Today was a good day; got up early to watch the Tour de France prologue, worked, worked out, did a little tanning and reading, watched Germany annihilate Argentina (man will they be a formidable opponent for the Oranje in the World Cup final), and enjoyed a great BBQ / dinner with friends (at which the appropriate wine pairing for Buffalo wings was determined to be Riesling rather than Grenache...)  We also managed to debate the chances of Meg Whitman over Jerry Brown (judged lower than we all want !) and the culpability of BP for the Gulf spill, shared with the government, and judged nearly infinite in view of the economic and ecological harm being caused...

An amazing article in the Economist: Intelligence tested, which floats the theory that intelligence is correlated with "disease burden".  Once again an amazing exercise in confusion between correlation and causality, caused by excess political correctness.  The best part is this chart (copied for posterity) showing the measured IQ in 184 countries, together with the measure of "disease burden".  Further columns showing economic well-being and birth rate would be quite revealing, I think... 

I'm sure the Economist and the study it quotes will come under fire for something as politically unacceptable as admitting there are differences in measured IQ between countries, even under the guise of presenting a politically acceptable rationale to explain the disparity, but it is significant that they chose to do so at all.

Important news you can use: How to make ice cream in (almost) any flavor.  Ice cream is *always* great, but black pepper clams?  Really? 

Science: stem cells from blood a huge milestone.  "Blood drawn with a simple needle stick can be coaxed into producing stem cells that may have the ability to form any type of tissue in the body, three independent papers report in the July 2 Cell Stem Cell. The new technique will allow scientists to tap a large, readily available source of personalized stem cells." 

A great analysis from Ars Technica: KIN's tragic demise (and the fading of Danger).  A classic situation in which good business strategy was undone by bad business execution.  And Microsoft's acquisition of Danger was squandered entirely... 

Yes!  Will the real programmers please stand up?  "Write a C function that reverses a singly-linked list."  Okay I will* :) 

A new definition for slow: Forth in Lisp.  Why? 

ZooBorn of the weekend (and candidate for ZooBorn of the world): an orphaned baby sea otter.  Please click through to see the movie, it's priceless... 

* okay you asked: 

struct listelt {    
    struct listelt *next;
     void *listdata;
} ;

void reverseList (struct listelt *&head) {
    struct listent *currelt,  
                   *nextelt,  
                   *newhead = NULL;  

    for (currelt = head; currelt; currelt = nextelt) {  
        nextelt = currelt->next;   
        currelt->next = newhead;  
        newhead = currelt;  
    }
    head = newhead;
}  

a pons asinorum if there ever was one...