Sunday Papers #2

Sundays are for walking around Bhaktapur with Anil Chitrakar (more on that in the near future) then returning home, exhausted, to drink tea and read some interesting stuff that was put up on the internet this week...

• It is a rare day when Meghan McArdle and Paul Krugman agree about something. NJ Governor Chris Christie seems to have made an extraordinarily bad policy decision in pulling out of the new Hudson rail tunnel project. In related news, now would be a really good time to repair US infrastructure...
• Bill Galston and Maya MacGuineas have proposed a deficit reduction plan for the US that actually makes sense. The Tax Policy Center's blog has an excellent recap of the Galston/MacGuineas plan. It is refreshing to see a plan that acknowledges that both spending cuts and tax increases are going to be necessary...
• More evidence that the disproportionately expensive US health care system is broken: American life expectancy continues to lag behind other countries that spend less than us. And no, it's not just because Americans are fat.
• Philip Howard, who gave one of my favorite TED talks, has come out with a political manifesto.
• Noah Silver wraps up his really excellent series on the role of statistics in predicting election outcomes. Parts one, two, and three are also great.
• As we rapidly approach the point where carbon reductions will come too late to prevent global warming, some people are beginning to think about the possibility of geoengineering...
• As always, the Big Picture's photo essay on the most recent environmental disaster in Hungary is excellent. For those who are unfamiliar with the Big Picture, they're one of the best photo journalism blogs on the internet. They were covering this particular story long before the major new sources picked it up.
• Finally! Some good news for bees! Personally, I think that's just the bee's knees (I'm sorry, I couldn't resist...)
• Will financial incentives be (bee? OK, I'll stop) enough to create a chess grandmaster? I'm skeptical but it will be interesting to watch...
• Scientists find a scientific basis for the parting of the red sea. Cool stuff.
• And those scientists just keep on trucking...now they're making spider silk from silkworms. The article is from Wired and their headline includes a phrase that deserves to be in the news more often: MUTANT WORMS! Straight out of an old sci-fi magazine...
• And to wrap it all up, Steve Burns of Blues Clues fame tells the funny yet also sad story of his date with a Playboy model.