[Yahoo! News]
Will no one think of the Constitution? Republicans have proposed at least 42 Constitutional amendments in the current Congress, Democrats—who typically take a more liberal view of the Constitution as an evolving document—a mere 27.

[Gizmodo]
Imagine a public eye scanner that can identify 50 people per minute, in motion. Now imagine that the government install these scanner systems all across an entire city. Or don't imagine it, because it's already happening, right now.

[Forbes]
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents.

[PhysOrg.com]
The Wright State Research Institute is developing a ground-breaking system that would scan the skeletal structures of people at airports, sports stadiums, theme parks and other public places that could be vulnerable to terrorist attacks, child abductions or other crimes. The images would then quickly be matched with potential suspects using a database of previously scanned skeletons.

[FDL]
Two FCC Commissioners and one US Senator slammed the Google-Verizon joint policy agreement and strongly endorsed the principle of net neutrality last night at a hearing before hundreds of citizens in Minneapolis, giving the Chairman of the federal agency Julius Genachowski all of the support he would need to regulate broadband Internet, if he so chose.

[Alternet]
ACLU Report: Obama enshrining Bush-era torture policies.

[Guardian.co.uk]
New analysis shows that government support for fossil fuel industry is about 10 times that offered to renewable energy firms.

[CNN]
Net neutrality is the foremost free speech issue of our time.

[BBC News]
The US Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination. In a 63-37 vote, five Republicans supported the bid, with Nebraskan Ben Nelson the only Democrat to oppose it.

[Big Questions Online]
All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not.

[ScienceDaily]
Four separate studies led by a Washington State University social psychologist have found that unselfish workers who are the first to throw their hat in the ring are also among those that coworkers most want to, in effect, vote off the island.

[Pitchfork]
The top 50 music videos of the 1990s.

[The New York Times]
Genes, memes...and now temes?

[Foreign Policy]
Gallup has just released its 2010 Potential Net Migration Index, an interesting survey that estimates what would happen to countries' populations if everyone in the world who wanted to migrate were able to.

[Miller-McCune]
For the U.S. to have world-class high-speed trains, the government will have to subsidize them. The investment would be small compared to the billions lavished on highways and airports.

[Spiegel Online]
Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might.

[The New York Times]
Watch a 3-year-old recite a Billy Collins poem from memory!

[The Atlantic]
The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination. To vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer.

[Miller-McCune]
For the U.S. to have world-class high-speed trains, the government will have to subsidize them. The investment would be small compared to the billions lavished on highways and airports.

[The Wall Street Journal]
In Paris, residents take to an underground network of tunnels and caves to explore city's past, paint murals or throw a party.

[BBC Archive]
Interviews with remarkable modern writers (Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, J.R.R. Tolkien, etc.).

[Tom Scott]
Journalism warning labels.

[The Wilson Quarterly]
America: Land of loners?

[The Atlantic]
How the internet makes us all DJs.

[Poetry Foundation]
Often poems are called "abstract," but I think that is misleading: all words are both abstract and concrete in nature, and calling a poem either "abstract" or "literal" is to deny the very thing that makes poetry so mysteriously powerful: its ability, like words, to be simultaneously general (belonging to us all) and particular (connected to individual experience).

[The Huffington Post]
The 15 most overrated contemporary American writers.

[Telegraph.co.uk]
The argument over whether the universe has a creator, and who that might be, is among the oldest in human history. But amid the raging arguments between believers and sceptics, one possibility has been almost ignored – the idea that the universe around us was created by people very much like ourselves, using devices not too dissimilar to those available to scientists today.

[LiveScience]
The Earth has seen several mass extinctions, including five that annihilated more than half the planet's species. Experts now believe Earth is in the midst of a sixth event, the first one caused by humans.

[Guardian.co.uk]
The Frozen Zoo was founded in 1972 at San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research as a repository for skin-cell samples from rare and endangered species. At the time that the first samples were collected and put into deep freeze it was not really known how they would be used and genetic technology was in its infancy. But there was a sense that one day some unknown scientific advance might make use of them and it was better to be safe than sorry. Now, thanks to a team at the nearby Scripps Research Institute, that day has come a lot closer.

[Discovery News]
Life raft makes sea water drinkable.

[PhysOrg.com]
Vitamin D found to influence over 200 genes, highlighting links to disease.

[Yahoo! News]
Secondhand cigarette smoke alters genes, study says.

[geek.com]
Toshiba's breakthrough could lead to 25TB 3.5-inch drives.

[ScienceDaily]
Yale researchers have discovered how a novel anti-depressant can take effect in hours, rather than the weeks or months usually required for most drugs currently on the market. The scientists found that, in rats, ketamine not only quickly improves depression-like behaviors but actually restores connections between brain cells damaged by chronic stress.

[Scientific American]
Recent finds suggest that the small population that gave rise to all humans alive today survived by exploiting a unique combination of resources along the southern coast of Africa.

[BBC News]
Scientists say they have located the brain areas that may determine how sociable a person is.

[Telegraph.co.uk]
People who enjoy a dream-filled sleep are significantly better at recalling information and making links between facts when they wake.

[SciDev.net]
Nano "tea bag" purifies water.

[Science Daily]
Within a dangerous stomach bacterium, Yale University researchers have discovered an ancient but functioning genetic remnant from a time before DNA existed.

[PhysOrg.com]
The ability to remember is not just to glimpse into the past; a sharp memory can help with creativity, productivity and even the ability to imagine the future.

[Guardian.co.uk]
Are you ready for a world without antibiotics?

[Discovery News]
DIY kit puts satellites into orbit for $8,000.

[Technology Review]
Caloric restriction and exercise slow muscle decline in mice.

[ScienceDaily]
Childhood personality traits predict adult behavior: we remain recognizably the same person, study suggests.