links for 2008-05-31

• Stonehenge Used as Cemetery From the Beginning – NYTimes.com
• Scientists move a step closer to mind-reading | Science | guardian.co.uk
• Pictures of the Week – Pictures of the Week – TIME
  A Communist Party boss in Sichuan province pleads with angry parents whose children were killed in the earthquake to stop their protest march. This is a powerful photo that shows empathy for both sides.
• Phoenix Lander ‘Talks’ to Twitterers – NYTimes.com
  hee hee

links for 2008-05-30

• Can Identity Politics Save the Right? | The American Prospect
  Mark Schmitt is consistently the most insightful writer on American politics today, and this article is no exception.

truth beats fiction

From an article on the real-life Indiana Jones:

One day in 1933 he received a mysterious telegram offering him 1,000 reichsmarks a month to write the sequel to Crusade Against the Grail. The telegram was unsigned, but he was instructed to go to an address in Berlin – 7 Prinz Albrechtstrasse.

When he arrived, he was understandably surprised to be greeted by the grinning figure of Heinrich Himmler, the head of Hitler’s SS. Not only had Himmler read Crusade Against the Grail; he’d virtually committed the thing to memory. For the first time in his life Rahn met someone even more obsessed with finding the Grail than he was. Indeed, so confident was Himmler of finding the Grail that he’d already prepared a castle – Wewelsburg in Westphalia – for its arrival. In the basement, surrounded by busts of prominent Nazis, was an empty plinth where the Grail would go.

dartboard analysis

Why polls, and any argument based on polls, are complete rubbish:

American polling organisations tend to rely on relatively small samples (certainly judged by British standards) for their results, often somewhere between 500 and 700 likely voters, compared to the more usual 1000-2000-plus for British national polls. The recent New York Times poll that gave Obama a 12 per cent lead was based on interviews with just 283 people. For a country the size of the United States, this is the equivalent to stopping a few people at random in the street, or throwing darts at a board.

Read the rest of the article for a depressing explanation of why we still rely on them.  The most amazing fact about American political journalism is that most of it is nonsense, it can easily be shown to be nonsense, and no one cares.

links for 2008-05-29

• amazing balloon “animals”
• In Moscow’s Metro, a Stray Dog’s Life Is Pretty Cushy, and Zoologists Notice – WSJ.com
  “They have developed innovative strategies, zoologists say, such as a come-from-behind ambush technique: A big dog pads up silently behind a man eating on the street and barks. The startled man drops his food. The dog eats it.”
• Monkeys Control a Mechanical Arm With Their Thoughts – NYTimes.com
  The cyborg monkeys will make excellent shock troops for our future robot overlords.

lunch for votes

A scene from Indiana:

Obama got a bit of a surprise at one table. While talking to a trio of men eating breakfast, one handed him the bill. “This will seal the thing,” he said. Obama accepted it, and later took it to the cashier and paid it.

I’m not sure if this guy is awesome or just a huge asshole!