Informative Links

The pharmaceutical industry has developed thousands of medicines that have saved millions of lives, but it has also used its marketing muscle to successfully peddle expensive pills that are no more effective than older drugs sold at a fraction of the cost.

The deaths of Cameron Todd Willingham’s children seemed like an open-and-shut case of murder by arson. Until just before his execution date, and by then it was too late.

How often does someone who draws super heroes get to become one himself? Comic strip artist Chris Weston suddenly saw the chance to use his skills to fight crime. Really. (via Metafilter)

Group Polarization: The Trend to Extreme Decisions. Rather than compromising, those who work in groups tend to exaggerate their preferences until they win something further than they really wanted.

Roxy Freeman never went to school until she was 22 and decided to go to college. She found the lifestyle that went with her studies to quite a challenge, and very different from the Gypsy life in which she was raised.

Nature’s Exotic Athletes: 12 Strange Animal Sports. http://webecoist.com/2009/09/04/natures-exotic-athletes-12-strange-animal-sports/ No donkey basketball; these are activities creatures perform in the natural world.

Where Did All the Flowers Come From? Figuring out the evolution of flowers may be a matter of analyzing how the DNA of modern flowers works.

The 33 Most Deadly Substances On Earth. Most of them provided free of charge by Mother Nature.