Informative Links

The Curse of Reality TV. Playboy looks at the morbidity of regular folks who jump at the chance of instant stardom.

Mankiw’s Ten Principles of Economics, Translated.

Six years later, a Katrina survivor talks about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her experience led her to a project involving veterans and their experiences. (via Boing Boing)

An astrophysicist at Fermilab developed a method of sending passengers to board a plane that proves to be twice as efficient as the current boarding method used by airlines. It’s even somewhat faster than a boarding randomly.

Get a taste of films coming out the rest of this year (and some from next year) by peeking at the posters. Not all of them are representative of the film’s promise.

A small liberal arts school asks students about their sexuality on the application form. They say they are fostering diversity, but are they putting young people in a tough spot instead?

When the American West was settled, railroads and farmers put up barbed wire fences, and ranchers tore them down. Manufacturers were making lots of money selling their own unique designs of barbed wire, which are now proving to be rare treasures for collectors.

Einstein had more than his share of brain glue, also known as glial cells. The number of glial cells you have depends on how much you use your brain while you are young.

The birth rate in Brazil has dropped to historically low levels over the past 50 years. National Geographic lays out six reasons for the relatively sudden empowerment of Brazilian women, one of which is television.

Use this handy chart to find out How Old is Your Globe? And then you can go to Metafilter for the jokes about who has the oldest globe.

New York Times photojournalist Joao Silva was in Afghanistan when a land mine blew his legs off last year. He talks about that day, plus his recovery and the important of war journalism, in a transcript of a recent speech. (via The Daily What)

6 strange ways to power your cellphone. Green innovations will make sure we can play Angry Birds even after the apocalypse.