share interesting articles I come across

America’s Greediest: The 2009 Top Ten

Has picking a year’s greediest “top ten” ever been easier? We don’t think so. We could, this year, fill an entire top ten just with bankers from Goldman Sachs — or JPMorgan Chase or any of a number of other Wall Street giants. All sport executive suites packed with power suits who fanned the flames that melted down the global economy, then helped themselves, after gobbling down billions in bailouts, to paydays worth mega millions — at a time when, in over half our states, over a quarter of America’s kids are living off food stamps. ...

So you’re eating lunch? Fascinating

Twitter? Inspirational? No – it’s inspiration’s opposite. The online phenomenon is about humanity disappearing up its own fundament, or the air leaking out of the whole Enlightenment project. In short, I feel about Twitter the way some people feel about nuclear weapons: it’s wrong. It makes blogging look like literature. It’s anti-literature, the new opium of the masses.

Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.

The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis. The stakes could hardly be higher. In today’s economy, the fate of a long-established company can hang on the outcome of a handful of tests.

Why are inert pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines alike?

Unflattering, uncomfy and unaffordable – why do we still love jeans?

All the fashion lies women have been sold over the years, the idea that jeans suit everyone is the cruellest.

Stiff, hipster-cut denim trousers are flattering only to a small minority of women, most of whom are under 30 and under-nourished.

Chemical in sperm ‘may slow ageing process’

A new study by scientists at Graz University found that spermidine, a compound that is found in sperm, slows ageing processes and increases longevity in yeast, flies, worms and mice, as well as human blood cells, by protecting cells from damage.

Brigitte, Germany’s most popular women’s mag, bans professional models

In what is seen as the latest attempt to stamp out the “size zero” model, the editors of Brigitte said it would in future only use women with “normal figures”.

“From 2010 we will not work with professional models any more,” said Andreas Lebert, editor-in-chief, adding that he was “fed up” with having to retouch pictures of underweight models who bore no resemblance to ordinary women.

No thanks for the memory: Why the net won’t let you forget

Google knows for each one of us what we searched for and when, and which search results we found promising enough to click on them. Google knows about the big changes in our lives – that you shopped for a house in 2000 after your wedding, had a health scare in 2003, and a new baby the year later. But Google also knows minute details about us: details we have long forgotten, discarded from our mind as irrelevant, but which nevertheless shed light on our past: perhaps that we once searched for an employment attorney when we considered legal action against a former employer, researched a mental health issue, looked for a steamy novel, or booked ourselves into a secluded motel room to meet a date while still in another relationship. Each of these information bits we have put out of our mind, but chances are Google hasn’t. Google knows more about us than we can remember ourselves.

Project ‘Gaydar’

The applications run the gamut, from predicting who might be a terrorist to the likelihood a person is happy or fat. The idea of making assumptions about people by looking at their relationships is not new, but the sudden availability of information online means the field’s powerful tools can now be applied to just about anyone.

The world’s sexiest dance can also heal troubled relationships

Tango may have its roots in the brothels of Argentina, but a wave of respectable research is highlighting its ability to heal relationships and create a heady glow of wellbeing. A study published last month, by Cynthia Quiroga Murcia, a psychologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, reveals how the dance boosts men and women’s sex hormones and emotions. ...

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Pigeon beats Telkom

Winston, a homing pigeon, has made history by beating a Telkom ADSL line in delivering 4GB of data from Howick to Hillcrest, outside Durban in just 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds, whereas the ADSL download was “still just under four percent complete” at 11:45.