10 Thoughts for July 7, 2014

1. Hormones and chemicals that mimic hormones are the primary suspect for a bunch of recently discovered intersex fish in a group of rivers in PA.  Imagine if conservatives and libertarians got their way and eliminated the EPA...we could all become intersex humans.
2. Illegal immigrants or undocumented residents?  If their immigration were illegal, then you would expect them to be prosecuted and incarcerated; if they were undocumented, you would expect them to be deported.
3. Climate change, it turns out, will be worse.  That Antarctic glacier melting will be much faster, because Antarctic wind changes will heat up the water higher than previously believed.  
4. When Billy was possessed.  Not everyone will get it, especially kids.
5. This UK pedophile scandal is not (yet) extensive, but it digs deep into government, which is probably a lot worse -- pedophiles operating inside of government.
6. There are a lot of fonts online, carrying either the Apache or CC license for free commercial use.  But it's difficult to find good ones with extensive glyphs.  Most of them, though nice, do not extend beyond letters and numbers and so I do not install them.
7. I never wrote a post about Google IO 2014, but the reason isn't because I thought it was stale; rather, it was because it was such an enormous milestone in the future of tech, that it required an extremely long and intensive analysis to explain how monumental what happened.  Most people didn't seem to understand it, either, so they reported back that the change they saw was that the conference -- in line with WWDC -- moved emphasis back onto developers.  Indeed, the conference has always been about developers, but the underlying theme for the conference is that Google has spent a lot of time developing L -- the next iteration of Android -- for a wider future of the Internet of Things.
8. This blows the mind: Scientists may have accidentally discovered a switch in the brain that turns consciousness on / off.  We're not talking about being awake, but having your eyes wide open and losing consciousness.
9. Without support from Russia, Ukrainian rebels are rapidly losing ground.  Note the tension expressed by rebels to what they feel is abandonment by their benefactor (Russia).  It looks like the election of Petro Poroshenko was the turning point for Ukraine.  In the face of Ukraine signing a trade pact with the EU, Russia hasn't done much to stand in the way.
10. Okay, so now that the US has been eliminated, how have the World Cup games fared, in terms of American viewership?  In a word: Falloff.  The US - Belgium game garnered some 21M US viewers, but since then, the highest-watched game in the US was seen by just 6.4M Americans.  By comparison, some 60M Americans tuned into the SF-Seattle NFC Championship game, and over 111M watched the Super Bowl.  I think soccer is a fine sport, but it has nowhere near the amount of action and talent as in the NFL for the time being.  I know soccer fans want to trump up its popularity, but American Football is the number one sport in America.