Interesting reading…

New College MPG Challenge Comes with $1 Million Purse - “Where will you be from August 14th - August 23rd? For my part, I’ll be doing my best to represent my college at the Great Race MPG Challenge, driving from New York to San Francisco on as little fuel as possible. Why would I be doing this? Because this year, to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1908 Great Race, the organizers of Hybrid Fest will be running a competition to see if any college teams can break 100 MPG in a cross country race…”

Kernel space: How to use a terabyte of RAM - “We have not yet reached a point where systems - even high-end boxes - come with a terabyte of installed memory. But products like those from Violin Memory make it clear that the day is coming; one can buy a Violin box with 500GB in it now. So it seems worth asking the question: once one has spent the not inconsiderable sum to buy a box like that, what does one do with all that memory - especially now that the Firefox developers have gotten serious about fixing memory leaks? Perhaps it’s time for some wild ideas.”

The 10 Most Disruptive Technology Combinations - “Often, even great new technology needs a partner to really change the world. Here are 10 marriages of technologies that have shaken the digital world over the last 25 years…”

‘Vanishing’ colour gives schoolgirls chance to beat ban on nail varnish - “A nail varnish that “vanishes” has been developed by a group of school pupils - offering girls the chance to beat bans on makeup. The nail colour is a vivid red outdoors - but inside it transforms to a much paler shade which can hardly be seen…”

Researchers identify language feature unique to human brain - “Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have identified a language feature unique to the human brain that is shedding light on how human language evolved. The study marks the first use of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), a non-invasive imaging technique, to compare human brain structures to those of chimpanzees, our closest living relative. The study will be published in the online version of Nature Neuroscience…”

“Power Shift” -How to Boost Your Memory - “A recent study suggests that merely glancing from left to right (the traditional “shifty look” of spies and sneaks) can boost memory power and help people differentiate between real and imagined memories. Moving the eyes up and down had no such effect. The trick may work because the specific left/right eye movement engages both the left and right hemispheres of the brain at the same time. As little as 30 seconds of the activity could be enough to help you remember where you left your wallet, or the number sequence needed to deactivate that bomb…”

The big picture - “Rivers of dead fish, 100-acre rubbish dumps, smog-filled skies - are these the world’s worst environmental black spots?”

Looks Like Jello, Works Like Cartilage - ” It may not look like much, but a slippery, Jello-like material developed by scientists in the United States and Japan could soon be improving everything from artificial joints to contact lenses…”

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe Presents our Top 20 Logical Fallacies - “What is a logical fallacy? All arguments have the same basic structure: A therefore B. They begin with one or more premises (A), which is a fact or assumption upon which the argument is based. They then apply a logical principle (therefore) to arrive at a conclusion (B). An example of a logical principle is that of equivalence. For example, if you begin with the premises that A=B and B=C, you can apply the logical principle of equivalence to conclude that A=C. A logical fallacy is a false or incorrect logical principle. An argument that is based upon a logical fallacy is therefore not valid…”

Lost in MySpace: How a generation of children are being raised online, spending 20 hours a week on the internet - “A generation of children are effectively being “raised online”, spending most of their free time on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, a report warns today. It says that many under-16s spend more than 20 hours a week glued to the internet, three times higher than official estimates…”

First look at Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” beta - “Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” has just entered the beta phase of development - and that means another 650+MB download and some good hands-on time with my favorite Linux distro!”

Taming the Beast - “We’re now in the midst of an epic financial crisis, which ought to be at the center of the election debate. But it isn’t. Now, I don’t expect presidential campaigns to have all the answers to our current crisis — even financial experts are scrambling to keep up with events. But I do think we’re entitled to more answers, and in particular a clearer commitment to financial reform, than we’re getting so far…”

Why is Bear Stearns Trading at $6 Instead of $2? - “I’ll cut straight to the chase. Bear Stearns is trading at $6 instead of $2 because unelected bureaucrats went beyond their legal mandates, delivered a windfall to a single private company at public expense, entered agreements that violate the the public trust, and created a situation where even if the bureaucratic malfeasance stands, the shareholders of Bear Stearns will either reject the deal or be deprived of their right to determine the fate of the company they own. Very simply, Bear Stearns is still in play. Still, when all is said and done, my own impression is that the ultimate value of the stock will not be $2, but exactly zero…”

Evidence mounting: Windows 7 going modular, subscription - “When Windows 7 launches sometime after the start of 2010, the desktop OS will be Microsoft’s most “modular” yet. Having never really been comfortable with the idea of a single, monolithic desktop OS offering, Microsoft has offered multiple desktop OSes in the marketplace ever since the days of Windows NT 3.1, with completely different code bases until they were unified in Windows 2000. Unification isn’t necessarily a good thing, however; Windows Vista is a sprawling, complex OS…”

Thinking Blu-ray? Don’t rush - “You may be itching to buy a Blu-ray DVD player now that the format has won the high-definition disc standard war. But you may want to hold off a bit before scratching that itch. By waiting a few months, you may save yourself some irritation - and a few bucks to boot…”

[See previous IR]