Most Interesting Thing I Read Today: Choreographing the Dance of the Vampires
The Most Educational Thing I Read Today: The Chinese Builders Behind Africa’s Construction Boom
Truth. The Great American Eye-Exam Scam
I am not sure such a small study tells you much anything useful but it sure is interesting anyway. Gut bacteria partly determine whether exercise improves the health of men with pre-diabetes. Another take on the same study. Gut microbes may predict whether exercising will prevent diabetes
One thing you would never know from reading this is that access to healthcare has never been shown to have much effect on life span except for perhaps towards the end of life. But that is still the first thing they think of when they see young people dying. Our workforce is dying faster than any other wealthy country, study shows
I don’t think fries are really the thing to worry about. America braces for possible french fry shortage after poor potato harvest
The story of American in general: The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course
Proof they don’t actually fear Trump: Why the Hell Did Democrats Just Extend the Patriot Act?
We don’t actually care about military might anymore: Lack of Right to Repair Limits Ability of US Military to Maintain its Own Equipment
Just in case you missed it: Israel carries out ‘wide-scale strikes’ on Iranian forces in Syria
I know there is two sides to this story and only one of them is told. But still…..The Quiet Rooms
I think there are more solutions to this problem then most people allow for. But it is still an interesting issue. Creating buildings to house all those people, along with the roads to knit them together, requires prodigious quantities of sand. In India, the amount of construction sand used annually has more than tripled since 2000, and is still rising fast. China alone has likely used more sand this decade than the United States did in the entire 20th Century. There is so much demand for certain types of construction sand that Dubai, which sits on the edge of an enormous desert, imports sand from Australia. That’s right: exporters in Australia are literally selling sand to Arabs.
When two people drive towards each other at full speed hoping the other person swerves it is called a game of chicken. Iran and Israel renegotiate ‘rules of the game’ in Syria shadow war
A very interesting post on the dangers of doing business in China. You must be very careful in negotiating lower prices from your Chinese factory because just asking for lower prices could cause your company some very serious blowback.
A useful complement to the Educated Deb Posts on japan if anyone has the time to read it. “Japan Raid by U.S. Is Out of Question”
This has been the story for a long time now. At some point it is going to end, but accurately predicting that end has made a fool out of a lot of people. How Best to Describe the U.S. External Balance Sheet
The most interesting story of the day. The Woman Who Can Smell Parkinson’s
Coming soon to a country near you? Foreigners visiting China are increasingly stumped by its cashless society
Just in case you are not keeping up. Impeachment: the allegations against US President Donald Trump
I don’t know about mind boggling, but it is interesting: The first map of America’s food supply chain is mind-boggling
Related to the above: Six of the nine core counties for America’s food supply are burning
Hard evidence of the scale of China’s swine flu problems: China’s pork imports are already set to surpass previous records this year, reaching between 3.1 million and 3.3 million tonnes including offal, the bank said in a report, up from 2.1 million tonnes last year.
Your daily reminder that there is so much that we are told as fact is actually wrong: “The olfactory bulb, a structure at the very front of the brain, plays a vital role in our ability to smell. Or, at least, so we thought. A research team has now discovered a handful of women who have a perfectly normal sense of smell but who seem to lack olfactory bulbs – completely altering our long-held views about smell.“