The Gulf of Mexico ecosystem was ready and waiting for something like the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and seems to have made the most of it, a new scientific study suggests.

Petroleum-eating bacteria - which had dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the seafloor - proliferated in the cloud of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible.

Yay!

Microbes consumed oil plume, study says

Yow! You can really see here just how much the home buyer tax credit distorted the market - massively. This is the worst July for existing home sales since **1996!**

Que stock market crash in 3... 2...

Exisiting Home Sales Plummet 27.2% | The Big Picture

Early patterns of Digg diggs and YouTube views reflect long-term user interest.

One of the holy grails of MemeStreams is herein achieved by academic researchers using larger social networking sites. I look forward to reading this. Looks like you can get the paper here.

Predicting the popularity of online content

Halderman says the researchers believe the person who gave them the voting machine had legal access to it and provided it in the interest of transparency and scientific study. Halderman spoke with Prasad on the phone while he was in the back of a police car on Saturday (see audio above). Prasad told Halderman that the police had no choice but to arrest him, since they were receiving pressure from above.

“This kind of intimidation will hit the hearts of volunteers, and no volunteer will come forward if this kind of thing happens in future,” Prasad said during the phone call. “That’s the reason I’m going to take it on and I’ll face it, so that the volunteers get inspired by me. And the ultimate goal is we have to achieve that these machines are not fit enough for elections.”

Researcher Arrested in India After Disclosing Problems With Voting Machines | Threat Level | Wired.com

“I don’t think we’re ever going to see the prosperity our parents did."

Real Estate’s Gold Rush Seems Gone for Good - NYTimes.com

Its nice to occasionally run into someone who seem to share your point of view. Searching for information on campaign finance reform popped up this essay by Wendy Kaminer, who seems to look at issues with a rare clarity.

But if many liberals and their organizations are selective in defending free speech, so is the Supreme Court, and so are many conservative Republicans who delighted in the Citizens United decision. (Commenting on the decision, my friend Harvey Silverglate suggests that the First Amendment is simply "a hook on which the Supreme Court's conservatives could hang their political hat.") Conservative justices who have so staunchly defended corporate speech rights have also staunchly opposed speech rights for students and supported thought crimes involving child pornography -- thought crimes fashioned by members of Congress whose solicitude for corporate speech is often matched by their disregard for the core political speech rights of individuals. You won't find many conservative Republicans who oppose restrictions on corporate electioneering and also oppose criminalizing flag burning. With friends like these, the First Amendment will never want for enemies.

Reading through some of her essays on The Atlantic turned up numerous prescient observations:

"Where's our bail-out," disaffected voters demand, understandably. When so few bad deeds go unrewarded, when mortgage fraud or negligence succeeds, when financial institutions that facilitated the crash are bailed out, some putative home owners are bound to feel entitled to walk away from their under water houses...

The astronomical financial rewards of moral if not legal corruption are indisputable (and overshadow the lesser risks of being caught.) The political rewards of demagoguery are evident... The power of lying and irrelevance of facts are demonstrated regularly by.... both right and left.

A culture that celebrates self-promotion and values a commitment to winning over honesty or fairness. Virtue is its only reward and vice is either ignored or richly compensated.

Is our culture loosing its soul?

Wendy Kaminer

154 lives were lost when Spanair Flight 5022 crashed moments after taking off from Madrid-Barajas International Airport in 2008. Now documents from an investigation into the incident are showing that a malware infection may have been to blame.

Lack of detail may indicate that something is being lost in translation here.

Malware Blamed For Disastrous Plane Crash

The illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry

Very interesting... It would be really cool to see this animated over time with the M&A activity...

Hacker News | The illusion of diversity: visualizing ownership in the soft drink industry

What really stands out, however, is the post YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo rise of video.

Internet traffic - protocols on a percentage basis

Democrats are much more liberal than Republicans on the economic dimension: Democrats in the most conservative states are still much more liberal than Republicans in even the most liberal states. On social issues there is more overlap (although in any given state, the average Republican is more conservative than the average Democrat).

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Ranking States by the Liberalism/Conservatism of Their Voters