links for 2011-08-28

The rental car turned onto the sidewalk behind the registrar's office and rolled slowly down the brick path between a dining hall and the English department, a few steps from my office. "Beyond Time," an upbeat German dance song, played on the car's stereo. The driver, Mohammed Taheri-Azar, had just graduated from the University of North Carolina three months earlier, so he knew the campus well. Beyond the dining hall was a plaza known as the Pit, where students were hanging out at lunchtime on a warm winter day in early 2006. Taheri-Azar planned to kill as many of them as possible.

A forensics expert in the article explained that semen stains are smeared "all over the place" in many other hotels, the traces visible from their telltale glow under UV lamps. Wait, does semen really glow in the dark?

The Earth is warming, with profound consequences for the roof of the world. Below, explore the Arctic's shrinking ice caps (shown in September of each year, when the ice reaches its annual low) and how shipping routes and extraction of natural resources might be affected.