December 16, 2008
I won't replicate the Word-of-the-Day email every day, but this was too good not to pass on. "The Dingle duo are seriously concerned that Jasmine's about to go doolally."
doolally
PRONUNCIATION:
(DU-lah-lee)
MEANING:
adjective: Irrational, deranged, or insane.
ETYMOLOGY:
After Deolali, a small…
December 15, 2008
James Surowiecki gives us the bad news and the bad news about newspapers. After noting that ad revenue dropped 18 percent in the third quarter alone, he gets on to causes and ultimate effects:
People don’t use the Times less than they did a decade ago. They use it more. The difference is that today…
December 15, 2008
How did I miss this for 24 hours? From the Times Magazine's 8th Annual Year in Ideas issue - Vending Machine for Crows:
In June, Josh Klein revealed his master's-thesis project to a flock of crows at the Binghamton Zoo in south-central New York State. The New York University graduate student…
December 15, 2008
That's not me talking. I'm just saying reporting -- or linking, anyway, to:
twitter is fucking retarded.
With due apologies to Clive Thompson, whose writing I like, and who argues otherwise.
December 15, 2008
As time goes on, it seems the benefits offered by modern antidepressants seem to drop while the downsides seem to expand. A story in today's Boston Globe -- excerpted below -- suggests that up to half of people who take SSRIs suffer significant sexual side-effects.
Sexual "numbness." Lack of…
December 15, 2008
Carl Zimmer faces the wrath with cheerful good humor.
The source of his troubles:
December 15, 2008
It appears Obama is going to make a health-care system overhaul a top priority in his first year.
from the Tribune:
"The time is now to solve this problem," Obama said at a Chicago news conference where he announced that former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle would head his health-care team. "…
December 13, 2008
For, well, about 6 months now I've been meaning to riff on this riff about internet writing from Steamboats Are Ruining Everything. As I can't seem to get in tune, or plugged in, or somehting, I'll just let Steamboats take it away:
If I were to interpret those tugs, I would say that writing on the…
December 13, 2008
Amid much good reporting on the current economic mess has been some weird vicarious excitement -- the sort of giddy buzz of kids watching a disaster and simultaneously not realizing that it's real and hoping it gets worse. You see this in the many stories about the Great Depression, the implication…
December 10, 2008
Boing boing spots Virgin Mary in MRI
Bird flu round-up, from Great Beyond touches a few stories reporting some unsettling human deaths from bird flu. I think people are scared to cover bird flu these days: There was so much about it 2-3 years ago, then the epidemic didn't come (we're so impatient…
December 10, 2008
From The Great Beyond
Far East top in science subjects
Researchers in the US have released the latest figures comparing the maths and science abilities of 4th- and 8th-grade students in countries across the globe.
Far Eastern countries dominate the top tens, with Singapore top for science in both…
December 10, 2008
From Knight Science Journalism Tracker:
Phil. Inquirer: Four part series disembowels the Bush White House version of the EPA
Many reporters have dived pretty deep into the legal and regulatory changes wrought at the EPA in the last eight years and into the scientist-administrator Stephen Johnson…
December 10, 2008
Now this is serious vertical drop.
wingsuit base jumping from doubleA on Vimeo.
December 10, 2008
I frankly don't know what the right call is on bailing out Detroit. On one hand, smart people are saying that not doing so could dangerously deepen the recession. On the other, if business idiocy had a three-strikes policy, these companies would be doing life. While going to school in Ohio car…
December 9, 2008
INTERVIEWER
Could you say something of this process? When do you work? Do you keep to a strict schedule?
HEMINGWAY
When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and…
December 9, 2008
Looks like a special effects lab, but it's a bakery that makes bread in the shape (and look) of body parts. Via Biomedicine on Display, where you can find more photos as well as a link to this YouTube video of the baked goods.
My wife is an ace baker as well as a vegetarian. Not sure what she's…
December 9, 2008
Over at Neurophilosophy, Mo gracefully describes an elegant and insightful study of fear by Joan Chiao:
The amygdala's response to fearful facial expressions is automatic, and the ability to detect any sign of imminent danger in the environment is of equal importance to all people. Some have…
December 9, 2008
There's been a lot of buzz on the Net* about the Nature commentary on cognitive enhancement I blogged about yesterday, in which I noted that you need only think about coffee to realize what a slippery slope the cog enhancement issue presents.
If you want to experience first-hand just how slippery…
December 9, 2008
CBC Radio | Ten Ways the World Could End :
From the wonderful radio program Quirks & Quarks:
Despite what you may think, the universe is not necessarily a friendly place. Sure, things here on Earth have been pretty stable over the past few millennia, allowing human civilization to gain a…
December 8, 2008
Malcolm Gladwell on how to spot great teachers (and why we should want to):
Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year%u2019s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher…
December 8, 2008
At the New Republic, Seward Darby worries that Obama's choice for the head of his transition's education-policy team means he's not serious about shaking up the educational system:
In November, Barack Obama bewildered education reformers by tapping Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford professor who…
December 8, 2008
This time had to come: A group that includes some serious neuro-heavyweights, such as neuroscientists Michael Gazzaniga and Ronald Kessler and the highly prominent and influential neuroethicists Hank Greely and Martha Farah, has published in Nature an essay "Towards responsible use of cognitive-…
December 8, 2008
A few that rolled away with the tide ...
PsychCentral not impressed with Outliers
Look Who's in the Operating Room
From the Deutches Museum, tractors as core culture
And from Boing Boing, a Studley tool chest. And I was all excited to get my little canvas toolbag yesterday.
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Technorati Tags:…
December 8, 2008
I get a couple media-industry newsletters, which lately have made gruesome reading: The blood is running deep in most media companies, and today came the news that the New York Times, from which I get some of my better freelance assignments, is borrowing against its own brand-new building to meet…
December 4, 2008
Eva Sollberger of Seven Day has posted a charming video feature about the Christmas tree farm run by Jim and Steve Moffatt, of Craftsbury, Vermont -- a family that occupies a major part of my first book "The Northern Forest," which I wrote with my friend Richard Ober. I spent a lot of time with the…
December 2, 2008
A few that keep slipping out of my hands:
It's All in Your Head -- Sally Satel, in the Wall St Journal, on a recent study showing about half of American doctors use placebos in practice. Satel, who wrote an interesting piece NY Times Magazine piece a while back on her search for a kidney donor,…
December 2, 2008
Beautiful -- YouTube and Carnegie Hall are holding online auditions for the "world's' first collaborative online orchestra":
In short, YouTube is offering a new twist on the familiar formula of how to get to Carnegie Hall: Practice, practice, upload.
From the Washington Post, YouTube Announces…
December 2, 2008
via Daily Dish, with yet more at The World's Fair
Technorati Tags:
photography, art, Daily Dish, The World's' Fair
December 1, 2008
So says the Wall St. Journal's Health Blog:
Obama Presidency Could Bring Cheaper Medicines, Universal Coverage
Disclosure of interest: I spent about $10,000 this year on health insurance, $6000 out of pocket; owe $1200 to doctors and hospitals; and still haven't gone through my deductible.
December 1, 2008
Last month I drew notice to an Atlantic story about (and an interview with) Michelle Rhee, the Washington, D.C., school chancellor who is aggressively pressing reforms in that district, most notably an effort to replace tenured teacher tracks with a system emphasizing higher salaries but more…
