Links 8/9/11

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Happy Thursday. Links for you. Science: In a Single-Cell Predator, Clues to the Animal Kingdom's Birth Two New Dandelion Species Discovered in Spain Meet Diania the walking cactus, an early cousin of life's great winners Running out of antibiotics -- and other drugs too Other: If any sign hits…
Forbes has an article on billionaires who oppose the stem cell ban (free reg required): the subtitle is "Billionaire cash has kept embryonic stem-cell research alive—just barely," which really says it all. It discusses the extremely generous gifts private donors (and also some state funding by…
Links for you. Science: Scientists Retract Report on Predicting Longevity On idiocy Genome data sharing goes global - how not to let the most selfish publish the sexy bits Annals of Stupidity Update-More on the GOP Hates Science beat Other: The Burger Economy It is the official position of this…
It's midnight! So, the submission form is now closed. Over the past year we have collected hundreds of excellent entries for the anthology - thanks to all who made the submissions. Jennifer Rohn has lined up some star people to judge all the entries, and in the end, we'll have the best 50 (…

The power grid pricing article shows the problems of ideology in attempting to use pricing to control demand. The obvious solution is to offer discounts for high levels of power usage over an extended period, but charge higher prices for high levels of power usage delivered on demand. It's the difference between a first class letter and express post. If you try to run a minute by minute auction, you are just going to get chaos at the post office, even it gibes well with the current economic orthodoxy.

I also seriously doubt that public libraries are obsolete, at least not until electronic technologies start catching up with paper in terms of pricing, lack of DRM, resalabiity, and so on. Books are still surprisingly expensive if you have a serious reading habit or would like to acquire one.