Anything but water

• Rule of law in China?

  Violent criminal gangs run dozens of heavily polluting—and profitable—rare earth mines in Jiangxi and Guangdong Provinces. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, has reported that criminals smuggled 20,000 tons of rare earths from the country in 2008, nearly a third of the total rare earth exports for that year.

• "The students who score the lowest and improve the least are the business majors." -- an interesting New Yorker piece on the purpose of college (sort the elites? broaden our knowledge? vocation?)
  
  
• The Anthropocene: A man-made world [from The Economist]
  
  
• Brain study shows why alcoholics fall off the wagon again... and again
  
  
• Ouch! How to Beat the Market: Follow the Trades of 19 Senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee Who Own Stocks on Prohibited List
  
  
• Wrote this in my book too: In a world of climate change, freak storms are the new normal.