three, have Teddy Roosevelt trade places with Washington at number four, and keep Jefferson and number five to round out the top five.

Elsewhere on the list, I'd move Nixon up considerably higher than 30th place due to Vietnam and all the institution-building he approved. Reagan needs to come down a few notches, probably to the mid-twenties, owing to his incredible destructiveness toward our social fabric. Truman deserves his high ranking. Wilson should come down a couple of notches, but is in the right neighborhood. Clinton should drop a number of notches, as history is beginning to reflect that he was more of a placeholder president than anything else; his only key accomplishment was eliminating the deficit, but that only happened because the dotcom boom came along at exactly the right moment.

Dubya deserves his place in the bottom five. Time will tell if he can keep his spot as fifth worst, or if he'll need to be downgraded to an even worser president. I'm pretty confident that he was a worse president than Buchanan (who failed to stop the Civil War, which by that point was probably unstoppable anyway). He's probably on par with Harding. Johnson and Pierce, I think, were worse. If Dubya had come along during a period of tremendous national instability (a la the Civil War or the Great Depression), I think he could easily have destroyed the nation.

It's too early to rank Obama coherently. He's ranked fifteenth, no doubt because of the major legislation he has passed through Congress and the economic depression he has thus far averted. We'll see what comes.

The crosstabs are interesting too. I agree that Jefferson deserves the spot for top intelligence. Buchanan should probably get 42 on luck (and keeping Hoover at 43 is a good call). I doubt that Lincoln deserves second place for imagination. Clinton's court appointments were pretty good; only my lack of knowledge of past court appointments makes it infeasible for me to say if he deserves the number 11 spot. Kennedy deserves his high communication rating. Obama does not deserve nearly so high a risk-taking rating.

[Thought]

It seems like on almost every point I'd argue them over that list. For example, William Harrison is clearly more unlucky than Hoover (though both are phenomenally more unlucky than almost any other presidents). Hoover at least had a full term; Harrison died right quick. Hoover was unlucky to be blamed as he is, but Harrison was more unlucky to have no even had the chance to be blamed for the problems of the nation.

It looks like this was a public opinion survey; is that right, Josh?

[Lord J Esq]

It was a survey of 238 presidential scholars at universities around the country.

[Thought]

Gel can help reduce the infection rate of HIV

[Lord J Esq]

This article on Israel vs. Iran is very interesting, and the author hits many key points and presents what appears to be an informative summary of the situation. I'm skeptical of its accuracy, after being burned one too many times by seemingly knowledgeable news reports and features, but it is a comprehensive enough article that it's worth reading even without taking away its prediction for the coming year. Be sure to read all six pages of the article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/09/the-point-of-no-return/8186/1/

I myself took away two urgent ideas from this article.

First, the global supremacy of the United States is in rapid decline and the West as a whole continues to be caught in a devastating mindset of appeasement and denial. The key quote of the entire article is "Bad things tend to get worse if they’re not challenged early." We're in a very dangerous situation now, with regard to the emergence of the Islamic world. Western conservatism is sucking all of the oxygen out of Western liberalism's ability to recognize and oppose religious fundamentalism outside of the Christian version.

Second, we had better become the best friends in the world to the Chinese. We're either going to be their partners or their antagonists, and it's gonna become their world if it doesn't become theirs and ours together. If we're with the Chinese against Islam, secular humanism wins. If we're against Islam sanctioned (even tacitly) by the Chinese, all bets are off. And the Chinese don't care; they're in it for themselves...like we used to be.

I think the smart thing for America to do would be to grant China the respect it craves, by essentially allowing it self-determination in its area of the world, in exchange for increased cooperation and partnership on every front possible and imaginable.

As for Iran, this is a difficult situation. The best outcome would be for the Iranian people to overthrow their government. Giving them the opportunity should be Israel's goal and America's. The second best outcome, amazingly, would seem to be an American military attack on Iran's nuclear program. I am astonished that that would be the second best outcome, but such is the reality of an intractable enemy. The problem here is that an American preemptive military attack would poison the Obama administration in the eyes of the American left. Despite what Obama's people said in the article, I don't think he's got the brass to carry it out. If only the American public were less shortsighted.

[tushantin]

Interesting!
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/twisted-physics-top-findings-100401.html

[Lord J Esq]

"Zelda Reorchestrated," or ZREO, is a group which has showered love and relevance upon the incredible soundtracks of the Zelda series by arranging them for orchestra. Though nearly all of these orchestrations are synthesizer compositions rather than live performances, with the usual commensurate reductions in quality and liveliness, there are enough gems in this collection that it becomes prohibitive for me to name them all--although I can't help but mention "The Great Sea Is Cursed," "Dark World Palace" (which has redeemed the piece in my eyes), and "Opening Demo" in the Majora's Mask volume. Check ZREO out for yourself:

http://www.zreomusic.com/listen

By indications on YouTube, some of ZREO's music has made the rounds, but anonymously, with ZREO's official page garnering far fewer views and relatively few of the third party postings giving credit to ZREO. You're likely to hear many orchestrations of the Zelda series that you've never heard before, and that's reason enough to set aside some time. =)

[Lord J Esq]

If you want to see James Horner talk about the score to Star Trek II, you can see that here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-8D6j5LPho

If you want to see a (much larger) documentary on the music of The Empire Strikes Back, and the work of John Williams generally, you can see the ultra-rare special here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGsbKZnaT8E

If you want to hear the isolated score of the Star Wars films, you may do so here:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FilmTracks#p/u

If you want to hear the isolated score of the Star Trek films, that's here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/SeanMaccaUK#p/u

And if you want to hear William Shatner reprise his famous "KHAAAAAN!!" you can find it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUrCB31SPv0

[FaustWolf]

There's some interesting tidbits in this economy-themed article that could be useful to folks here. In particular, I wanted to point out the Young Entrepreneur Council and the Gen Y Fund. That latter isn't active yet, but it'll be interesting to follow in 2011 and see where it goes.