Internal Monologue

Kevin Drum on the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction representations: To put this more succinctly: any serious long-term deficit plan will spend about 1% of its time on the discretionary budget, 1% on Social Security, and 98% on healthcare. Any proposal that doesn't maintain approximately that ratio shouldn't be considered serious. The Simpson-Bowles plan, conversely, goes into loving detail about cuts to the discretionary budget and Social Security but turns suddenly vague and cramped when it gets to Medicare. That's not serious. http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/11/deficit-commission-serious [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typo graphical errors.] --Zachary Drake

Yes, you can actually play the game .

I think that qualifies for Internal Monologue's headline of the day : You could call it the surprise du jour: A popular food on Vietnamese menus has turned out to be a lizard previously unknown to science, scientists say. What's more, the newfound Leiolepis ngovantrii is no run-of-the-mill reptile —the all-female species reproduces via cloning, without the need for male lizards. Single-gender lizards aren't that much of an oddity: About one percent of lizards can reproduce by parthenogenesis, meaning the females spontaneously ovulate and clone themselves to produce offspring with the same genetic blueprint. Maybe species hunters should pay more attention to restaurants. I suppose a cloned species would have culinary advantages: you could develop very specific cooking procedures and not have to worry too much about individual variation.

Nicaragua accidentally invades Costa Rica and blames Google Maps for the error. Someone at Microsoft is smiling: Perhaps the most embarrassing thing for Google, though, is that competitor Microsoft has the border definition right on its maps. If Nicaraguan commander Pastora had used Bing Maps , the entire red-faced incident might never have happened. You know that disclaimer those maps often print ("to be used for planning purposes only, make sure the road is still there, etc.")? Maybe they need to include some legal boilerplate about "this map not to be used for invasion planning purposes."

Fascinating article about 4-year old craniopagus twins : They are the rarest of the rarest of the rare. Tatiana and Krista are not just conjoined, but they are craniopagus, sharing a skull and also a bridge between each girl’s thalamus, a part of the brain that processes and relays sensory information to other parts of the brain. Or perhaps in this case, to both brains. There is evidence that they can see through each other’s eyes and perhaps share each other’s unspoken thoughts. And if that proves true, it will be the rarest thing of all. They will be unique in the world. They have been drawing international attention, both public and scientific, since before their birth. Dr. Douglas Cochrane, a neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital, is part of the team that has been watching over them since they were in the womb. Last year he conducted tests in which one twin looked at an object while he measured the brain activity in the other. “Their brains are recording signals from th

The methodology is a bit crude (a simple search for the string "we broke up because") but the results are fascinating. Peak breakup times : post Valentine's Day and pre-Christmas.

You really don't need much more election analysis than this.