Economic ignorance is commonplace.
- Ron Paul (Farewell Address: Economic Ignorance)

It is the untraceable web of the billions of voluntary interactions between individuals that make economies work miracles; it is not the result of academically trained men pulling levers and flipping switches on their magic economy controlling machine. When power is conglomerated into third parties and then wielded over others in a non-voluntary manner, market distortions inevitably occur. The bigger the abuse/misuse of power over others, regardless of the nobility of the intention, the more painful the inevitable corrections of the market will be upon everyone, with effects rippling into parts of the web that the tyrant could not predict. One of the most popular maxims in libertarian circles, and one I hold dear personally, is that “good ideas do not require force.” If something is worth doing, an individual with sound reasoning (which unless you are a bigot or elitist should be thought of as an overhwleming majority of people) will investigate the information they deem relevant to the matter and pursue it naturally under their free will.

The laws of economics are so called because, as with a scientific law, they cannot be rewritten by the mass manipulation of prices, wages, interest rates, or currency value. Markets can be gamed over a short term (economic bubbles) but they cannot be reprogrammed. Economics often receives a bad rap because we hand over mass amounts of unearned power to individuals to wield over us, while they test out the latest revisions to their economic theories (these folks having been able to convince the masses that they are able to rewrite or ignore existing laws, or write some new economic laws & loopholes). When the bubbles burst fingers get pointed to political ideologies, foolish speculators, or greedy fat cats. Not once in human history have leaders fessed up and said, “Our bad again, for some bizarre reason this amazingly large and complex organic system will not behave in the manner we desire, regardless of how much power we seize to try and domesticate it, and then run it like an (inherently impossible) perpetual motion machine.” When you domesticate an individual, or group there of, that practice is commonly referred to as slavery. The results of slave labor tend to be inferior to those of voluntary labor, as freedom and happiness go a long way for the quality of life in human beings.

Do not ever say that the desire to “do good” by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.
-Ayn Rand

As we keep slapping band-aids on the inherently broken philosophy of centralized economic guidance, we see the results piling up around us uncomfortably. From news about large food chains implementing unpopular measures to mitigate the costs of Obamacare which will end up punishing consumers and employees (1,2,3), to unionized Twinkie bakers, striking themselves out of a job (an interesting note is that the Unions own a 25% stake in the company, it’ll be interesting to see how much of the liquidated assets get trickled down to the now out of work creme fillers).

A misinformed sense of labor value achieves what the zombie apocalypse couldn’t. RIP Twinkies

While it’s likely that the iconic Hostess brands will be snapped up (or an “after-the-buzzer” agreement ends up getting made), I find it unlikely the new owners will magically be able to change the demand for the nutritionally passé products in order to give in to the union’s demands. These bakers will either have to face the true value of their labor, actually increase the value of their labor to warrant the wages they desire, or find a new specialization that meets their wage goals. A union consolidates the power of the workers in order to better leverage against unfair employers. Unions also incur a cost upon it’s members to operate, inherently making them middle men. A union is powerless against the forces of the market, and can’t help workers who have bosses that do pay them fair wages. The law of diminishing returns tells us that eventually union dues will exceed their value. Who defines what fair is? Wages, costs, prices are all factors that are determined by millions of individuals, not handfuls. Once you have squeezed an employer for all the profit margin he is willing to give, there comes a point where he will no longer willingly operate his business (or as the Randians say, he will “Go Galt”). Whenever you have to use force to achieve the results you desire, the effects will be both immoral and temporary.

While populist memes and Huffington headlines may demonize entrepreneurs (and the countless more to come) for trying to keep their companies afloat after the government mandated extra labor costs upon them, the laws of economics won’t change. Anyone who has worked in the food service industry knows that the margins are razor thin, and any restaurant that wishes to exist long term needs to minimize overhead costs. The cost of food inputs can’t be controlled, but the costs of labor and what you charge can be. When you force costs upon one individual in a vast web, who ultimately ends up paying for it?

This short video illustrates wonderfully how economics really functions best: voluntarily.

We’ve known for a long time that organic systems (nature) are complex beyond our ability to comprehend the scope. When we try to meddle with them (regardless how good our intentions are) our inevitable nearsightedness ends up creating more or bigger problems than we were attempting to correct or influence. It astonishes me how arrogant the human ego is, automatically disconnecting ourselves from the rules we observe in nature while assuming the responsibility of a god with the misguided authority to force our influence upon it. Despite ever more evidence every day that nature does an amazing job of correcting imbalances and adapting to changes without any assistance by primates hopped up on self-awareness, our impatience with the recovery or adaptation process ultimately continues a never-ending string of follies.

“The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is always an experience of complex phenomena. No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action. We are never in a position to observe the change in one element only, all other conditions of the event remaining unchanged. Historical experience as an experience of complex phenomena does not provide us with facts in the sense in which the natural sciences employ this term to signify isolated events tested in experiments. The information conveyed by historical experience cannot be used as building material for the construction of theories and the prediction of future events. Every historical experience is open to various interpretations, and is in fact interpreted in different ways.” – Ludwig von Mises

The ability to wield power does not imply one has the ethical or moral authority to use it over others. As a man who has had 98th percentile size his entire life, this was a lesson my father instilled in me from a very early age. He taught me that the most effective way to resolve disagreements and to achieve my goals would be to use my words over the physical advantages I possessed. That is why I wrote this post instead of coming to your house and punching your face until you submitted to my line of thinking. Why do we not hold our leaders to the same standards we raise our children by?

It’s also a well agreed value in our culture that we shouldn’t hand the keys to our car to an intoxicated friend who may likely harm himself and others (involuntary victims). Perhaps it is time we started giving the same scrutiny to the people we blindly hand the keys to our economic well-beings.

The post An Economics Lesson From a Twinkie & a Pencil appeared first on Scott Templeman.

There is a disease that is plaguing this country. It has seeped into every nuance of our society, permeating and infecting our collective culture. That’s right boys and girls, I am referring to horrifying specter that is the unwinnable crusade of political correctness.

It seems like over the past month that the bombs of racism accusations and subsequent dead horse beating have been flying high in the media like a US Predator drone over a remote Middle Eastern village. The racial equality inquisition has been revived since the outrageously covered murder of Trayvon Martin, who was Black, by George Zimmerman, who is Hispanic. I doubt many Latinos would agree that they receive a preferential treatment by police/justice system over African Americans, but others felt that Zimmerman had.

Repetition is key: all we heard for weeks was racism, racism, racism. The dog and pony show went into full effect when the president was pestered into telling us that if he had a son, it would look like the deceased young man. -_- Then there were folks like myself who were wondering if this would be national news if the two parties had been in the exact same scenario but were fortunate enough to share the same ethnicity while maiming each other. Zimmerman then got charged with 2nd degree murder and the story was put on hiatus, but a large, now angry, mob’s bloodlust had yet to be sated. Onwards the crusade went, anything that could help fuel the fires of racial tension was brought forth.

This is what flies for journalism at CNN nowadays, reading the racially charged facebook status of a mentally troubled Cherokee verbatim on the Sunday news. Sure it was posted many months before the incident occurred and wasn’t directly related, but reporting about yet another tragic young man on a cocktail of prescription psychiatric meds shooting up groups of strangers simply isn’t headline news anymore. In what I am sure is unrelated news, CNN posted it’s worst month in April since immediately before 9/11.

But the blogosphere wasn’t about to sit on the sidelines and let all this fine yellow journalism whiz past their own page view counters (crappy t-shirt advertisements won’t click themselves). It started with this racially charged critique of the new show on HBO: Hipster Sex & the City Girls. The biracial author explains in exquisite detail how she fails to connect perfectly with the show about Brooklyn hipster girls because all of the main characters are white. Martin Luther King Jr. be damned, people simply cannot feel a connection with another human being based on superficial aspects like the “content of their character.” HBO should have known better when not pandering to the 1 in 20 hipsters who aren’t a white kid from the suburbs (those racists). You know who did eat that post up? The 19 in 20 who are.

SEND IN THE CLONES!

And thus we have this white guy at Gawker, who turned a single tweet he believed in response to that article from the writer of said Sex & the City reboot, into a 3 page racist rant (which he totally made up in his head). Let me repeat that, a white guy does his Exorcist impression while spewing forth the racist assumptions and other bullshit he conjured up based on a single fragment sentence. Not wanting to pass on some aging link bait carrion this white girl decided to gobble it up and regurgitated all the things she hates about white people being what she perceives as racist (contradicting herself frequently, saying some things which seem willfully ignorant, and forgetting she was numbering a list half way through). Never let quality get in the way of quantity when it comes to churning out fluffy link bait. Her first example of “Hipster racism?” This Tweet:

Haha. RT @SaraBareilles: Home from tour and first things first: New Girl episodes I missed. #thuglife

— zooey deschanel (@ZooeyDeschanel) April 24, 2012

Dude, Where’s My Brown Face?

And finally the straw that pissed the camel off into writing a blog post. Today “the internet” declared Ashton Kutcher a racist because of a new marketing campaign with Pop Chips.

This is racist because he wore “brown face,” a fake mustache, a fake indian shirt, and used a fake Indian accent. Representatives for the Stoner Alliance, the Redneck Consortium, and the Eurotrash Union were not available for comment on how hurt they felt by the harmful portrayal of their own cultures’ stereotypes.

Within hours –you can guess this one– a white girl was on the scene! Gathering all the reactions she could to imply a large negative reaction to this campaign while also shamelessly sharing it and further promoting it’s viewing. She even found a couple brown people upset (who apparently had been a-ok with the horrendously racist show Outsourced). A fit of curiosity made me wonder how Mashable has covered CNN’s risque embrace of the N-bomb.

As the author of the “Hipster Racism” article stated, it’s only ok for white people to get their culture teased. I mean, sure that’s inherently racist, but as a white person I can’t poke fun at other cultures because it’s assumed that I have oppressed them or they were not as lucky as me because of my pasty skin. In the witch hunt for racism/racial hypersensitivity the inquisitors are perpetuating discrimination more than if they ignored molehills.

Don’t get me wrong there is certainly racism still in this country. But how about looking at the drug war or public education system where the numbers solidly show minorities are getting shafted, versus flipping out over a commercial you don’t find funny, or how a writer decided to portray her own art and how a mass media outlet marketed it. Is it silly to ask that people show this kind of passion for things that tangibly affect lives? Is it not silly to fight racism by promoting discriminatory behavior between races?

The fact is that we are living in a culture that is expressing unprecedented tolerance for one another. Stop buying into yellow journalism, and stop creating epidemics out of minor instances. It’s time the rational majority of us to start ignoring the irrational attention whores on both sides of these issues.

“If you believe that discrimination exists, it will.” -Anthony J. D’Angelo

Study: If You Believe That Discrimination Exists, It Will

Just Sayin’

The post Racism is the new black appeared first on Scott Templeman.

“We are the most successful species on this planet because we are the most social species on this planet.” – Daniel Gilbert (This Emotional Life)

Humans are a truly remarkable species, despite the fact that as physical specimens we are anything but. Lacking fur, natural armor, claws, fangs, venom, or remarkable athletic abilities we have somehow managed to conquer the food chain, while spreading and adapting to every continent and climate on the planet. We have even been able to personally explore the moon; not out of any need for survival or benefit, but simply because we were curious and wanted to prove we could do it. The beauty of this is that no single human mind could possibly start from scratch and end up on the moon within a single lifespan. Our “secret weapon” is that the human species has the ability to share (vast amounts of) knowledge and innovate upon it in conjunction with an innate ability to collaborate with and influence the actions of each other. In this post I discuss the quickening of our understanding of the science behind ourselves as a social creature, both biologically and via social media data.

Understanding the Social Hardware

While our understanding of how our minds work is still a very murky picture, we are finally entering an age where we can begin to understand the role biology plays in our social interactions. Scientists are now able to study the brain without having to cut or drill into it, which most test subjects will agree is a pretty awesome development. We now can identify which parts of our brains makes our species so unique (and so successful). One finding particularly relevant for this post is that scientists now have a good idea which parts of the brain are responsible for our ability to influence others and at what volume. We can now trace the development and function of specific areas of the brain as opposed to qualitatively describing personality characteristics such as cunning, charisma, natural leadership, or empathy.

The ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is located in the frontal lobe (part of the “mammalian” brain) and is implicated in the processing of risk, fear, and in decision making. It also gets activated during games where the participant tries to influence the decisions of their opponent (see picture below) as well as serving a part in the analytical process of the brain triggered when being influenced by politics (the degree to which our species’ social interactions are political is unparalleled in nature). Other research has found that this region of the brain is in rapid development during adolescence/teen years, which means our brains adapt or are nurtured to the social structures (or lack thereof) that we grow up in. This helps make us incredibly adaptable to rapid changes that would kill off a lesser species. Furthermore, damage to this area of the brain has been associated with a deficit in processing gender specific social cues. Having a healthy and compatibly developed VMPFC region likely meant a large difference between mating success and being a genetic cul de sac.

The social brain:allowing humans to boldly go where no other species has been

It also seems to help regulate the Amygdala, which is the responsible for processing our emotional responses and the “modulation” of long term memory (and is the other part of our brain stimulated by politics). You read that right, the emotional center of our brain curates our long term memory, which is why we better remember emotionally jarring events. This is also why human memory often proves to be much more perception and opinion than factual data. The volume of the amygdala has been positively correlated with the size of one’s social network, and the density of this region has also shown to have an effect on the size of one’s Facebook network. If social media friends are not real friends, it seems no one bothered to tell our brains.

So there you have it, the two regions of the brain that (we currently believe) determine our skill at reading and influencing others, how we will respond to certain politics, and will even curate our long term memories. How these two key social regions work in concert could mean the difference between becoming a legendary king or just a bloody peasant.

Social Media Teaching Us About Us

So now that we’ve discussed the hardware behind the social interactions, it’s time to move onto the software (our social interactions). I personally fall into the camp that agrees that data gleaned from social media can give us powerful insights into human behavior. Early in my social media career I absorbed the findings of people like Dan Zarrella, who turned social data into scientific insight, and have found personally that these findings tend to hold true in practice. What MRI’s are doing to revolutionize our understanding the intricacies of the human brain, social media networks are doing for understanding the complexities of human interaction. When studying an animal’s behavior you want to study it in it’s own environment, and without disturbing natural behaviour. It’s nearly impossible to study anything without affecting it in some way, however this is easily (and frequently) done in social media. Instead of studies with dozens or hundreds of multiple month data sets to base conclusions on, social networks offer millions of multiple year data sets that people have been recording for their personal use (and primarily only being used for targeting advertisements so far).

Understanding the Sample

You can see vast gaps in social media usage by generations, it should be noted that Generation X would have their social brains developing still while computers and digital gaming were becoming part of American culture, while Millennials would be developing while the internet began to take root in our lives, These Groups were ~50% more likely than people over 50 to use social networks. However if you refer below, you will also see that people over 50 have been making great strides to catch up with younger generations (perhaps as parents and grandparents finally give in to curiosity about their offsping’s activity). Other interesting notes in this survey is that while simply attending college made one more likely to use social media, a middle class income made one significantly less likely to use, and females were 10% more likely than males to be users. These are all important observations to note when making observations how people behave on social networks.

LinkedIn is a social media boy’s club, while women will predominantly dominate social networks with a comfortable margin. Behavior data will thus be overall skewed towards younger female users (though these demographics can change rapidly in just years).

Playing Nice In the Sandbox

As one would expect, teens reported more emotional issues and less of the positive effects of social networking. I am sure many luddites and over protective parents would leap upon this this as proof that social networking is inherently evil and dangerous for children, but such people clearly forget what high school was like. Teens have always been bullied, ended friendships, argued,and fought with friends and family.

If one remembers from earlier, the part of the brain that helps regulate the irrational emotion factory of brain is in rapid development during these years. It’s these initial negative experiences during our early social years that help teach us how to cope with and avoid future issues (and even regulate cortisol in our system, the stress hormone). The bottom line here is that a strong majority of people do not find social media prone to cruelty, and a majority receive real emotional value from it (by feeling good either about another or themselves). Only 15% of the adults surveyed described social networks as unkind. Social media has a real effect on our emotional well-being and its effects are generally positive, we also know this to be true for social interactions in general.

Politics & Social Networking

Politics is an inevitable part of human social interactions, the Monty Python clip earlier illustrates not just how silly our politics are, but also how one’s ideology and perceived sense of influence can completely steer simple social interactions. As I pointed out above, the regions that get simulated during political dialogue are our social power centers of emotion and our perceived ability to influence others. How political interactions unfold in social media (on a Macro scale) can be reflective of unique conditions of culture to specific generations.

Liberals are top participants in social media networks, followed closely by Moderates. A conservative is 10% less likely to use a social network. This is likely a reflection of younger generations being better represented in social media, with older generations being more conservative.

Liberals are the most likely to curate the membership of their social networks due to political ideology (2x as likely as a conservative to unfollow because of a disagreeable post) and Moderates the most tolerant across the board (although talking and arguing too much about politics can rub them the wrong way). This is interesting and unique, because social media allows unparalleled exclusivity just as much as it offers connectedness. On the social webs, we reference echo chambers as the result of someone who prunes their perception of reality like a bonsai tree, such that they only hear opinions they will agree with.

Only 25% of respondents agreed with the political opinions of their friend most or all of the time (implying that 75% have at least a somewhat politically diverse network). While some political curation of friend networks is occurring, a majority of people are not creating politically homogenous echo chambers. Who are the folks creating the echo chambers?

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” -Thomas Jefferson

Political extremists on the ideology spectrum were the most likely by a large margin to create an echo chamber for themselves. This supports the folk wisdom that people who tilt too heavily one way or the other politically have trouble socializing with those who aren’t their mirror ideology. It also underscores why there is a (time tested) cultural norm in this country to never discuss the big three taboo topics with strangers: sex, religion, and politics. In modern times, all these topics have been thrown in a blender, it’s near impossible to talk about one without starting an argument about the other two.

Those who self identified as very liberal had over a 1 in 2 chance of agreeing with political opinions of their friends, compared to less than 1 in 5 Moderates. It seems that overall being liberal made one the least tolerant of different ideologies and opinions in their social networks. This disparity might be due in part to a majority of Americans perceiving a liberal bias in traditional media outlets (on which these liberals were raised), and thus were less exposed to contradictory beliefs and more prone to falsely believe that their views and opinions were those of an overwhelming majority. The Pew data on media bias below, supports such a theory.

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” -Marcus Aurelius

People have a much easier time seeing bias in news outlets they disagree with, finding those that lean their own way much more fair to both sides. If Independents are a good baseline for identifying bias in news stories, then Democrat-leaning news has been strongly favored for the past decade. Before 2000, all parties tended to see around the same amount of bias.

Because of this severe distortion in how people have been modulating their own realities (remember that the same center that curates our long term memory is the emotional component of how we are influenced by politics), liberals would be thus more likely to find opinions and ideologies that disagree with them as unrealistic. In social media this translates to liberal-leaning users much more likely to be pruning out people in their network who create cognitive dissonance in their echo chamber. This translates to “I cannot interact with this person, not even passively, because they do not live in my reality.”

If you have ever heard 2 people from opposite sides of the political spectrum arguing, you will often hear this mentality in action. The next time you do, you can now diagnose the two political debaters as simply a couple of apes with some incompatible wiring between their respective amygdalas and VMPFCs.

There is a plethora of additional data and studies out there to help draw more conclusions and observations from (indeed I have contemplated writing a book on the subject). It certainly is an exciting time in the social realm as nueroscience, evolutionary psychology, and quantified social data begin to align to help us understand ourselves better. The elegant dance of nature and nurture is coordinated such that our offspring will be heavily ingrained to perpetuate the social structure and ideologies that we raise them in. This inclination is so strong that we will warp our very perceptions of reality to cling onto them: avoiding, even demonizing, all people who disturb our delusions, while forgetting or twisting facts that contradict our deeply held beliefs.This innate political behavior in our social brains certainly causes many issues in our daily lives, but it also allows for the mass collaboration of equally intelligent individuals: societies. Culture is always evolving to meet the latest challenges and opportunities offered to every new generation. It’s truly exciting to be able to bear witness to historic amounts of human data to document our progression as a species.

The post Understanding The Poking Ape appeared first on Scott Templeman.

One week before Thanksgiving I got a call at 5PM in the office and the caller ID told me it was HR. As a former recruiter I didn’t need clairvoyance to know what the topic of this conversation would be. Together with my latest boss (my 4th in ~18 months), I was informed that Outsell’s marketing strategy for 2012 did not include a role for me. My first reaction was one of shock: I had already achieved all the goals set for me in 2012, the social properties had finally gained critical mass after a year of careful and persistent management, and sales were up despite a skeleton crew in marketing & sales. I had successfully implemented a content marketing strategy this year, increasing unbranded search engine referrals to our web store by 96% in just 6 months. Under my guidance and coaching, a nucleus of analysts were strengthening the overall brand by effectively leveraging social media tools at their disposal (and expressing their expertise outside of a paywall). I was delivering big results with a marketing budget that consisted of nothing more than my salary, but this strong ROI didn’t seem to be factored into the planning for 2012.

While the economist inside of me struggled to comprehend this, the rationalist took the mental reigns instead and kept me steady. I refused to be upset for two reasons:

1. I had just been relieved of the burden of having to wrap my head around any such decisions further. “We” had just became “they,” and I was now back in full control of my life.

2. I knew I was delivering results, and giving solid data-driven strategic advice. This confusing and abrupt end had validated what I had long suspected: I was neither being appreciated nor listened to. I was now free to find someone who would do both!

I have always been one who shines most in times of turmoil. My family can tell you that when crisis hits I become eerily optimistic and will pick up slack where needed while others struggle to cope. Perhaps it’s the adrenaline rush that can only come when one’s livelihood is on the line. Perhaps it’s seeing the silver lining in the rubble of a recently shattered life, finding serene confidence in knowing that you can rebuild an improved version.

Fortunately I was able to come across a couple small projects almost immediately and had Gilbane Boston 2011 these past 3 days (where I ran the twitter feed, shot some video to produce, and networked/learned from many of the best & brightest in the Content realm). I hadn’t been out of work for more than a day and I was already working on some projects that truly excited me, an aspect of my life that has been sincerely missed. It’s hard for me to think of the past few weeks and not break out grinning. Things are going to be better than ever. I’m not there yet, but there isn’t anything that can get in my way now.

My resumé

The post Announcing My Employment Free Agency for 2012 appeared first on Scott Templeman.

The post 5/13/80 Bernard Levin Interviews Freidrich Hayek appeared first on Scott Templeman.

It is time to stop hoping and to start acting. Your true power as a citizen is in your votes. Inform yourself beyond the superficial and wield this right as the responsibility and privilege that it is.

The post An Exercise in Foreign Policy Empathy appeared first on Scott Templeman.

Study: Chimps Go to War Over Territory

“Invariably, some will take this as evidence that the roots of aggression run very deep,” he says, and therefore conclude that war is our evolutionary destiny. “Even if that were true,” says Mitani, “we {^generally} operate by a moral code that chimps don’t have.”

I don’t think that war and violence is our genetic destiny as much as a survival mechanism for times of (Biological) economic stress. In modern ages, the emotional states that trigger these behaviors can be artificially produced with false flags, propaganda, and a shadowy villain. Throughout history the mob has been a term of disparagement. The right combination of population density, heat, alcohol, and economic stress and people become gas cans ready to explode upon the first offense. Chimps are the second smartest animal on the planet, and one of our closest genetic relatives. This cyclical pattern of social upheaval and instinct to look out for one’s self, even at the cost of cannibalizing our neighbors, is ugly but seems to be a conditioned survival mechanism. When we are afraid for future of our current social status we lash out. What seems a mystery outburst of violence to us in chimps, might be as simple as “that group of chimps strongly disagreed with them in theological matters,” or “that group of chimps simply had better bananas.” Our genetic legacies do not need to control our collective fates, we overcome a majority of our natural instincts every day without even realizing our struggles against nature. Not looking at violence as a solution to a current problem should be the easiest one should ever have to struggle against. As riots are often a prelude to great social changes, I wish all of England on both sides the best of luck (and hope a non-violent solution is found).

The post Some Video Thoughts for a Politically Tumultuous Summer appeared first on Scott Templeman.

“	Conspicuous Conservation: Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You”re Driving? – Freakonomics » http://ow.ly/5yQKj
	tallbonez July 7, 2011

“	RT @ad_chickadee: Way creepy! Social “X-ray” glasses tell you what’s really on people’s minds http://ow.ly/5zJu3
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Jonathan Drori: The beautiful tricks of flowers | Video on TED.com http://ow.ly/5xVl6
	tallbonez July 6, 2011

“	RT @libertyideals: Would You Give Up The Internet For 1 Million Dollars? #libertarian http://bit.ly/pTZvhI
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

"Tomb of the Otters" Filled With Stone Age Human Bones Thousands of human bones have been found inside a Stone Age tomb on a northern Scottish island, archaeologists say. The 5,000-year-old burial site, on South Ronaldsay (map) in the Orkney Islands, was accidentally uncovered after a homeowner had leveled a mound in his yard to improve his ocean view.

An ocean divide The tiny, isolated islands of the Pacific are in crisis; battling weak government, corruption and faltering economies. The Pacific Islands can appear like an idyllic palm-fringed paradise. But many of these tiny and isolated countries are struggling to survive, facing weak governance, unemployment and faltering economies. They also face a health crisis – obesity.

“	RT @freakonomics: Scientific literacy doesn’t increase concern of climate change, decreases instead http://ow.ly/5wWLb #rabblerabblerabble
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	Body’s Own Marijuana Chemicals Trigger Love of Fat | Fat & Food Cravings | LiveScience http://ow.ly/5xee1
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	Vain Monkey Steals Cam to Take These Adorable Self-Portraits http://ow.ly/5xqic via @BrianneVillano
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	FYI: What is the Hottest Pepper in the World? | Popular Science http://ow.ly/5zbso
	tallbonez July 7, 2011

“	Polar Bears are actually a “young” hybrid species (of extinct parents): Today’s P.B. Started Out Brown and Irish http://ow.ly/5AcP7
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Fitbit users are unwittingly sharing details of their sex lives with the world – TNW Industry http://ow.ly/5vK0g
	tallbonez July 3, 2011

“	The PaleolithicDiet Infographic http://ow.ly/5A8Dm
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	For the good of all of us: CERN launches open source hardware effort http://ow.ly/5zV4h
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

powered by Storify

The post Science & Economics News Round up July 9th appeared first on Scott Templeman.

“	Read it- Bradley Manning”s Army of One – NYMag http://ow.ly/5xtOA
	tallbonez July 6, 2011

“	RT @libertyideals: Federal Wiretaps Nearly Doubled Last Year #libertarian http://onforb.es/imUMDE
	tallbonez July 4, 2011

“	False Flags are old favorites in the US – AnonOps: Are Hacker Attacks Government Ops To Push Internet Censorship Laws? http://ow.ly/5AfwB
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Another “Pro” bites the dust: Anonymous Dumps Content of (Gov Contractor) IRC Federal to ThePirateBay http://ow.ly/5A5aQ
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Great Insight on “hacktivism”: Census ‘hack’: who are LulzSec? – Telegraph http://ow.ly/5Acu7
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Before a digital search… Know Your Rights! | Electronic Frontier Foundation http://ow.ly/5yliz
	tallbonez July 6, 2011

“	lots of hack news today! Campaign is now claiming it wasn’t hacked (bs): Obama’s campaign website | Washington Examiner http://ow.ly/5xgWr
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	China to deploy huge Big Brother surveillance network with Cisco http://ow.ly/5x4Ee
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	Anonymous Claims to Have Stolen Apple User Data – Gear News at IGN http://ow.ly/5xcTz
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	Connexion Email Account Dump Includes Military and Government Accounts http://ow.ly/5xdpV
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	RELEASE THE KRAKEN: Anonymous Posts Turkish Government Websites to ThePirateBay http://ow.ly/5z9ib
	tallbonez July 7, 2011

“	How Easy is Voting Fraus: Abhaxas Dumps Details of the Internal Florida Voting Database Online[‘[ http://ow.ly/5vGm1
	tallbonez July 3, 2011

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“	5 Reasons I am Smitten with Google+ | The Musings of Scott http://ow.ly/5yNCk #SocialMedia #SMN #google
	tallbonez July 7, 2011

“	Zuck’s big announcement: Facebook Reveals Video Chat Powered by Skype http://ow.ly/5y527 (meh)
	tallbonez July 6, 2011

“	RT @ad_chickadee: Way creepy! Social “X-ray” glasses tell you what’s really on people’s minds http://ow.ly/5zJu3
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Get the Google+Tweet extension http://ow.ly/5AidX via @satisfeye
	tallbonez July 9, 2011

“	Add your Facebook stream to Google+ with this browser extension http://ow.ly/5A6fs
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Bitcoin goes mobile on Android using QR codes to initiate transactions #coolness – Android Market http://ow.ly/5ymir #ruhrohFed
	tallbonez July 6, 2011

“	HootSuite hits 2 million users, doubles signups in seven months http://ow.ly/5wSpl
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	It’s time to take down those nude Keg Stand pictures – I Flunked My Social Media Background Check. Will You? http://ow.ly/5A92S
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Apple iTunes revenues to push $13 Billion in 2013: Report – TNW Apple http://ow.ly/5wMoe
	tallbonez July 5, 2011

“	Roland Bunce: Next top model? | NMA.tv http://ow.ly/5xL5C
	tallbonez July 6, 2011

“	Dropbox updates license following IP controversy – TNW Apps http://ow.ly/5yz6l
	tallbonez July 7, 2011

“	eBay Buys Zong For $240 Million In Cash To Boost PayPal”s Mobile Payments Technology http://ow.ly/5z89y
	tallbonez July 7, 2011

“	Ehem Sony RT @rww: ReadWriteBiz: Your Support Site Parties Like It’s 1999 http://rww.to/pu1Bv1
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	For the good of all of us: CERN launches open source hardware effort http://ow.ly/5zV4h
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

“	Using Gaming To Drive Desired Behavior: Privacy Policy As A Game | Techdirt http://ow.ly/5A065
	tallbonez July 8, 2011

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