In the last few months gambling has become a popular way for lawmakers to help their struggling economy. Isn't it funny to find the same body of lawmakers who once used to accuse these games that people like us love to play for mental relaxation or challenge as factors for demoralizing societies now thinking about them as a way to improve the sinking economy?

Earlier today Wikimedia announced a generous $2 million grant to the foundation from the Google Charity Fund at the Tides Foundation. This is the first gift to the Wikimedia Foundation from Google, and as an unrestricted gift it enables the foundation to support operations for Wikipedia and its other free knowledge projects across multiple priorities.

We have reached an interesting point in moving toward digital technology. The the barriers between paper and paperless offices are no longer technical but cultural. The components of a paperless office are readily available and not particularly expensive.

Soundcloud and Tumblr are leading the way in both of their respective fields, and combining the two by embedding SoundCloud's audio player is a popular way of sharing music.

By far my favorite book on the research methods, Unobtrusive Measures (first published in 1966), is a skeptical romp through social science where the authors take the position that most of what we call social science is wrong. The theme of the book is that research is likely wrong because research design is very difficult and researchers too easily substitute received wisdom and procedure for hard thinking about designing studies, experiments, measures, tests, and so on.

At least (and at last), that's the news from the US Department of Transportation. The Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, in a policy announcement reported in the “Autopia” blog at Wired, said that the department will aim to give as much weight to the needs of cyclists and pedestrians as it does to the needs of motorists.

Marijuana can be a promising treatment for some specific, pain-related medical conditions, according to California researchers who presented an update of their findings Wednesday to the California Legislature and also released them to the public. ”I think the evidence is getting better and better that marijuana, or the constituents of cannabis, are useful at least in the adjunctive treatment of neuropathy,” Igor Grant, MD, executive vice-chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California.

Yesterday, the Toronto Star had an excellent article about a new security threat introduced by, of all things, photocopy machines. It really makes no sense to have a strict security policy for your office computers, if the photocopier is down the hall passing out information to anyone who asks. These machines, like PBX equipment, need to be secured with the same care that the computers get.

I'm actually quite surprised I haven't seen a story like this before. According to a post on the Threat Level blog at Wired, a disgruntled former employee of Texas Auto Center, in Austin TX, managed to disable about 100 cars of the firm's customers, using a Web-based system that was intended to be a sort of electronic "Repo Man."

Frequent exposure to sunlight may reduce the risk of renal cell carcinoma in men, according to a study published in the March 8th online edition of Cancer by a team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, MD.

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