Bagels!

Freakonomics

A retired economist decides to go into the bagel delivery business. He uses the honor system in receiving payment. His findings are rather interesting in regards to people's behavior as to when they do and do not pay.

School of Male Studies

graftonjjh

Joseph doesn't update very often, so I figured it's worth mentioning when he does. It just hit me that he's going to be my roommate next year. It's going to be an interesting senior year.

Lighting the World

Nature

Scientists have created commerically-viable organic LEDs which can illuminate a room. These OLEDs are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs and cheaper to produce than fluorescent lights. Current LEDs have the problem that, other than their limited light producing capabilities, the blue dye in them degrades relatively quickly, causing the light to turn yellow. The new dye being use lasts around 10,000 hours. Compare that to the lifespans of incandescent bulbs, 1,000 hours, and fluorescent lights, 20,000 hours. Actually, I'm rather surprised by the huge disparity in lifespan between incandescents and fluorescents. I never thought it was that much.

An Indepth Look into Imbreeding

One thing that I have found interesting about the Swedish Royal Family is that the Royal House of Bernadotte is actually French. This left me wondering, just how Swedish is the Swedish Royal Family. Using Wikipedia to find lineage going back 10 generations and some rough guesses, I've determined that King Carl XVI is only 0.1% Swedish.

The break down is this:

Swedish	0.1%
Danish	0.1%
Russian	0.2%
French	4.9%
German	94.7%

I was expecting French to be much more prevalent given the history of Sweden, but apparently the fact that Germany didn't unify until the 19th Century left a rather large pool of noble families to marry into. It appears that between 17th and 19th Century Germany's largest export was spouses. Turns out Catherine the Great was a German princess, I had no idea. The Russian blood in the Swedish Royal Family came from Catherine's husband, Peter III. Intriguingly, he's also the source of the Swedish blood in the Swedish Royal Family. He was also deranged.

However, I think the greatest part of this little study was the prevalence of imbreeding. In King Carl's family tree, Queen Victoria (House of Hannover, go figure) shows up twice, Francis Frederick Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld 4 times, Ferdinand Albert II Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg three times, and King George I of Britain (he was German) shows up an astonishing 6 times. King Carl is lucky to have that 4.9% French blood which mostly comes from non-royal, less imbreed families, although some random French lady does show up twice (wife of a German).

Also, King Carl is related to the two previous Swedish Royal Families, one being of German origin, the other through Peter III of Russia mentioned earlier.

Sweden Sues Ryanair!

BBC

The PM of Sweden is suing Ryanair over an unflattering advertisement using his image, reportably without permission. What I find interesting is that the lawsuit is for less than $10,000. Compared to lawsuits in the US, that's tiny.

School of the Americas

The Nation

Here's something I haven't heard about in awhile, the School of the Americas, a program in which Latin America countries send troops to the US for training. There have been a lot of human rights abuses connected to it, so up until the Iraqi War, it was a major target of Human Rights Activists. This article continues with my previous mention of the US's waning authority over Latin America as three countries, Argentina, Uruguay, and Venezuela, have decided to no longer send troops there.

Japanese Game

Music Brothers

Crazy little Japanese flash game. It's pretty easy to figure out. Just remember to hit the space bar for the little blue circles. I managed to get to level 9 once, but I generally lose at the last bar on level 6.

Health Care to the Masses

Boston Globe

It appears that the state of Massachusetts is set to become the first state with full health care coverage. It's not exactly universal care as the cost is only subsidized and only provided for those who can't afford private insurance, but it's a step in that direction.

Leftward March

BBC

An interesting article on the recent leftward turn of many Latin American governments the United States' waning authority. I kind of wish the article went more into why this was happening. Why has the US lost authority? Why are so many countries electing left-wing governments in such a short span of time?

Fermented Herring Banned From Flights

BBC

British Airways and Air France have banned surströmming, a Swedish dish, on their flights for fear they may explode. I figured the smell would be enough.