Search & Worth a Look: Iraq Veteran Rings

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This is interesting for two reasons:

1)  Our first thought was that returning veterans were forming small criminal rings to survive in the absence of jobs being available.  That is still a potential threat, on top of all the gang members that joined the military for the express purpose of gaining advanced training and liberal access to weapons and munitions.

2)  Second, this is the same web site that sells service rings for $45, and those we recommend highly, but the “culture of war” seems to be captured by this offering, with one big caveat as pointed out by Marcus Aurelius in an earlier post–only a tiny segment of our population–and virtually NONE of our political leaders–is a war veteran.

Journal: Brains Beat Algorithms….Again

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Today's issue of Nature contains a paper with a rather unusual author list. Read past the standard collection of academics, and the final author credited is… an online gaming community.

Scientists have turned to games for a variety of reasons, having studied virtual epidemics and tracked online communities and behavior, or simply used games to drum up excitement for the science. But this may be the first time that the gamers played an active role in producing the results, having solved problems in protein structure through the Foldit game. (Also related, TED talk on how gaming can make a better world).

See Also:

Graphic: Jim Bamford on the Human Brain

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated