10 stories and links I think are educative, informative, entertaining, or weird

How Much Does Earth’s Atmosphere Weigh? via Britannica Blog by Britannica Editors


Earth’s atmosphere provides gases that are critical for living things. Credit: W. Perry Conway/Corbis
A lot of people wonder how much our planet itself weighs. But what about its atmosphere?
The total mass of Earth’s atmosphere is about 5.5 quadrillion tons, or roughly one millionth of Earth’s mass. Air is heavier at sea level, since the air molecules sit close together, compressed by the weight of air from above. As elevation increases, however, air molecules grow farther apart, and the air becomes lighter.
And those links above could have you spending several minutes (or even hours) testing all the hyperlinks in Britannica!

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The genre-busting magazine essay - think John Jeremiah Sullivan or Geoff Dyer - has emerged as a worthy alternative to the creaky conventions of fiction... more

Three inventions to keep livestock off railroad tracks via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Why do cows and horses like standing on railroad tracks? Here are three inventions to encourage them to loiter elsewhere. One involves a jet of hot water, another adds a whistle to the water jet, and a third involves a humanoid automaton that waves its hands and strikes a gong. I agree with Greg of Futility Closet when he says, “I desperately wish this had caught on.”
See the unlikely inventions at Coming Through.

Elvis Playing Football, December 27th, 1956 via Retronaut by Chris

All images by Barney Sellers
Thank you to Elvis Australia
More pictures here

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Does the impact of literary scholarship really justify the money and effort that go into it? Not even close, says Mark Bauerlein... more

How Exercise Boosts the Brain via Big Think by Big Think Editors
At least once in your life, you have probably had that familiar feeling of fatigue mixed with alertness after exercising. The fatigue is your tired muscles, the alertness is your brain, somehow awakened by physical activity. A recent study carried out in Ireland confirms that exercise improves cognitive performance: After half an hour on a bicycle, individuals did much better on memory tests which associated names with unknown faces. Blood samples were taken in order to look for a biological corollary.
Scientists believe a greater quantity of a special protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, is released in greater quantities during and after strenuous physical exercise. Individuals who have an especially low output of BDNF have often found it difficult to remember past learned behaviour—piloting a jet, in the case of one experiment. “The evidence is very, very strong that physical activity will increase BDNF levels and improve cognitive health,” says Dr. Ahmad Salehi, a behavioural scientist at Stanford.
Read it at The New York Times

Nice Guys Earn Less Money via Big Think by Big Think Editors
A new study shows that “agreeableness” correlates negatively with how much money men earn. According to Notre Dame researchers, “agreeableness” is a combination of trust, straightforwardness, compliance, altruism, modesty and tender-mindedness. Men who were found less greeable were not sociopaths or maniacs but they were willing to aggressively advocate for their position during conflicts. The difference in pay was stunning: agreeable men earned an average of $7,000 less than their bristly peers.
Why do we allow nice guys to finish last? What is it about aggressive personalities that we find worthy of financial reward? “Although agreeable people are less likely to get fired, and are just as likely to supervise others, they appear far less effective at negotiating pay increases, thus suggesting that the main financial benefit of disagreeableness is a willingness to stubbornly fight for what’s wanted, even if it makes others uncomfortable.” When it comes to romance, however, studies show kindness is the most important trait.
Read it at Frontal Cortex

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Alienation and misanthropy. Stephen Sondheim’s muse is misery – about success, relationships, aging, and mankind itself... more

Honeybees can smell TB via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow

Image: Honeybee on Snakeroot, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from dendroica's photostream
New Zealand biologists believe that honeybees can sense the faint floral odour on the breath of people infected with tuberculosis, and are trying to find a way to train bees to help them diagnose TB:

“When we tested them with the tuberculosis odours we found the bees can still smell it down to parts per billion,” says Max Suckling.
Christchurch zoologists are training bees to associate the smell of the disease with a sweet treat and to stick out their tongues when it’s present.
Worldwide new TB infections occur at a rate of one per second. Right now it’s diagnosed medically by expensive tests and with the disease being most common in poverty stricken areas, using bees instead could make a real difference.

Bees help in the battle against tuberculosis (Thanks, Gnat!)

agatha via 3quarksdaily by Morgan Meis


Agatha Christie was not cosy. She earned the title the Queen of Crime the old-fashioned way – by killing off a lot of people. Although never graphic or gratuitous, she was breathtakingly ruthless. Children, old folks, newlyweds, starlets, ballerinas – no one is safe in a Christie tale. In Hallowe’en Party, she drowns a young girl in a tub set up for bobbing apples and, many chapters later, sends Poirot in at the very last minute to prevent a grisly infanticide. In The ABC Murders, she sets up one of the first detective-taunting serial killers. The signature country home aside, Christie’s literary world was far from homogenous. Her plots, like her life, were international, threading through urban and pastoral, gentry and working class, dipping occasionally into the truly psychotic or even supernatural. Christie murders were committed for all the Big Reasons – love, money, ambition, fear, revenge – and they were committed by men, women, children and in one case, the narrator. Some of her books are truly great – Death on the Nile, And Then There Were None, The Secret Adversary, Murder on the Orient Express, Curtain to name a few – and some are not. But even the worst of them (The Blue Train, The Big Four) bear the hallmarks of a master craftsman. Perhaps not on her best day, but the failures make us appreciate the successes, and the woman behind them, that much more.
more from Mary McNamara at the LA Times here.