Owsley Stanley, famed chemist that produced high-grade Acid for rock stars in the 60′s, was not only that: he was also a professional dancer, sound engineer, broadcast engineer, financial backer of the Grateful Dead, co-designer of the iconic Grateful Dead logo, metal- and jewelry-maker, ex-con, and emigrant to Australia. The man died on Sunday in a car accident in Queensland, but the legend lives on. (Complete obituary from the NYT.)
The Guardian reports on a speech Assange gave at Cambridge:
“The internet is the ‘greatest spying machine the world has ever seen’ and is not a technology that necessarily favours the freedom of speech, the WikiLeaks co-founder, Julian Assange, has claimed in a rare public appearance.”
He also mentions the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia and Manning’s arrest by the US government.
Defending Governor Scott Walker’s proposed anti-union reforms, one Time article claims, “The system is set up to allow the unions’ political barons to easily skim big money from dues with very little member involvement.”
Another says that although the protesters lost this battle, they aren’t giving up on the war against Walker: “Their anger will likely also provide momentum for recall petitions.”
And according to reports from BoingBoing.net, it petitions to sack walker are gaining momentum. “In other words, Dems are reporting they are nearly halfway to the finish line, with roughly three-fourths of the alloted time remaining.”
Some good news in a whole pile of bad:
“The massive tsunami destroyed most of the neighborhood in Sendai where Kikushi Kayo and her father live. But somehow their two dogs, Toya and Melody, survived.” (WSJ)
Some real talk from BoingBoing.net about radiation exposure and the risk of developing cancer that humans being who are exposed face. I’m sure there’s more to come, but this short post tells us one thing: a years worth of exposure may only increase your risk by “.5 – 1%”. Not insignificant, but you won’t storm away like a raging Akira either.
Napping before you learn can boost your ability to keep and recall memories. This study found that sleep spindles, or bursts of electrical activity in your brain during NREM (Non-REM) sleep, helped those that napped before their test perform better than those who didn’t nap; better even than those who did nap but did not experience the so-called sleep spindles.
“Walker and his colleagues suspect that the sleep spindles are working to transfer information from the hippocampus, a small area deep in your brain where memories are made, to the prefrontal cortex, which serves as long-term storage. That frees up the hippocampus to make new memories, Walker said.”
This is a hypertext timeline of the revolution that overthrew Mubarak and his government in Egypt. It begins with the protests on January 25th, 2011 and ends with the resignation of former President Hosni Mubarak on February 11th. —read on »
“The better work men do is always under stess and at great personal loss.”
William Carlos Williams
