Beauty and the Brainy

According to this article, beautiful people also tend to be smart people and vice versa. Their argument:

    Intelligent men achieve higher status and marry beautiful women, who pass their genes
    on to their disproportionately attractive and smart kids, who win mates who are
    good-looking or brainy, and so on.

As far as I can see, the only reasonable statement in the article is:
    And if you come up way short on all fronts? Well, there's always the Internet.

Via this blog:
(The numbers aren't perfect.)

If the Earth's current population was reduced to 100 people, but all the existing demographic ratios remained the same, the people would have the following characteristics:

· 59 would be Asians
· 9 would be European
· 5 North America (US & Canada)
· 9 Latin & South America
· 12 would be from Africa
· 1 Australia/New Zealand

51 would be female; 49 would be male

70 would be non-White; 30 would be White

32 would be Christian; 68 would be non-Christian (Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Non-Religious)

· 16 would speak Chinese; 9 would speak English
· 8 would speak Hindu; 6 would speak Spanish
· 6 would speak Russian; 4 would speak Arabic
· 51 would speak the other 200+ languages

50 percent of all wealth would be controlled by 6 people, and all 6 would be from the United States

· 80 would live in substandard housing
· 70 would be unable to read
· 50 would suffer from malnutrition
· 1 would be near death, 1 would be near birth
· Only one would have a college education
· 1 would own a computer

3 billion people on Earth live on $2/day or less

Making Linux Faster

This post was inspired by Amit Singh's  article Making An Operating System Faster , This will serve as a place holder for the techniques that can be used to make linux faster( boot faster, and run applications faster). The following is the summary of the techniques listed by the Amit Singh. Some of them seem to have rudimentary implementations in linux already. Please post your comments and knowledge regarding anything you know that can make linux booting and applications faster.

Summary

• BootCache
• Kernel Extensions Cache
• Hot File Clustering
• Working Set Detection
• On-the-fly Defragmentation
• Prebinding
• Helping Developers Create Code Faster
• Helping Developers Create Faster Code
• Journaling in HFS Plus
• Instant-on

(more)