Smart Links 11/16/11

If only I could train my dogs to tap dance for food! (Thanks, JC!)

So, what if your wedding venue burned down the night before? O_o (Thanks, PB!)

Elizabeth Taylor in Iran. (Thanks, BH!)

Did the NYPD tip off the NYTimes about the Occupy Wall Street eviction? Good questions from the readers of Naked Capitalism.

Yup, the NYPD are not above pepper spraying the small dogs of OWS.

In other news, Pope says pedophilia used to be normal in the olden days. #Rationalization/LifeFail

The idea of donors and couples selling/buying eggs based on ethnicity is incredibly creepy.

Also in the world of reproduction, researchers say the biological clock ticks for men too.

Smart Links 10/21/11

This awesome hammock boat is courtesy of the kiddos at UC Davis. Happy Friday, folks!

I saw this fierce set of talons yesterday. Inquire on Mulberry Street, NY, in case you've lost an alligator foot.

Who killed Che?

Forget Ironman. Aspire to overcome the Death Race, a 45 mile course that involves crawling under barbed wire, lugging bags of pennies, and chopping wood. Pw to view the video is: run.

Victor LaValle, a judge for this year's National Book Award, talks smack in response to Laura Miller's Salon article on why the NBA is now irrelevant in literature.

Knit a sweater. Save a penguin. Seriously.

Oh, Canada - only in your lovely country would Occupy Wall Street protesters and policemen have some old fashioned fun with water guns.

When you "Like" a company on Facebook, it could drive up its stock, according to a Pace University/Famecount study.

Smart Links 9/28

We've known for awhile that patent laws are stifling innovation, but it must be pretty bad when the OECD says it's inhibiting growth.

The Museum of Children's Art in Oakland was going to show an exhibit on art made by Palestinian children during wartime, but "concerned parents" compelled the museum to shut it down. If you would take your kid to the Holocaust Museum though, you should have no problem taking your kid to an exhibit on Palestinian kids. Bad form, MOCHA, though I still love your acronym.

Acknowledge racism still exists. It will help the world.

Are you disabled? You'll find out within 40 minutes.

Women can finally vote, but they still can't drive in Saudi Arabia. Instead, they get lashed for driving a car.

Anthony DeRosa's opinion on the Wall Street Occupation makes him sound like a complete a**hole. As if all people protesting corporate greed would all be "over-privileged, unemployed trustafarians". The Wall Street Occupation is simply a protest against corporate privilege and exploitation, something all Americans can relate to.

If these links have made you depressed about the current state of affairs, have some coffee. It helps make people happier, well kinda.

Smart Links

Yes, there could be a scientific rationale of why you're happy, or why you're not.

Via BH at Salon Anthro - Meet Henri, the existential cat.

On women and guns, victims and victimizers, in Libya.

Jail is the "new" madhouse as the mentally ill struggle within the American prison system.

I wouldn't necessarily call it a "wake up call", but one can easily imagine that riots are most likely to take place in poverty stricken areas. Here's a map of recent riots in England.

People can crowdsource anything these days, including green projects and start ups. IndieGoGo all the way!

A neat lab product from Google lets you track and compare how words rise and fall in popular usage. Data for the program was gleaned from the mammoth Google Book Search.

Smart Links

A reminder of when women were holistically judged on things like making coffee, and men were ok with being jerks about it.

A new study from the Pew Center of Research found that agnostics, atheists, Jews and Mormons were on average more knowledgeable on religion than Christian groups. Go God(s)!

According to a new report by a Chinese environmental group, Apple products leave a toxic trail.

Given the freak earthquake and hurricane warnings in New York last week, let's all take a moment to consider how the world might actually end. Guernica points out several scenarios, per Hollywood's freewheeling imagination.

Another sad case of when conversion to Islam is perceived as race betrayal.

For the first time in history, there are more Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. than in Puerto Rico. Diaspora and its discontents persist away from Boricua.

Via BXChen. Fox Sports makes a racist Asian video.

Yikes. Maya Angelou had some fightin' words for the quote that was selected for the newly unveiled MLK memorial. She called the selection a poor choice that made the civil rights hero look like an "egotist".

An interview with David Graeber, an economic anthropologist, shakes up money mythologies. According to him, credit and debt preceded the barter system, and money shifts back and forth from functioning as a commodity/object and credit/social relation.