2012 mid-year link clearance

Another round of the semi-annual link clearance.

• Seattle says, "My hometown is better than yours." Chuck Norris fact: Chuck Norris learned how to be awesome from Seattle.
• What is it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics? What's even more interesting is that many of these traits apply to other skills, like programming and debugging.
• Conspiracy Über Alles: Once you entertain one conspiracy theory, you start to take them all, even if they are contradictory. For example, the more strongly you believe that Princess Diana may have faked her own death, the more strongly you also believe that she may have been murdered. "The monological nature of conspiracy belief appears to be driven not by conspiracy theories directly supporting one another but by broader beliefs supporting conspiracy theories in general."
• Know Your Graffiti, a three-part series on the semiotics of graffiti in South Los Angeles. (Part 2 helps you distinguish different types of graffiti, and Part 3 delves into the messages hidden inside.)
• New York Magazine has an entertaining (yet informative) Absolute Moron's Guide to the Euro Debt Crisis. There's also a Part II.
• I can't help but admire that people from Cleveland have a good sense of humor about themselves. (Second video.)
• You've seen it on TV: Performing an emergency tracheostomy with a ballpoint pen. But what brand pen should you use? The paper Airflow efficacy of ballpoint pen tubes: a consideration for use in bystander cricothyrotomy finds that the majority of ballpoint pen tubes are unsuitable. Read the paper to learn which brands work.
• You've seen it on TV: House Hunters, a reality-adjacent program ostensibly about finding and purchasing a new home. You'll be shocked, I'm sure, to learn that it's a total fabrication. Here's an interview with one couple who appeared on the show.
• This, my friends, is rocket science. The mechanism for landing the Curiosity Rover on Mars appears to have come straight out of a high-budget sci-fi movie. Just when you think it couldn't get more insane, it gets more insane. This will either be a triumph of engineering or a triumph of hubris. Let's hope it's the former.
• CamelCamelCamel is a Web site that tracks price history for various products on Amazon and other online retailers. You can even sign up to be alerted when the price of an item you fancy drops below a target price. Personally, I'm watching 2TB hard drives.
• Linda Holmes sometimes needs to step in and say the obvious: If you're writing a serious food review of the Burger King bacon sundae, then perhaps it is you who are missing the point.

And, as always, the obligatory plug for my column in TechNet Magazine:

• Early Birds and Night Owls
• Power to the Power User
• Why Can't We All Just Work Together?
• Ship It
• Dusting for Fingerprints
• Bring on the Lab Rats. (Here's a bonus link for bug-hugging.)