Links for you. Science:
Don’t believe the Affymetrix anti-hype
String of HIV infections brings porn industry to a standstill
Pictures: Jaguar Kills Caiman in “Spectacular” Attack
The FDA sidesteps on arsenic and rice.
The Science of Big Science (related thoughts here)
The Dignity of a Porn Star
Other:
Not Very Giving (when studies make claims that spending has little effect on outcomes, I wonder if they include this)
Alan Grayson: ‘They have no smoking gun that the attack was ordered by Assad’
Why disrespect festers between city bicyclists & drivers
Tennessee Republicans nervous workers may gain new power at Volkswagen plant
Soles for sale
Senate Surrenders War Powers Over False Flag Incident
How Mississippi turned $3.5 million into $80 million
Syria – Cui bono? Part 1 & Part 2
Boston Politicians Settle Feud on Event
Left With Nothing
We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online
The wealthy ‘make mistakes’, the poor go to jail
ObamaCare Staggers Toward the October 1 Finish Line (4)
The Cowboy of the NSA: Inside Gen. Keith Alexander’s all-out, barely-legal drive to build the ultimate spy machine.
mikethemadbiologist
The whole “why disrespect festers between cyclists and drivers” is several things:
1) Both sides tend to treat the other as a group. Note that as “majority group”, drivers could actually decide to pass laws restricting driver behavior, while the “tiny-minority group” does not have this option, so one “group” actually has the option of compelling change (or at least passing laws or requesting more enforcement) in all their members, while the other does not.
2) As groups, both frequently break traffic laws.
3) As a group, drivers kill and maim thousands of people each year in their subsidized of the roads.
4) As a majority group, drivers perceive that their behavior is a desirable norm, and are either unaware of their frequent law-breaking, or believe that they only break stupid and unimportant laws, or don’t break them too badly.
5) The safety advice to new cyclist is that drivers are blind, deaf, stupid, and irritable. The fact that this model of drivers is safety-enhancing does not do a lot for respect.
6) Drivers on the internet (as a group) do a lot to support the “stupid” part of #5, because they seem to be unaware of the substantial differences in risk to others (drunk cyclist is safer for others than a sober driver, for example), and completely unaware that their car compromises their ability to see and hear what is around them. They’re also unaware that the overwhelming majority of adult cyclists are also licensed car owners who frequently also drive, and unaware that “gas taxes” only cover about half the cost of maintaining roads (particularly the non-freeway, non-rural roads most used by bicycles), and unaware that bicycles don’t tear up roads like cars (and especially trucks) and don’t need all that expensive signalling infrastructure that cars do to maintain safety (at least not until their volumes are enormous).
Or to put it differently: knock down Nicole Kidman with a bicycle on a sidewalk, get charged with three infractions; crush five children with an SUV on a sidewalk, get charged with nothing ( http://blog.tstc.org/2013/09/13/drive-suv-on-sidewalk-hit-5-children-0-summonses-drive-bicycle-on-sidewalk-hit-nicole-kidman-3-summonses/ )