Link Dump - 11 June 2011

Engineering:

✭ Calamities: Engineering Design Failures
A column by an MIT engineering professors that goes through engineering failures (mostly materials failures) and their post-accident investigation.

✭ Michael Bay’s Scenario « xkcd
Great discussion from XKCD about the rising levees, with a plug for McPhee's "Control of Nature."

Evil lawyers:

✭NYT: At Well-Paying Law Firms, Some Going cheap in Legal. Wonder why some firms took so long to try to cut costs in legal, while cutting their engineering staffs to the bone? Maybe they thought the consequences of crappy engineering wouldn't be as bad as crappy corporate defense. Ask that to BP and see how they respond.

✭ NOLA.com : Sen. Vitter's spokesman dares Obama administration to prosecute his boss Umm, Mann Act (aka- the "White Slavery Act" with its 10-year statute of limitations) anyone?

YouTube:

✭ YouTube - ‪Bear Grylls turns a dead seal into a wet suit‬‏

Bear Grylls makes homemade wetsuit: Umm..

✭ YouTube - buran briefing. Bonus points for 80's era Soviet music.

✭ She texted. We kicked her out. : Blog : Austin : Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

Note to self: if ever in Austin, go to this theater:

Miscellaneous:

✭ Joplin Sat Images

✭ NYT: Ex-Mossad Chief Meir Dagan Slams Gov't When Mossad think you're bloodthirsty...

✭IEEE on Chernobyl and Fukushima radiation deaths Verdict: It's VERY hard to put a precise number on it

UPDATE- a few more:

✭ The First Item on my Christmas List...

✭ Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education | The Nation . From 1971 to 2001, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in English declined by 20 percent, but the number awarded in math and statistics declined by 55 percent. The only areas of the liberal arts that saw an increase in BAs awarded were biology and psychology—and this at a time when aggregate enrollment expanded by something like 75 percent.

✭ 5 Ignored WikiLeaks Hits of 2011.