Link dump: 2009.07.22

From the four corners of the web:

• Greater Good Magazine | Why is There Peace? [Steven Pinker]: Violence is declining, argues psychologist Steven Pinker. What are we doing right?
• The bigger they get, the faster they go – the rise of the 'superhuman' athletes | Sport | The Guardian: Weight categories urged to make sprint races fairer; Usain Bolt 11 inches taller than his 1929 counterpart.
• Get Smarter | Jamais Cascio | The Atlantic Online
• "The METI Controversy": Should Detection by an Exo Civilization Be Viewed as a Threat?
  If we should pick up signals from alien civilizations, Stephen Hawking, our century's Einstein, warns: "we should have be wary of answering back, until we have evolved" a bit further.
• String theory hints at explanation for superconductivity : Nature News
  Baroque field gets fresh lease of life in condensed-matter physics.