The Rainmaker?

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NYTimes:

Though not exactly ordinary, Ms. Ryan’s story is familiar around here. Campus veterans marvel at all the poolside apartments that have sprung up since Georgia popped the income cap off its merit awards. Professors are testing their hypothesis that instead of increasing college enrollment, the state’s $1.7 billion scholarship program has been a blessing for the automobile industry — since so many families roll the savings into buying new cars.

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Thomas Friedman in the NYT: countries that are globalizing sensibly but steadily are also the ones that are becoming politically more open, with more opportunities for their people, and with a young generation more interested in joining the world system than blowing it up.

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Dean Ornish in the NYTimes:

So the diagnosis is correct: we are eating too many simple carbohydrates. But the cure is wrong. The solution is not to go from simple carbohydrates to pork rinds and bacon, but from simple carbohydrates to whole foods with complex carbohydrates like whole wheat, brown rice, and fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes in their natural forms.

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BBC: Humans have anti-HIV gene.

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As someone who is perpetually 8-16 pounds overweight, and doesn’t really do anything about it, I read the NYTimes Big Fat Lie article with great interest. Thankfully, most (non-vegetarian) Indian diets, while carbohydrate-adequate (for the hot climate and the higher metabolic rate), are not fat/protein deficient. And processed flour (”maida” and friends), while more common than it used to be, is still looked at with disapproval by ‘traditional’ wisdom.

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Beyond 2000: Perfect Match. Until now, a donated kidney has been a tragic impossibility for many people with renal disease. But now scientists at the Johns Hopkins University in Maryland have come up with a way for kidneys to be used in transplants regardless of their type.

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BBC: Fake fingerprints trick biometric systems. How long before retinal scans crumble, I wonder?

Update: The good people (person?) at Neuroprosthesis News point out that iris identification may be much more reliable than retinal scans.

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BBC: Hubble’s ‘Pillars of Creation’ are fading. And most people don’t know that the Pillars of Creation look that good only after extensive image processing. Here’s a picture of the same region of space in infrared, taken by the Paranal Observatory at Chile. Doesn’t look quite as exciting now, does it?

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BBC: Life expectancy to soar, centurions to become commonplace. The majority of the world’s work culture and education systems — even corporate hiring procedures — on the other hand, remain mired in the 1900s, when you started a job in your 20s and retired at 60. More flexibility in high school and college programs and an increased awareness of age-ism worldwide (especially in recruiting) would help young and old alike.

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