More pebbles: items I (wanted to but) didn't get to

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Boing boing spots Virgin Mary in MRI

Bird flu round-up, from Great Beyond touches a few stories reporting some unsettling human deaths from bird flu. I think people are scared to cover bird flu these days: There was so much about it 2-3 years ago, then the epidemic didn't come (we're so impatient!), and now a lot of journalists feel they were out shouting wolf. Maybe wolf is still out there.

Jonah Lehrer on Governor "Show Me the Money" Blagojevich, greed, and a version of the ultimatum game called -- I love this -- the dictator game. "When the dictator cannot see the responder - they are isolated - the dictator begins acting with the kind of unfettered greed expected by economists." (Special bonus: Andrew Sullivan's Quote of the Day is also about Blagojevich.)

Daniel Carlat on "It's not about Goodwin. It's about disclosure."

The Extensible Obama: How the POTUS-elect will use web tools to power his next presidency. From MIT's Technology Review.

More like this

I can't help but feel gleeful at this morning's news.   Back in January I had landed, I thought, a postdoctoral position at the Illinois Natural History Survey
Martin Cothran, the perpetually benighted Disco. Inst. blogger, considers the tussle over Blagojevich's Senate appointment and sees it as a fight, The Democrats vs. the states:
The pathetic behavior of the Illinois governor - his brazen attempt to sell a Senate seat - raises the larger question of power and corruption, and whether having a position of power reliably leads to unethical behavior.