Links for Saturday, December 22, 2007

• Financial Armageddon: A Mind-Boggling Data Series – “When paper assets rapidly increase to the levels of recent years (20% or more of GDP), well, a bubble that swells… and then deflates… can wreak economic havoc. That scenario is unfolding right now in the real estate market, and among lenders who “spread around the risk” to every corner (and under every rug) in the entire financial system.“
• Pharyngula: Evolution of Vertebrate Eyes – “The message is that, once again, all the heavy lifting, the evolution of a muscled eyeball with a lens and retinal circuitry, was accomplished early, between 550 and 500 million years ago. Most of what biology has been doing since is tweaking — significant tweaking, I’m sure, but the differences between a lamprey eye and our eyes are in the details, not the overall structure.“