News From Respected Sources

• US-Israel row highlights quandary over settlements (AP) 2010/03/10
  AP - An open diplomatic row during the visit of Vice President Joe Biden has shined a spotlight on the U.S. failure to rein in Israeli settlement ambitions and deepened Palestinian suspicions that the United States is too weak to broker a deal. […]
  (author unknown)
• The Decade's Ten Most Expensive Transit Projects 2010/03/10
  The Infrastructurist on-line magazine ("America under construction") has put together a revealing list of the decades 10 biggest transit projects in North America. It's worth browsing through the slide show, and includes debacles such as San Juan Puerto Rico's rapid transit line (and the Los Angeles Red Line subway) as well as successess […]
  sam.staley@reason.org (Samuel Staley)
• Arab League chief says Mideast talks off (Reuters) 2010/03/10
  Reuters - Arab League chief Amr Moussa said on Wednesday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him he would not enter indirect talks with Israel, only days after the Palestinian side had agreed to the contacts. […]
  (author unknown)
• Arab League chief says Mideast talks off (Reuters) 2010/03/10
  Reuters - Arab League chief Amr Moussa said on Wednesday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him he would not enter indirect talks with Israel. […]
  (author unknown)
• Revised Supreme Court Rules 2010/03/10
  Effective February 16, 2010, the Court adopted revised Rules of the Supreme Court.  A complete copy of the updated rules can be found here.   The revisions, which are summarized in this memorandum from the Court,  include: - A reduction in the number of words allowed for a merits reply brief — from 7500 to 6000. - Changes to Rules 26 and 34.1 clarify what is […]
  Adam Schlossman
• First whole genome sequencing of family of 4 reveals new genetic power 2010/03/10
  The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) has analyzed the first whole genome sequences of a human family of four. The findings of a project funded through a partnership between ISB and the University of Luxembourg was published online today by Science on its Science Express website. It demonstrates the benefit of sequencing entire families, including lowering […]
  (author unknown)
• Gastric bypass surgery increases risk of kidney stones 2010/03/10
  Patients who undergo gastric bypass surgery experience changes in their urine composition that increase their risk of developing kidney stones, research from UT Southwestern Medical Center investigators suggests. read more […]
  (author unknown)
• Game on? Video-game ownership may interfere with young boys' academic functioning 2010/03/10
  Parents of young boys may want to encourage moderation when it comes to their kids' video game habits. According to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, owning a video-game system may hamper academic development in some children. read more […]
  (author unknown)
• Conquering the chaos in modern, multiprocessor computers 2010/03/10
  Computers should not play dice. That, to paraphrase Einstein, is the feeling of a University of Washington computer scientist with a simple manifesto: If you enter the same computer command, you should get back the same result. Unfortunately, that is far from the case with many of today's machines. Beneath their smooth exteriors, modern computers behave […]
  (author unknown)
• More on the Mythology of Disaster 2010/03/10
  Awhile back we had a guest post from Lisa Grow Sun (BYU) on the various myths surrounding disasters and the challenges that they pose for policy makers who are grappling with events such as we’re seeing in Haiti and Chile.  For those who are interested, Lisa has now put her most recent paper on the topic up on SSRN.  Here’s the abstract This Article consider […]
  Nate Oman
• Thoughts about choosing a law school, pt. 3 2010/03/10
  Legal writing programs get staffed in 3 meaningfully different ways.  One model relies primarily on part-time instructors (generally adjunct teachers or graduate student fellows) supervised by a director of the program who is sometimes, but not always, a full-time specialist in legal writing.  A second model uses a director (sometimes, but not always, a full […]
  Alfred Yen
• Students' perceptions of Earth's age influence acceptance of human evolution, says U of Minn. study 2010/03/10
  High school and college students who understand the geological age of the Earth (4.5 billion years) are much more likely to understand and accept human evolution, according to a University of Minnesota study published in the March issue of the journal Evolution. read more […]
  (author unknown)
• Gun Control After McDonald 2010/03/10
  By David RittgersI recently appeared on the Patt Morrison Show in southern California opposite Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in a segment that begs the question of what gun control laws will look like if the Supreme Court incorporates the Second Amendment with the McDonald v. Chicago case. The audio of the program is here, but the […]
  David Rittgers
• Hate Register? 2010/03/10
  By Jason KuznickiIn my policy analysis “Attack of the Utility Monsters,” I wrote that one problem with hate speech laws is that the longer they stay on the books, the more they can encourage outrage over increasingly petty offenses. Here’s a story from the United Kingdom I’d certainly have included if I were writing that paper today: A ten-year-old boy from […]
  Jason Kuznicki
• Mysterious cosmic 'dark flow' tracked deeper into universe 2010/03/10
  Distant galaxy clusters mysteriously stream at a million miles per hour along a path roughly centered on the southern constellations Centaurus and Hydra. A new study led by Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., tracks this collective motion -- dubbed the "dark flow" -- to twice the distance originally re […]
  (author unknown)