Reasoned Consideration

Hmm, which seems more likely - Apple's decision to disallow multi-level folder hierarchies for their new integrated cloud service*: (A) constitutes some sort of visionary forward-thinking insight into how the human brain processes information , or (B) is because difficulties inherent in implementing automatic change-tracking and conflict resolution across arbitrary folder hierarchies on that scale (and for a user base with many non-technically-literate users) might otherwise have become an implementation and user/support nightmare, and they probably just didn't have enough time to get a solid working implementation ready for "version 1". ("You want it to do what by when !?") I'm guessing it'll eventually be added in a subsequent version. * It's not actually a "new filesystem".

I like fossil fuels as much as the next guy, but: http://planetsave.com/2011/12/10/newest-epa-report-confirms-fracking-fluids-contaminating-pavillion-wyoming-water-supply/ ... the Environmental Protection Agency published a 120 page report today concluding that the process known as ‘fracking’ does indeed cause contamination of water supply ... In an initial sampling in 2008, EPA scientists found traces of hydrocarbons and other contaminants associated with frcking fluids. A second analysis in 2010 by federal health officials and the EPA confirmed these results, and residents were urged not to drink their water and to ventilate their homes while showering to prevent explosions from released methane gas. ... "The evidence keeps on coming in The government findings are sure to ignite more debate amongst Congress, but they are part of a mounting body of evidence that fracking is a source of chemical contamination for local water supplies. A previous study of fracking wel...

http://ideasillustrated.com/blog/2012/04/01/visualizing-english-word-origins/

(For the benefit of foreign readers: "Ek is tog 'n Bloubul" means to be a supporter of the 'Blue Bulls', a local provincial rugby team.)

The language selector from hell

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/16/escape-north-korea-prison-camp His first memory is an execution. He walked with his mother to a wheat field, where guards had rounded up several thousand prisoners. The boy crawled between legs to the front row, where he saw guards tying a man  to a wooden pole. Shin In Geun was four years old, too young to understand the speech that came before that killing. At dozens of executions in years to come, he would listen to a guard telling the crowd that the prisoner about to die had been offered "redemption" through hard labour, but had rejected the generosity of the North Korean government. Guards stuffed pebbles into the prisoner's mouth, covered his head with a hood and shot him. In Camp 14, a prison for the political enemies of North Korea, assemblies of more than two inmates were forbidden, except for executions. Everyone had to attend them. The South Korean government estimates there are about 154,000 prisoners in North Kore...

Some studies on home schooling suggest some of the common criticisms aren't borne out by the facts: "A significant difference was found between GPAs, TASP reading, and TASP math scores of home schooled students and non-home schooled students. Home schooled student performed significantly better than non-home schooled students regardless of part-time or full-time status or age at the time of admissions" [1] "In 1997, a study of 5,402 homeschool students from 1,657 families ... demonstrated that homeschoolers, on the average, out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects. A significant finding when analyzing the data for 8th graders was the evidence that homeschoolers who are homeschooled two or more years score substantially higher than students who have been homeschooled one year or less. The new homeschoolers were scoring on the average in the 59th percentile compared to students homeschooled the last two ...

Why the latest study purporting a causal link between red meat and increased mortality is Bad Science (TM) ... http://garytaubes.com/2012/03/science-pseudoscience-nutritional-epidemiology-and-meat/ and http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2012/03/red-meat-mortality-the-usual-bad-science/ Bottom line, eating meat is still good for you.

This might be a stupid question, but any good reason the C++ compiler can't/shouldn't automatically treat "hello" as e.g. L"hello" when the type is explicitly clear from the context? E.g.: const wchar_t* message[2] = { "hello", "world" };