Weekend Links

From a book I happen to be reading at the moment:

[...T]his was real work too, something more than mere labor—time put in for pay. [....] At the end we would have something to show for it, would have added something to the stock of reality—to what Hannah Arendt once called the “huge arsenal of the given.” In The Human Condition Arendt writes of the privileged position of homo faber, man the maker of things, whom the Greeks believed stood not only above the laborer, but above even the man of action and the man of thought, or words. The laborer produces nothing lasting he can call his own, and both the man of action and the man of thought are ultimately dependent on other people, without whose regard and remembrance their deeds and creations do not matter or endure.

—A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams by Michael Pollan, pg. 165.

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And Now, The Links

• Europe puts brakes on fusion project – Cheap, clean, limitless power? Maybe later. Time to fund a few domestic alternate efforts.
• A Tiny Revolution: Save Yourself! – (Thanks to Jay Lake.) I was one of the approximately ten thousand people in the February 15, 2003, demonstration here in Austin, Texas. It may not have been much in the grand scheme of things, but there are times when you have to, at a minimum, stand-up and say “no, this is wrong” (wrong factually, wrong morally, wrong practically). Turns out it had some effects, after all. And, as the largest day of protest in human history, it should have. But if local media coverage is anything to go by, I have to wonder: How many Americans even know it happened? And how many non-Americans? If our media had done its job better, would it have had even more effect?
• Why do we hate? Academics seek answer in new field – Thanks to Jay Lake.
• War Is Peace: Can Science Fight Media Disinformation?
• Greenland ice loss behind a sixth of sea-level rise
• Antarctic temperature spike surprises climate researchers
• Hacked E-Mails Fuel Global Warming Debate
• IBM makes supercomputer significantly smarter than cat – It should have worked, and it did. Bravo!
• Rat Made Supersmart -- Similar Boost Unsafe in Humans?
• A 25-Year Battery – Thanks to Jay Lake.
• Boffins try to get closer to hot bodies – Quantum dots: making electricity from waste heat
• Will secret copyright treaty restrict your digital rights?
• Shocker: Ars, Hollywood agree on need for ACTA openness
• Could Jupiter Moon Harbor Fish-Size Life? – Oxygen enough for fish in the seas of Europa.
• Icy moon's lakes brim with hearty soup for life – The hydrocarbon lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan are loaded with acetylene, a possible anti-freeze for life.
• Manager encouraged by first attempts to move Spirit rover
• New hope for plucky Japanese asteroid mission
• 'Frankenstein' fix lets asteroid mission cheat death
• Dark galaxy crashing into the Milky Way
• Novel Nova: Stellar Blast Powered by Helium May Leave a Tantalizing Remnant
• Titanic Thirty Meter Telescope Will See Deep Space More Clearly
• Future colliders: Beyond the LHC
• Circulation of LHC Beams Could Resume in Earnest over the Weekend
• The Emerging Field of Biophotonic Communication – Thanks to Jay Lake.
• Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists
• Malaria Gaining Resistance to Best Available Treatment – Evolution in action.
• Fight to protect California condors from lead ammunition moves to Arizona
• ID Error Leaves Fish at Edge of Extinction
• Extinction Countdown: Skate punk'd: Taxonomic "oops" put rare fish species in danger of extinction
• Dung Fungus Provides New Evidence in Mammoth Extinction
• Lava Cave Minerals Actually Microbe Poop
• Plants Have a Social Life, Too
• Plants Share Light If Neighbor Is Related
• Surreal underwater river – Thanks to Jay Lake.
• WWII "Samurai Subs" Found -- Carried Aircraft
• Scuba diving to the depths of human history
• Maya "Painted Pyramid" Reveals 1st Murals of Daily Life
• Don't pack your parachute: Totally free fall – There’s what you can do, and what you should do.... Leaving that issue aside, here’s wishing you safe landings, folks.
• Creepy insurance company pulls coverage due to Facebook pics
• US could ban caffeine-alcohol drinks within months
• Daimler Brings Car-Sharing to the Lone Star State
• Nov. 23, 1963: Doctor Who Materializes on BBC