Interesting Links for 20-11-2016

[andrewducker]

New drug dispenser may turn human beings into weapons against mosquitos

(tags: mosquito Malaria Technology )

On Rural America: Understanding Isn’t The Problem

(tags: religion Education usa politics )

Looking for atheism in the ancient world

(tags: history atheism religion )

How to make a nice cup of tea

(tags: tea advice )

How you get from here to concentration camps

(tags: history germany nazis )

Who are the villains in the Indiana Jones movies?

(tags: movies )

Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories

(tags: children parenting war games )

You can make people less racist - but only if you're the same kind of person as them

(tags: racism twitter )

Manufacturing Jobs Aren’t Coming Back

(tags: Technology automation robots usa jobs politics society )

EU nurses are suffering racist abuse and heading home

(tags: europe nhs uk racism )

Shared epigenetic changes underlie different types of autism

(tags: autism epigenetics genetics )

Virtual reality to aid Auschwitz war trials of concentration camp guards

(tags: Auschwitz VirtualReality germany )

German Cities Are Solving The Age-Old Public Toilet Problem

(tags: germany toilets )

Comments

[frith]

I use llamas as weapons of biting fly destruction. I spray them on the legs with a permethrin insecticide for livestock and my biting fly population has crashed. I live at the edge of a swampy woodlot and there used to be a lot of mosquitoes. Now there are hardly any and I don't get mosquito larvae in my rain barrel anymore.

Key points: llamas don't groom and thus they don't lick off the insecticide. Only biting and pest insects are poisoned, reducing impact on innocuous insect populations. Biting insects are more attracted to livestock than to humans. It doesn't work so well if you only have a few weaponized animals in an area where there is a large population of non-weaponized blood meals to be had.