It came to them that day: they would make the first pole-to-pole journey fueled entirely by manpower and natural power. More precisely, they would travel between the geomagnetic poles. They thought it would be a far bigger undertaking than Everest, an expedition called “180° Pole-to-Pole.” On April 8, 2007, off they went on the big adventure. They skied and sledded through Greenland, then sailed 3,000 miles to New York. They cycled to Texas, accompanied at various points by Hutchins, relatives, and assistants they hired along the way, while Atkinson raised funds back in England. They pedaled through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. They sailed to Ecuador and then cycled the rest of the way through South America. From there they continued on to the magnetic South Pole—a 9,000-mile hell ride highlighted by hurricane-force winds and 80-foot waves. By the time the expedition ended, in Australia, they had traveled 26,000 miles in 396 days.

via Higher, Colder, Deadlier | Culture | Vanity Fair.

This is surely one of the most remarkable infographics we've ever posted. Created by social scientist Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán, it documents the organizational structure and almost limitless influence of Mexico's Michoacan drug family. And it teaches you a great deal about why, exactly, the family is so hard to combat -- and why its power seems so pervasive. The infographic itself details various wings of the Michoacan cartel -- or La Familia as it's better known -- alongside various government agencies. (The short hand for the acronyms: Anything starting with "FUN" is a Michoacan drug cell; those starting with "NAR" are government drug agencies.) The arrows show links between each one, meaning they're sharing information. But what's most interesting is that the size of the bubbles shows how much information each cell of the organization is able to share...

We're not quite sure how accurate the information is or how it was gathered, but what strikes you is that the group is far from centralized. Instead, it's extraordinarily diffuse, much like Al Qaeda, for example. And that in turn surely contributes to the fear the organization sows -- it's power must seem limitless in Mexico precisely because its influence, even when small, is always very close at hand, due to the prevalence of tiny, semi-autonomous cells everywhere you look.

via Co.Design.

Click on the link to see the infographic.

Tom Friedman:

Having traveled to both China and India in the last few weeks, here’s a scary thought I have: What if — for all the hype about China, India and globalization — they’re actually underhyped? What if these sleeping giants are just finishing a 20-year process of getting the basic technological and educational infrastructure in place to become innovation hubs and that we haven’t seen anything yet?

via NYTimes.com.

From John Allen Paulos:

Consider the two boys problem in probability. Given that a family has two children and that at least one of them is a boy, what is the probability that both children are boys? The most common solution notes that there are four equally likely possibilities — BB, BG, GB, GG, the order of the letters indicating birth order. Since we’re told that the family has at least one boy, the GG possibility is eliminated and only one of the remaining three equally likely possibilities is a family with two boys. Thus the probability of two boys in the family is 1/3. But how do we come to think that, learn that, believe that the family has at least one boy? What if instead of being told that the family has at least one boy, we meet the parents who introduce us to their son? Then there are only two equally like possibilities — the other child is a girl or the other child is a boy, and so the probability of two boys is 1/2.

Many probability problems and statistical surveys are sensitive to their intensional contexts (the phrasing and ordering of questions, for example). Consider this relatively new variant of the two boys problem. A couple has two children and we’re told that at least one of them is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability the couple has two boys? Believe it or not, the Tuesday is important, and the answer is 13/27. If we discover the Tuesday birth in slightly different intensional contexts, however, the answer could be 1/3 or 1/2.

via NYTimes.com.

Spent the evening with Jake & Billy from Nuru. absolutely wonderful guys with a vision, strategy, and execution wrapped up in a God-centered humility that moved my heart and set my mind racing. i don't often say this, but these guys are the real thing - and i want to follow them as they follow Jesus...

Nuru International is a social venture dedicated to fighting the greatest humanitarian crisis of our generation: extreme poverty.Our mission is to eradicate extreme poverty by holistically empowering rural communities to achieve self-sufficiency and inspiring the developed world to confront the crisis of extreme poverty.

via Nuru International - Ending Extreme Poverty.

Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The new position could have a huge impact on medicine and on the biotechnology industry.

via NYTimes.com.

More:

The issue of gene patents has long been a controversial and emotional one. Opponents say that genes are products of nature, not inventions, and should be the common heritage of mankind. They say that locking up basic genetic information in patents actually impedes medical progress. Proponents say genes isolated from the body are chemicals that are different from those found in the body and therefore are eligible for patents.

The Patent and Trademark Office has sided with the proponents and has issued thousands of patents on genes of various organisms, including on an estimated 20 percent of human genes.

But in its brief, the government said it now believed that the mere isolation of a gene, without further alteration or manipulation, does not change its nature.