1. Mapping the 2010 U.S. Census. This has been out for a few weeks, but it is still worth looking at if you haven’t heard about it yet. The New York Times has created a neat tool which visualizes the results of the U.S. census. You can zoom in at different levels (states, counties, census tracts) to see all sorts of demographic information about any place in the United States.

2. Earth Is Not Random. A summary of a scientific paper which tried to quantify whether the Earth has unusual properties which led to its biodiversity and the evolution of humans. The authors conclude that “Earth-Moon properties,” “[i]ndividual planet locations,” and “[t]he overall structure of the Solar System” indicate that the Earth is well-situated to have a stable climate. They observe that stable climates seem to be related to high rates of biodiversity, and that this indicates “that planets with Earth-like levels of biodiversity are likely to be very rare.” If true, maybe this is an explanation why SETI programs have not yet found evidence of other technological civilizations in the universe.

3. “Big Content” Is Strangling American Innovation. From the Harvard Business Review: Big media companies “‘do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. Example after example abounds of this attitude; whether it was the VCR which was ‘to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone’ as famed movie industry lobbyist Jack Valenti put it at a congressional hearing, or MP3 technology, which they tried to sue out of existence. . . . The sensible thing for them to do would be to learn how to deal with the change. Instead, their approach to every generation of technology is either to attempt to stymie it so badly that nobody wants it, or to stop it altogether through their influence with lawmakers in Washington DC.”

4. Seasteading: Striking at the Root of Bad Government. A possible solution to bad governments: develop the technology to create autonomous communities living on ocean platforms. It will make it easier for people to start their own country with better rules and institutions and encourage all governments to get better as they compete to attract citizens.