Here's a pretty cool idea about leaves and mine detection.
It looks like more and more Americans are outsourcing medical care to Thailand. Key quote: [You should] hope they learned more medicine than English grammar. Nonetheless the doctors are promoted: "Asians often seem to do well in high tech academics... not that well in football, but often very well in the class room / laboratory... pretty good in baseball & gymnastics.."
I sometimes tease Canada/Canadians in a good-natured way, but maybe they are that dumb. If Triumph thinks so, it's gotta be true.
I just finished reading The Vision of the Anointed, by Thomas Sowell. While definitely oriented more towards the conservative viewpoint, you don't have to agree with the man to learn a lot from reading him. He often goes to lengths to not take a strong position, sometimes not even a position at all, on issues but rather he points out the way certain people argue their side. Basically he shows how often times people will take on an air of moral superiority regarding intentions and a priori beliefs and refuse to consider other possibilities such as that the other side doesn't have bad intentions or a lack of brainpower, but has legitimate disagreements as to what are the best methods of achieving goals. Yes, there are racists, but opposing affirmative action isn't proof that you are one. Yes, we want to make flying safer, but not all ways of doing so are advisable. To put the book into a nutshell (which is too small a place for it), always remember there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. We can probably fix this one area, but it will have an effect on other situations too. Maybe the costs are worth it, but remember that they do exist, and no one can see everything. Ok, that was kind of a large nutshell, but it still doesn't come close to not making this a good book for you to read.