Links for 2010-09-10

A great discussion of the modern NFL, including a couple of former players.

"This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. More to the point, it has opened my eyes to some fascinating complexities in what seemed to be a black and white case.

In the Guardian in 2002 I discussed the sharp rise in the number of the world's livestock, and the connection between their consumption of grain and human malnutrition. After reviewing the figures, I concluded that veganism "is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world's most urgent social justice issue". I still believe that the diversion of ever wider tracts of arable land from feeding people to feeding livestock is iniquitous and grotesque. So does the book I'm about to discuss. I no longer believe that the only ethical response is to stop eating meat."

"The internet being what it is, even a post as marginally belated as this one feels a little redundant. Still, it would feel stranger not to set down my thoughts on this year's winners at all, if only because I can't agree with Cory Doctorow that these are "some of the best results in recent memory"; they seem to me, as usual, a mixed bag, and perhaps more than usual an inconsistent bag."

"After running the model with 1000 scientists over 500 time-steps, Thurner and Hanel find that even a small presence of rational or random referees can significantly reduce the quality of published papers. When just 10% of referees do not behave "correctly" the quality of accepted papers drops by one standard deviation. If the fractions of rational, random and correct referees are about 1/3 each, the quality selection aspect of peer review practically vanished altogether."

A long and detailed discussion of the physics of climate.