Has the internet run out of ideas?

Has the internet run out of ideas already? | Technology | The Observer

EU anti-austerity backlash

Politicians braced for backlash as Europe turns against austerity | Business | The Observer
It's very hard to know where to stand on the EU  crisis. On the one hand can appreciate the augments to reduce debt, but on the other I would definitely think Keynesianism sounds right on the need for government stimulation of the economy when it flags. Of course the problem is over reliance on deficit during the good, or at least better, times puts most countries in a bad starting position for this. Overall though, while aware hard economic pragmatism is needed, my gut reaction to the anti austerity backlash is positive. Firstly, I think the austerity measures hit the least able (and least responsible for the crisis) most, and so are unfair. Secondly, not least after the global groupthink failure of so called experts on 2008 , I can easily believe that the same can happen again, and leaders and elites (even if probably out of sincerity) are blinkered to alternatives to the existing financial system. The slavish devotion to the "markets" while logical within the rules of the current game, ignore the fact that the game can be changed, not by markets but de facto by governments (though not on their own except for maybe the US or China).  One thing is I think for sure however, simply muddling along playing the same game isn't going to work, and massive and creative steps are needed. I'm not going to hold my breath for it though...

Neil Heywood case sheds light on privileged lifestyles of China's elite

Neil Heywood case sheds light on privileged lifestyles of China's elite | UK news | guardian.co.uk

Latest review of mobile phones and health

The Health Protection Agency today publishes a large-scale review of the evidence to date on the links between mobile phone use and brain cancer. You can find the full report here.
Do mobile phones cause cancer? | Politics | guardian.co.uk

Après Moi, le Déluge - By James Poulos | Foreign Policy

Après Moi, le Déluge - By James Poulos | Foreign Policy

What does 15 years of baby name data tell us about modern Britain?

What does 15 years of baby name data tell us about modern Britain? | News | guardian.co.uk
By Anna Powell-Smith:
"If you are a parent, or soon to be a parent, you may already have discovered the US's Baby Name Voyager. It's a data-visualization classic, a wonderful way to bring 100 years of American baby names to life....So I built a web app called, imaginatively, England & Wales Baby Names. Just like the Voyager, you can look up names for your own children and see naming trends. You can quickly search through the 27,000 names used by parents since 1996, and see the exact number of babies given each name every year since 1996."

Mein Kampf to be re-released with notes countering Hitler's arguments

When I heard that Mein Kampf was to be allowed be published again in Germany (due to the copyright, currently held by the German government, lapsing) while not being exactly cheered by the news, overall thought a necessary evil, since simply banning the book would I believe be the wrong approach (fueling the oxygen of parnoic conspiracy arguments). But it is actually refreshing to read the details behind the story, namely that the Germans are publishing it themselves precisely to counter the inevitable surge in readings once it leaves copyright.

Mein Kampf to be re-released with notes countering Hitler's arguments | World news | guardian.co.uk

"Academics are working on producing an annotated version of the book which will include commentaries on the text that will seek to dissect and rubbish Hitler's arguments. A separate, more simplified version for schools is being produced together with academics from the Munich Institute for Contemporary History, which Bavaria's finance minister, Markus Söder, said was necessary, as more people would be reading it. The expiration of the copyright in three years' time might well lead to more young people reading Mein Kampf," he said, adding that he hoped the school version would help to demystify the book – which lays out the Nazi version of Aryan racial supremacy – and emphasise the "global catastrophe that this dangerous way of thinking led to", he added.
" 

Surely this is overall the best approach with despicable books, don't ban or bury them, but hold them up to the 'market place of ideas' and make the case against them, since it is often the case they achieve more through mystique and fame, than meaning and fact.

BFF?: Cell Phone Study Shows Evolving Lifetime Relationships in Men and Women

he calling patterns of three million cell phone users support a theory that female relationships change with shifting biological priorities, suggesting that women drive the evolutionary fitness of human
BFF?: Cell Phone Study Shows Evolving Lifetime Relationships in Men and Women: Scientific American

Why Booze Makes Some People Belligerent: Scientific American

Some people are friendly drunks, whereas others are hostile, potentially endangering themselves and others. The difference may lie in their ability to foresee the consequences of their actions, according to a recent study in the online Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Why Booze Makes Some People Belligerent: Scientific American
Before playing, the participants completed a survey designed to measure their general concern for the future consequences of their actions
Subjects who expressed little interest in consequences were more likely to administer longer, more intense shocks. In the sober group, they were slightly more aggressive than people who cared about consequences. When drunk, however, their belligerence was off the charts.

Marine Le Pen's success reveals populists' appeal to European voters

The Front National is the big winner in the French elections as 'far right' parties capitalise on immigration and eurozone fears
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/23/marine-le-pen-populist-appeal

• what the assorted leaders and parties have in common is a deep rightwing cultural conservatism suffused with nostalgia for an always better and often imaginary national past – the era before mass immigration, globalisation, Europe, and international finance destroyed, they believe, the old, white, illiberal, homogeneous nation states of Europe.On economics, however, the populists tend to be anything but rightwing. They are further to the left of European social democracy in supporting generous welfare states, early retirement ages, pensions – a strong state munificent in its public spending. 
• Islamophobia has become the new antisemitism for the current generation of rebels, while the age of austerity decided by Europe's leaders as the answer to runaway debt, soaring deficits, and a failing euro supplies fertile ground for the populist campaigners.
• Although they do not achieve their maximalist demands, these campaigns are successful in setting the agendas in national politics and forcing the mainstream parties to accommodate the extremists by meeting them halfway. 

The future internet, no dogs allowed

Online identity: is authenticity or anonymity more important?
Before Facebook and Google became the megaliths of the web, the most famous online adage was, "on the internet, no one knows you're a dog". It seems the days when people were allowed to be dogs is coming to a close
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/19/online-identity-authenticity-anonymity

The argument (and trend) seems to be that real identities enable more people to trust the web, and thus take part in it :
"Allan believes the benefits of authentic identity outweigh the costs. Facebook and other services with an assurance of security and credibility are more inclusive, and open up the web to new audiences who never would have gone online before, he says. "We're optimists. Facebook enables hundreds of millions of people to express themselves online because they didn't have or know how to use the tools they needed." Facebook, he believes, is a stepping stone to the rest of the web."

My personal position is that while it would be good to have consistent identities online (regular use of same psuedonym, or a limited set of psuedonyms, across platforms) there are many reasons why this should not mean real life identity. The biggest reason is perhaps the dangers people would expose themselves to, from the obvious cases of antagonizing a repressive (or even democratic) systems laws to the more widespread risk of 'peer-to-peer' persecution and mob justice. The internet often brings out the worst in both people and state in how they react to perceived violations of norms and values, and revealing one's true identity would expose one to this. Of course it may be argued that if everyone is identifiable then the risk from trolls etc. is also removed, but while this might temper it, and prevent outright illegal persection, it would not prevent plenty of malign and vindictive behaviour. Furthermore it is a fact that the nastiest people are often the most passionate, and hence most likely to go to the effort to bypass any authentication system (something which will always be possible no matter how well implemented).

Furthermore, on a lower level, but still important, there is the problem of interaction with real world relationships - friends, acquaintances, co-workers employers etc. The sharing and linking of the web means anything one says or does can easily be passed on, taking it out of the intended social circle, and out of context. The result would be that, if real identities were necessitated on services such as blogger, one would have the option of either limiting who can hear to a (hopefully) trustworthy small circle of friends, or resort to comments so bland and innane as to be worthless (and even this might not work, since even a fair and balanced statement might anger a racist or bigotted associate).

It is interesting that such a anonymous-but-traceable approach is supported even in the restrictive regimes of China and South Korea:
"An online identity can be as permanent as an offline one: pseudonymous users often identify themselves in different social networks using the same account name. But because their handles aren't based on real names, they can deliberately delineate their identity accordingly, and reassert anonymity if they wish. Psychologists argue that this is valuable for the development of a sense of who one is, who one can be, and how one fits into different contexts. This kind of activity is allowed even in countries where social network account holders are required to register for a service using a national ID, as in South Korea and China; their online public identities are still fabrications. Even with this explicit link with the state, when users are aware that their activities online are traceable, identity play continues."

This would make it seem that in some ways China is more permissive than Google, since although the state might want to know if you're a dog, it will still let you bark around the virtual park if you want; when it comes to Google+ however, no dogs allowed.

The online product, you.

Exploiting Big Data's opportunities will need a delicate balance between the right to knowledge and the right of the individual
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/big-data-privacy-information-currency

• This month, the US chain Walmart bought the startup Social Calendar, one of the most popular calendar apps on Facebook..when a Social Calendar user listed a friend's birthday or details of a holiday to Malaga, she or he probably had no idea the information would end up in the hands of a US supermarket. But now it will be cross-referenced with Walmart's own data, plus any other databases that are available, to generate a compelling profile of individual Social Calendar users and their non-Social Calendar-using friends
• In one recent high-profile example, a Minneapolis man discovered his teenage daughter was pregnant because coupons for baby food and clothing were arriving at his address from the US superstore Target. The girl, who had not registered her pregnancy with the chain, had been identified by a system that looked for pregnancy patterns in her purchase behaviour. 
• last month, police in New York used a photo from Facebook in combination with their own photo files and facial recognition software to arrest a man for attempted murde
• Sceptics like Adler argue that the right to be forgotten is flawed because it ignores how social boundaries are currently being negotiated in the Big Data world. "The ability to delete personal information means that you lose the potential for lessons learned," he said. "If you can step away and erase something someone says that is stupid or hurtful, you lose an element of accountability."
• The weakest link is the technology itself. The Target pregnancy case demonstrates that machines can pick up patterns in ways that may have unexpected consequences for individuals.

The test card: when a girl and a clown ruled the airwaves

Many an impatient early morning hour spent waiting for this to end and the cartoons to start (Penelope pitstop? Yogi bear? Flintstones Scooby Doo? Ah, Hannah Barbera...)
The test card: when a girl and a clown ruled the airwaves | Television & radio | The Guardian

Is 35 really the best age to be?

What's the best age to be? Carefree 16 or a young-enough-to-have-fun but old-enough-to-leave-home 21? Or maybe a wise and stately 65? No – it's 35, according to research by insurer Aviva.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2012/apr/18/is-35-best-age

However,in 2010, research by relationship counselling group Relate suggested 35 was the beginning of the misery years for some, with work and relationship pressures taking their toll on many.

Greece burns, but not its German arms contracts

Definitely it does sound hypocritical for the Germans to be demanding such social austerity in Greece, while at the same time maintaining massive arms contracts.  While of course Greece was profligate and would need help anyway, it needs to be highlighted when countries like German and France are imposing tough conditions, to lend money which will be used to pay bills owed to them! Furthermore it is a valid question as to whether inner core countries have been able to reduce military spending partially due to relying on (poorer) peripheral countries who have to maintain the border. Of course there is some sharing of resources in the EU, but psychologically there is more drive if one is on the perimeter. And of course military spending is often accompanied by corruption, so will always appeal to the government/elite who can profit from it, and in border countries the psychology may again enable them to convince the public to pay for it (and worth noting even some German companies have been fined/settled out of court with regards to corrupt deals with Greece).



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/19/greece-military-spending-debt-crisis?INTCMP=SRCH

Ah, it could be worse - we could be Greece - The Irish Times

Ah, it could be worse - we could be Greece - The Irish Times - Tue, Apr 17, 2012
Fintan O'Toole recognizes the 'could be worse' current mentality to something identified 50 years ago by a German writing about Ireland :"
?When something happens to you in Germany,? Böll noted, ?when you miss a train, break a leg, go bankrupt, we say: It couldn?t have been any worse; whatever happens is always the worst. With the Irish it is almost the opposite: if you break a leg, miss a train, go bankrupt, they say: It could be worse; instead of a leg you might have broken your neck . .
Böll was not engaging in colourful Paddywhackery. He realised that a culture in which people routinely answer the question ?How?s things?? with ?Ah sure, they could be worse? is one that has learned to defend itself against real and persistent pain: ??It could be worse? is one of the most common turns of speech, possibly because only too often things are pretty bad and what?s worse offers the consolation of being relative.?
Even more incisively, he suggested that this habit of mind is not mere passivity. On the contrary, it takes great creativity to sustain it: ?With us [Germans] when something happens our sense of humour and imagination desert us; in Ireland, that is just when they come into play. To persuade someone who has broken his leg, is lying in pain or hobbling around in a plaster cast, that it might have been worse is not only comforting, it is an occupation requiring poetic talents.?

Walled gardens look rosy for Facebook, Apple – and would-be censors

Part 3 of the Guardian's 'battle for the internet' series looks at how the rise of app stores and social networks is making the way we use the net cleaner, easier and far more controllable
Walled gardens look rosy for Facebook, Apple – and would-be censors | Technology | guardian.co.uk

You can choose your friends, but only 150 of them

Interesting talk from TEDxObserver given by Robin Dunbar :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07IpED729k8&list=PL880EAF3F736F99AC&index=6&feature=plpp_video
"Robin, currently director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology of the University of Oxford, is renowned for creating a formula which is now known as 'Dunbar's number' - and that number is 150. This calculates the 'cognitive limit' of the number of people we can hold meaningful friendships with. When it was first formulated it created a fevered debate about the nature of and the differences between, online and real 'friendships'.
Robin will explore the psychology and ethology of romantic love to find out if the brain - and science - can help us explain how and why we fall in love."

In the talk he mentions also that we have circles of levels of friendship, with the average number of close friends being 5, then a next level of about 15, etc. Perhaps not surprisingly being in a romantic relationship costs 2 close friends, due mainly to the lack of time available to devote to such friendships. Indeed time spent is a key factor in how friendships are maintained, though there are it seems gender differences, with women spending more time in verbal communication (average female phone call was something close to an hour) than men (average phone call something like 7 seconds! 'meet you at 10? yip! grand so'). And face to face time, meeting in person or even skype, is the most valuable of all, which indicates that online relationships face major hurdles in being maintained


Also interesing is from this guardian interview with him on the question as to whether Dunbar's number can be increased :
"We're caught in a bind: community sizes were designed for hunter-gatherer- type societies where people weren't living on top of one another. Your 150 were scattered over a wide are, but everybody shared the same 150. This made for a very densely interconnected community, and this means the community polices itself. You don't need lawyers and policemen. If you step out of line, granny will wag her finger at you.
Our problem now is the sheer density of folk – our networks aren't compact. You have clumps of friends scattered around the world who don't know one another: now you don't have an interwoven network. It leads to a less well integrated society. How to re-create that old sense of community in these new circumstances? That's an engineering problem. How do we work around it?"

Since a major issue in the modern world is how to view, shape and even sign up to 'society' then the fact that our brains are evolved for such small social groupingswill have to be taken into account. Perhaps one element of a solution would be to consider 'groups' as 'persons'. So maybe if one viewed 'other commuters' or 'Germany' or 'bankers' as 1 of the 150 individuals one can keep track of, then it would allow the rest of society to be some how kept socially 'in mind' rather than being a blurry 'other'. Of course the main problem with this would be the risk of stereotyping and blanket generalization, but since we have know complex and deep individuals, maybe we can similarly have 'friendship' with complex and complicated groups. Of course this is just a spur of the moment idea, but the point is we need to take our natural dispositions into account if we are to adapt to the modern world.

Militarisation of cyberspace: how the global power struggle moved online

Militarisation of cyberspace: how the global power struggle moved online | Technology | The Guardian
"The remaining cold war superpower, the United States, is slowly squaring up to the emerging behemoth, China, in a sphere in which Beijing has a distinct advantage: cyberspace.
Experts estimate China has as many "cyber jedis" as the US has engineers, and some of them, with backing from the state, have been systematically hacking into and stealing from governments and companies in the west, taking defence secrets, compromising computer systems, and scanning energy and water plants for potential vulnerabilities.
The scale of what has been going on is only now being recognised, and with a discernible sense of panic, the US and the UK are trying to make up lost ground."

US and China engage in cyber war games

"The US and China have been discreetly engaging in "war games" amid rising anger in Washington over the scale and audacity of Beijing-co-ordinated cyber attacks on western governments and big business, the Guardian has learned.
State department and Pentagon officials, along with their Chinese counterparts, were involved in two war games last year that were designed to help prevent a sudden military escalation between the sides if either felt they were being targeted. Another session is planned for May. "
US and China engage in cyber war games | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Guardian Battle for the Internet series

Day 1 of the Guardian series

Sergey Brin on the threat to the Open Internet
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom-threat-google-brin
"He said five years ago he did not believe China or any country could effectively restrict the internet for long, but now says he has been proven wrong. "I thought there was no way to put the genie back in the bottle, but now it seems in certain areas the genie has been put back in the bottle," he said."

In the first part of a series on the struggle to control the internet, Oliver Burkeman finds out why the US is spending millions to help activists communicate:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/commotion-wireless-new-america-foundation

The European Citizen's Initiative

"The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI),  -  Hailed as the first transnational instrument of participatory democracy in world history, it allows members of the public to call for new European laws on issues of their choice, provided they have a million supporting signatures from at least seven member states. But despite its stated aim of bringing the EU closer to its citizens"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/09/eu-citizens-initiative

BUT - while there is obviously a risk that a body such as the EU ends up being ruled by a kind of 'elite' of bureaucrats, I am also slightly sceptical about referendum/petition based politics. On the one hand they do provide help raise ignored issues, and give a voice to a perhaps too often paternalistically ignored public, but on the other they are very prone to populism, and the 'tyranny of the majority'. The problem is, apart from those affecting disenfranchised minorities (which by definition cannot result in such tyranny), often the topics which get people most exercised about, are those which are aimed at the behaviour of others (moral issues, social friction issues), and this is what is most dangerous about populism. And of course there is the risk of manipulation by well funded special interests. So overall while the EU needs more public involvement, I am wary of such initiatives unless properly balanced and controlled.

understanding trolls

Interesting article about a journalist who met an online 'troll' face to face, and realised there was some misunderstanding on both sides...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/12/noel-edmonds-day-i-met-troll

Selling you on facebook

Many popular Facebook apps are obtaining sensitive information about users?and users' friends?so don't be surprised if details about your religious, political and even sexual preferences start popping up in unexpected places.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303302504577327744009046230.html#project%3DGRABBY1204%26articleTabs%3Darticle

Fairytale beginnings to learn about life

The conventions of Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After have led to fairytales being misunderstood as sappy little fables with no bearing on modern life, which need to be either teased or mutilated to please a contemporary audience.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/06/mirror-mirror-not-fairest-them-all
"It is generally accepted that fairytales introduce children to the dark side of life while keeping the horror at a safe distance. Any threat should be fantastical and impossible, and confined to an absorbing and tangentially familiar storyline

As adults we remain affected by the lessons we have learned from fairytales. Rather than using a narrative frame to guide us in our movements, we bend our experiences to fit the storyline – whichever comedy or gothic horror, or romance best suits our needs at the time. Thus, with hindsight, we recast friends, lovers, family as the wicked witch, the true love, the ingénue. A love affair can be beset with disasters, coincidences, chaos and lost slippers, and if it works out it is cast as "meant to be". If it fails, it was clearly a disaster waiting to happen.
Our heroes switch places with our villains with every family feud and unveiled secret. Our successes and our failures become inevitable once they are behind us. The longer we linger, the more complicated Once Upon a Time becomes, until we feel that we've lived several existences and been several characters. Sometimes the people we have been knit nicely together, other times they clunk together uneasily like disparate charms on a bracelet. We parcel our lives up into segments, in which the moment – this very second – is The End."

Top 5 regrets of the dying

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying

1.  I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Plasticine Philosophy

Money will always be necessary. But as a measure of worth, it's extremely limited and highly corrupting as Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists shows
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/06/deborah-orr-aardman-pirates-capitalism

The right remains obsessed with creating wealth, the left with redistributing it (though, obviously, redistribution is and will always remain an important aspect of civilised behaviour). The task of redefining wealth, with a view to diminishing the necessity of money itself, is a task that seems impossible. Yet it's no more impossible than the peacefully redistributive dreams of socialism.
 "Equality of opportunity" is really about maximising people's chances of competing in the jobs market, so that they can earn money to buy things, and thus transform their environment. Socialism is, in this crucial respect, just a sucker-punch feeder-system for capitalism.
What people really need is the ability to adapt to their environment, rather than be fobbed off with the promise that if they work hard, they can escape it. Humans need to start seeing money as the problem, not the solution. It will always be necessary. But as a measure of worth, as Pirate Captain learned, it's extremely limited and highly corrupting. Placing it at the centre of human existence is folly, and always has been.

The neuroscience of Bob Dylan's genius

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/apr/06/neuroscience-bob-dylan-genius-creativity
The constant need for insights has shaped the creative process. In fact, these radical breakthroughs are so valuable that we've invented traditions and rituals that increase the probability of an epiphany, making us more likely to hear those remote associations coming from the right hemisphere. 
And this is why poetic forms are so important. When a poet needs to find a rhyming word with exactly three syllables or an adjective that fits the iambic scheme, he ends up uncovering all sorts of unexpected connections; the difficulty of the task accelerates the insight process.
The story of Like A Rolling Stone is a story of creative insight. It took only a few seconds before a mental block became a work of art.

Climbing Mount Immortality: Death, Cognition and the Making of Civilization

How awareness of our mortality may be a major driver of civilization
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climbing-mount-immortality&print=true
I particularly like the concept of "Terror Management Theory - awareness of one's mortality focuses the mind to create and produce to avoid the terror that comes from confronting the mortality paradox that would otherwise, in the words of the theory's proponents psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski, reduce people to 'twitching blobs of biological protoplasm completely perfused with anxiety and unable to effectively respond to the demands of their immediate surroundings.'"

Polly Toynbee on Tax

The tax and finances of every citizen must be open to public scrutiny
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/09/tax-finances-every-citizen-scrutiny

Michael Sandel: master of life's big questions

Michael Sandel: master of life's big questions | Observer profile | From the Observer | The Observer

Shift in marriage patterns 'has effect on inequality'

Shift in marriage patterns 'has effect on inequality' | Society | The Observer

Religious not necessarily conservative

Religious people are more likely to be leftwing, says thinktank Demos | World news | The Observer
new research suggests they would have been preaching to the converted: people with faith are far more likely to take left-of-centre positions on a range of issues, including immigration and equality.
The research, revealed in a new report by the thinktank Demos, undermines the widely held view that members of religious groups are more likely to have conservative tendencies.

Fried food 'fine for heart' if cooked with olive oil

Eating fried food may not be bad for the heart, as long as you use olive or sunflower oil to make it, experts say.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16691754
They found no heightened risk of heart disease or premature death linked to food that had been cooked in this way. But the investigators stress that their findings, from studying the typical Spanish diet in which these "healthy" oils are found in abundance, do not apply to lard or other cooking oils. 

One thing this made me think about, is that rumour that heating olive oil makes it unhealthy. The root of this seems to be that all oils begin to break down when heated above their smoke point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_oil#Cooking_with_oil) and since olive oil has a lower smoke point than other oils, it is thus probably not suitable for high temperature cooking.

The following table (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point) indicates that if Sunflower/Olive oil is best for frying, then up to ~190 degrees olive oil is ok, and above that semirefined sunflower oil is best.

Corn oil	Unrefined	352°F	178°C
Corn oil	Refined	450°F	232°C

Olive oil	Extra virgin	375°F	191°C
Olive oil	Virgin	391°F	199°C
Olive oil	Pomace	460°F	238°C
Olive oil	Extra light	468°F	242°C

Sunflower oil	Unrefined	225°F	107°C
Sunflower oil	Semirefined	450°F	232°C

Peanut oil	Unrefined	320°F	160°C
Peanut oil	Refined	450°F	232°C

Could our brand loyalty drive up the cost of shopping online?

 One web entrepreneur, Alex Gannett, founder of CampusSplash says that 2012 will be 'the year of behavioural pricing' - a new type of e-commerce, where prices will be tweaked to include what customers are willing to pay. Gannet writes, 'This year will mark the end of static pricing. The use of your tweets, credit score, and web history in e-commerce pricing is frightening?but ultimately unavoidable.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2090645/Could-shops-charge-MORE-products-youve-Liked-Facebook-Twitter.html

Though [erhaps a more reasoned response is at
http://socialmediainfluence.com/2012/01/27/social-commerce-spotlight-will-behavioural-pricing-drive-up-the-cost-of-shopping-online/ 
which points out :  "behavioural pricing has existed (albeit in more simple forms) for hundreds of years: physical stores will alter their prices based on the demographic of its patrons; seasonal items are priced according to demand, and sales and offers are designed to appeal to certain markets. "

So while I think there is a touch of 'scare mongering' in the Daily Mail article (no surprises there) it is a relevant issue, given the information we share to retailers, often unwittingly, online.

The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'

A neuro-imaging study shows that personal values that people refuse to disavow, even when offered cash to do so, are processed differently in the brain than those values that are willingly sold
http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/stories/2012/01/esc_brain_decides_sell_out.html

China's Power Struggle: Is a Dangerous Divide Opening Between Beijing Leaders?

For weeks, China's communist leaders have been embroiled in a bitter power struggle that could jeopardize a carefully planned transition in the national leadership and the course charted by more moderate reformers. Although the state has tried to keep the feuding under wraps, the Internet is awash with rumors -- including those of a possible coup.
China's Power Struggle: Is a Dangerous Divide Opening Between Beijing Leaders? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Study Hints at the Limits of Medical Genomics

"On the steep slope of plummeting DNA sequencing costs rides the suggestion that whole-genome sequencing will soon be a part of the clinical experience for most patients. But researchers have now shown that deciphering the genetic code of most people would alert them to an increased risk for at least one of 24 common diseases, but fail to warn them about other diseases they will ultimately develop. "
Study Hints at the Limits of Medical Genomics - Technology Review

Facebook users may develop poor body image

Facebook users may develop poor body image - Baltimore Sun
The researchers found that because users spend so much time on Facebook, they spend a lot of time analyzing their bodies. 
The researchers found:
+People spend a lot of time on Facebook and in doing so, spend a lot of time analyzing their bodies and the bodies of others.
+Facebook appears to be fueling a “camera ready” mentality among the general public.
+Advances in Facebook technology such as Timeline, are making it easier for people to track body and weight changes.+People are not happy with their bodies and are engaging in dangerous behaviors in connection with those feelings.

A boost for your brain power -

A boost for your brain power - The Irish Times - Tue, Apr 03, 2012

A Tour of the New Geopolitics of Global Warming

Climate change is already shaping conflicts around the world--and not for the better
A Tour of the New Geopolitics of Global Warming: Scientific American
"Some scientists have linked the Arab Spring uprisings to high food prices caused by the failed Russian wheat crop in 2010, a result of an unparalleled heat wave. The predicted effects of climate change are also expected to hit developing nations particularly hard, raising the importance of supporting humanitarian response efforts and infrastructure improvements."

Why do bankers get to decide who pays for the mess Europe is in?

Why do bankers get to decide who pays for the mess Europe is in? | Aditya Chakrabortty | Comment is free | The Guardian

Social media and the post-privacy society

"Whether personal or political, the problem with the very public lives we now all live is essentially the same. People generally arrive at positions through trial, error and experimentation. They mature by making mistakes and learning from them. But if you feel the mic is always on, you're far more likely to do something anodyne for the record than think of something creative and take risks for all to see. The power to transmit amplifies not just the audience, but the consequences." 
Social media and the post-privacy society | Gary Younge | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Charlie Brooker, on babies (and in a good mood!)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/01/can-say-i-get-babies

the lotteries in life

Always think articles on statistics and chances worth reading - since we all seem to have a mental blindspot when it comes to probability
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/30/how-mega-millions-is-like-shark-attack

Though of course some odds aren't easily compared; even if chance of a shark attack for the global population is 250m to 1, the odds must be significantly lower for people inland who never enter the water! But still, does make the important point that we (a) are terrible at judging odds in the first place and (b) allow 'ease of visualization' (influenced by media reports) to distort our judgement even more.

AI evolution

" The AI community is beginning to question whether we should be so obsessed with recreating human intelligence. That intelligence is a product of millions of years of evolution and it is possible that it is something that will be very difficult to reverse engineer without going through a similar process. The emphasis is now shifting towards creating intelligence that is unique to the machine, intelligence that ultimately can be harnessed to amplify our very own unique intelligence."
AI robot: how machine intelligence is evolving | Technology | The Observer