Saturday roundup

A Sicilian town is growing accustomed to the tragedy of dead migrants.

Encroachment is pushing Brazil's indigenous people into favelas.

This will surprise no one who's been to India:

“These floods have turned Kashmir back 40 years,” said Abdul Samad, 65, as he sat on a bridge atop of a rice sack as if it were a prize, his family on either side. Below, the floodwaters still churned with debris and the carcass of a cow.

“We’re hungry. We have nothing to eat,” said Samad, still sweating from the exertion. “That’s why I’m fighting for a sack of rice at my age.”

Instead of moving in to help keep order among the starving crowd, Indian army soldiers watched from a parapet next door, laughing and filming the scene on their smartphones.

Keep you prescription drugs away from your kids.

Would the world be a better place had Gary Hart kept his $!@& in his pants?

As I've been saying: broadly dismissing people as "anti-science" is (usually) a cheap shot. I think it's appropriate only for settled science, which opens a new debate as to what is settled science. The safety of vaccines is settled science; anthropogenic climate change is settled science. Heliocentrism is settled science. The safety of GMOs may be, but the need/benefits are not.

On a related note, when is proton beam therapy necessary or at least worth it?

I agree with the overall theme of this piece on Richard Dawkins, i.e., that he's not edgy, but I've never cared much for the atheist movement, not only because of its misogyny and racism problems. I guess I just don't see atheism as a movement as preferable to any religion as a movement. This view was reinforced when I read about this guy, who got hit in the face with a dirty bomb:

During the next five-and-a-half months, McCluskey's deep Baptist faith sustained him as doctors laboriously extracted tiny bits of glass and razor-sharp pieces of metal embedded in his skin.

You want to tell this guy that his faith is misguided? Just let it go.

Dr. Higgs is not a believer in the multiverse.

I'd be very efficient at chin energy.

An e-bullying survivor speaks.

I couldn't read this whole TNR debate about the future of feminism, but there's some controversy for all. I haven't seen much backlash yet (then again, I haven't read the comments, or maybe the Beyonce wars have flamed out). I feel about Beyonce the way I feel about Kate Moss: I could care less about their product, but I respect their success and economic power, which belies the allegation that either is "exploiting" herself.

Slouching weighs on your soul.

These parody reviews do capture the ridiculousness of many Yelp reviews (eg., "why does this Mexican restaurant serve Mexican food? I was hoping for pasta.).

A fulsome list of everything you're doing wrong.