Interesting if true...
ddobbs | September 24, 2009[Note: An update from 25 Sept 09 is at bottom]
Here's a sad mess. It seems a
potentially important finding -- that getting a seasonal flu shot might
increase risk of contracting the swine flu -- is being sat on by a
journal, with the authors forbidden from talking about it, until they
get through the slo-mo publishing process.
The finding may or
may not be accurate. But as it regards an important issue, it needs to
be vetted and discussed openly, with the data at hand, as soon as
possible. But it's not.
This is a tricky situation, to be
sure. There are, at least theoretically, both good and…
ddobbs | January 6, 2009From Mind Hacks: Deodorants boost sexiness by getting men in the groove:
I keep running into fascinating articles that The Economist ran over the Christmas period and this one is no exception - it covers research that suggests that men's deodorants do increase sexual attractiveness, but by increasing confidence and hence the behaviour of the wearer. The smell alone seems to have little impact on women.
ddobbs | 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 foothold. But that could change at any time. Disaster lurks everywhere, from the deepest reaches of space to the very bowels of our planet. We've recruited nine prominent Canadian scientists (and one science fiction writer) and asked them to imagine how they think the world might end. We bring you The…
ddobbs | December 8, 2008A 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:
Malcolm Gladwell, Medtronics, Deutsches Museum, Wildlife
ddobbs | December 2, 2008A 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, also has an interesting piece on a Senate bill designed to allow states to reward organ donors.
PhamaLot on Pharma's Influence on the Media.
On a related note, a Columbia Journalism Review piece on Science Reporting by Press Release
Andrew Sullivan on The AP's Cowardice.
Hospitals Fail to Take Basic…
ddobbs | September 8, 2008
Hi Readers.
Wanted to clue you in to a couple web pleasures. One is Edge: GIN, TELEVISION, AND COGNITIVE SURPLUS A Talk By Clay Shirky, in which Shirky talks about how society's "cognitive surplus" -- the time and brain power contained in the free time created by the Industrial Revolution and the 40-hour work week -- has moved from building cultural infrastructure (libraries, democracies, museums) in the 19th century to TV in the post-War 20th century and the Internet (at least for many people) in the 21st century.
The benefit of this last move, Shirky argues, is that the Internet can…
ddobbs | June 16, 2008From Mind Hacks, which turns up such gems (and thoughtful essays) with astonishing regularity
Serious threats distinguished by style over substance:
Last September's Journal of Forensic Sciences had an intriguing study comparing email and handwritten threats to members of the United States Congress.
While threats by letter were more thoughtfully composed, they need to taken more seriously as they were more often followed by a threatening physical approach and more frequently written by people with a significant criminal history.
A comparison of email versus letter threat contacts toward…
ddobbs | March 6, 2008There's been a lot of attention the last couple years to the possibility of brain-based lie detector tests -- most of it premature. That coverage, I see now, has overlooked (as did I!) a 2005 study that showed compulsive liars are wired differently -- in an unexpected way -- than the rest of us. NPR's Radio Lab covered it this morning. You can get both the text and the audio at NPR: Radio Lab: Into the Brain of a Liar.
Here's the opening:
Morning Edition, March 6, 2008 ·
We all lie -- once a day or so, according to most studies. But usually we tell little lies, like "your new haircut…
ddobbs | February 7, 2008And this:
Japan scientists make paper planes for space (Reuters)
Reuters - A spacecraft made of folded
paper zooming through the skies may sound far-fetched, but
Japanese scientists plan to launch paper planes from the
International Space Station to see if they make it back to
Earth.
I am sad that I can find no pictures.
ddobbs | February 7, 2008Go figure:
Apparently immaculate Komodos hatched (AP)
AP - Two Komodo dragons have hatched at the Sedgwick County Zoo, apparently without the fertilization of a male. The dragons, both males, are believed to be the first in North America known to have hatched by parthenogenesis, which occurs naturally in some species, including invertebrates and lower plants. It happens more rarely in some vertebrates.
ddobbs | December 17, 2006
my fiddle, trying to get atop a Beethoven Trio
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The last month or so I've been pondering what to photograph, as I walk around town, to convey the disturbing wierdness of the weather we've had these last months in Vermont. I live in Montpelier, which is the nation's smallest state capital and generally one of its coldest. (Also the only one without a MacDonald's). It's should be damn cold here by now -- it should have been cold weeks ago -- but we've had four months of autumn. Too many ways to count it. Take your pick:
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ddobbs | October 4, 2006Boing Boing points out that Fox News has at least thrice identified disgraced Congressman Mark Foley — Republican of Florida, former chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, cyberstalker of adolescent Congressional pages — as a Democrat.
See it to believe it.
Apparently they identified him in captions several times as Mark Foley (D-FL):
and another time they asked, in a caption accompanying an interview with Democratic House Leader Harry Reid, "Did Dems Ignore Foley E-mails to Preserve Seat?":
This seems incredible -- but then again, seems a logical extension of an…