This week: Why life expectancy for women is decreasing in some parts of the U.S. Iceland crowdsources its new constitution. How brain scans of teenagers can predict future pop hits, and may even be able to determine whether they’ll grow up to be a criminal.
| You might have learned about the hidden elves of Iceland if you read the Michael Lewis article we blogged about recently. (Note: for Icelandic pushback to Lewis’s colorful tales, see here.) The Icelandic government apparently takes these elves very seriously, and often requires that new construction sites be certified as clear of elves before building begins. So how do . . .
Icelanders love taking insane risks. In 1973, when a volcanic eruption threatened to wipe out a town on the island of Heimaey, they bet they could stop the lava flow by shooting it with millions of gallons of frigid Icelandic sea water. Unbelievably, they won. Nobody in human history had beaten a volcano before, and nobody’s done it since. That’s . . .
It doesn’t seem fair that one person can be so good at so many things. Nathan Myhrvold is one such person. He is probably still best known as the former chief technology officer of Microsoft. These days, he runs an invention company and spends his free time digging up dinosaur bones, experimenting with old and new cooking methods, and taking . . .