“ The Niger Delta is made up of nine states, 185 local government areas, and a population of 27 million. It has 40 ethnic groups speaking 250 dialects spread across 5,000 to 6,000 communities and covers an area of 27,000 square miles. This makes for one the highest population densities in the world, with annual population growth estimated at 3 percent. About 1,500 of those communities play host to oil company operations of one kind or another. Thousands of miles of pipelines crisscross the mangrove creeks of the Delta, broken up by occasional gas flares that send roaring orange flames into the already hot, humid air. Modern, air-conditioned facilities sit cheek-by-jowl with primitive fishing villages made of mud and straw, surrounded with razor wire and armed guards trained to be on the lookout for local troublemakers. It is, and always has been, a recipe for disaster.”

The Curse of Oil

Floating issues are often easy to solve..but only after finding out how:

float flummox

Reminders of floating techniques are always good..

On Collision Detection:

“ The Five-Year Forecast
Unseasonably warm, with freakish snowfalls and chance of cyclone. This winter will be weird, and the weather will keep getting weirder.”
by Clive Thompson

A feature on the future of New York's weather:

The five-year weather forecast

Science's 2006 Breakthrough of the year and runners up:

Special Online Collection: Breakthrough of the Year 2006

Exxon is getting discounts:

Court halves Exxon spill damages

Considering they reported record profits for the year 2005 and the third-highest quarterly profit in the company's history they should be made to pay more not less.

On Ideasonideas:

Five foundries

Via Kottke.org:

The Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006

“ The largest lizards in the world are capable of virgin births. Scientists report of two cases where female Komodo dragons have produced offspring without male contact. ”

Virgin births for giant lizards

“ Coached by breast milk and good bacteria, the immune system strives to learn the difference between food and pathogens before the first morsel crosses our lips.”

Why We Develop Food Allergies

“ In 1891, Sylvain Dornon walked 1830 miles between Paris and Moscow on stilts at an average of about 30 miles a day (58 days total).”

Stilt Walkers

It's always good to remind ourselves of what we need to live and that we have an untouchable right to it:

“ Water (H2O, HOH) is the most abundant molecule on Earth, composing 70-75% of the Earth's surface as liquid and solid state in addition to being found in the atmosphere as a vapor. It is in dynamic equilibrium between the liquid and vapor states at standard temperature and pressure. At room temperature, it is a nearly colorless, tasteless, and an odorless liquid.”

Water molecule

“ Has any book been recast into English more times than this tale of Aeneas' wanderings and the eventual establishment of the Roman Empire? Probably not, given both the poem's venerability and the relative accessibility of Latin. When you further consider all the partial or complete versions in private manuscript - often the work of old classics teachers, shared with their students - we indeed confront something that looms over us like a cloudburst.”

Wars and a Man

An interesting article on Digital Web:

“ Though hundreds of years of packaging design history and best practices may have influenced your offline shopping behaviors and decisions, the lessons learned in this enduring discipline didn't have much of an influence on early web designs.”

Packaging Design for Web-based Products

On Wired:

The Church of the Non-Believers

I don't like any kind of extremism. I think everyone is entitled to believe in whatever he wants, as long as one doesn't try to impose his beliefs on others. I personally don't believe in a God, I know there is a life energy that keeps things the way they are but I don't see the necessity to call it something or attribute it “human-like” qualities. I think that religions originally are born as guidelines for social behaviour, in times when there were very few people able to write and read and the only way to regulate society was to convince everyone in a higher entity seeing all and judging us for our actions, even when, for example, in absence of witnesses would have been possible to get away with murder. Also, for literate people, they were a tool to a higher awareness. As far as extremes are concerned, it's always people twisting things to gain something. I think that having to choose it's good because it makes people take responsability. I don't think the problem is the religion in itself but the interpretations given to it by people for personal (or economical) reasons.

On Laputan Logic:

• the evolution of numbers
• the cult of the Golden Ratio

On Scientific American:

Love Thy Neighbor

Altruistic behaviour surely came from the fact that it ensures better survival odds, a step up from cooperation during a hunt. But, after a few thousand years of written history, humans should realize that only the awareness of others and their needs can lead to a peaceful co-existence and mutual understanding. Two steps up from cooperating to hunt?

On a different level but of the same basic meaning:

What's Holding Back Arab Women?

Women, like men, should be free to choose; choose to study or not, choose to work or not, choose to wear the veil or not, choose to get married or not..cultures are an ever changing part of social human life. What is today seen as usual wasn't so until fifty years ago and that's valid in any culture. The problems that women face in the Arab world are often basically the same as the ones they face in the Western world. Fifty years ago the similarity were even closer. That's what I meant when I wrote “of the same basic meaning”: freedom of choice, respect, cooperation; that's all we need. When we will understand that we will all have a chance to live with dignity.

A photo-essay:

a trail of diamonds

An exemplification of how the world economy works nowadays: some people can spend millions of dollars because many more have absolutely nothing.

Historical notes for every decade since 1650:

history by decades

The Smithsonian's online exhibition of satellite imagery:

Earth from space

Via India,Ink.:

“ Penguin's just announced a new series of My Penguin classics with naked front covers - white art-quality paper, blank save for the Penguin logo. It's up to you to clothe them, in illustration or collage or whatever, and if you e-mail it to Penguin they'll post it to their online gallery.”

Draw your own

A nice idea.

The National Sleep Research Project:

forty facts about sleep

On The Nonist:

“ It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits - like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing a beautiful woman, flying through the stratosphere or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits - involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding - inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, a Roosevelt can feel themselves to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, a Blake. Understanding is ever unattainable. Therein lies the inevitability of failure in embarking upon its quest, which is none the less the only one worthy of serious attention.”
Malcolm Muggeridge

The trap of first rate pursuits

Another outstanding post from The Nonist. Food for thought.

Flying back home..