FAA Flight Delay Info

The FAA has a nice website / map titled "Flight Delay Information - Air Traffic Control System Command Center" that lists all the major airports, and what delays there are (and why).

US Is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy

Not sure if this is new news, but a resent study by folks in Princeton and Northwestern University have found: (from slashdot, and also in The New Yorker)
after extensive analysis of 1,779 policy issues, that the U.S. is in fact an oligarchy and not ademocracy. What this means is that, although 'Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance,' 'majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.' Their study (PDF), to be published in Perspectives on Politics, found that 'When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.'"

Why Do We Yawn?

There are some great science youtube channels out there, and one is the Sci Show.  In this episode, Hank Green takes about 2 minutes to explain why animals yawn (its not because your sleepy).