Links for March 29th
On 29 March 02011 with 6 comments
- BBC News: Jordan battles to regain ‘priceless’ Christian relics
Seventy ancient books, made out of lead, have been found in a Jordanian cave. The text is in encoded Hebrew, little of which has been translated. Scholars are debating whether they are of Jewish origin or—far more tantalizingly—very early Christian origin. - Village Voice: Women’s Funding Network Sex Trafficking Study Is Junk Science
I'd read about the exploding rates of forced juvenile prostitution, and like most people, was shocked. It turns out that those numbers are a total fiction, ginned up by an advocacy group in an effort to get more funding. Good for the Village Voice for asking the questions that dozens of other reporters failed to ask. - New York Times: A Stealth Downsizing, as Shoppers Pay More for Less Food
The U.S. isn't immune from global food price increases. Manufacturers of packaged foods are shrinking quantities while changing the packaging to disguise the increased per-unit cost. - Wikipedia: Cessna 172
The record for longest manned flight was set in 1959, when two guys flew a Cessna 172 for 64 consecutive days without landing, to raise money for a cancer fund. They'd fly close to the ground to hoist up food and water in a bucket, matching their speed with a car driving below. The same method worked to refuel, only using a hose instead of a bucket. They only stopped because the engine simply couldn't run for that many hours without an overhaul, and it lost power.
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