October 2011
68 posts
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When the Nurse Wants to Be Called ‘Doctor’ →
Gardiner Harris of The New York Times on the latest controversy tearing the U.S. apart: should you call a nurse with a doctorate “Dr.”?
Dr. Roland Goertz, the board chairman of the American Academy of Family Physicians, says that physicians are worried that losing control over “doctor,” a word that has defined their profession for centuries, will be followed by the loss of control...
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Whales navigate Northwest Passage for first time... →
Emma Woollacott, TG Daily:
Researchers from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources used satellite tracking to monitor the movements of the whales - and found that, last year, whales from both oceans entered the passage to reach an area called Viscount Melville Sound.
Still think climate change isn’t a big deal? It could seriously change the ecosystems in our oceans.
...
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Wikipedia: Learned Hand →
One of the people mentioned in the previous Ken Burns piece I linked is Learned Hand, a U.S. judge I’ve never heard of before. I checked him out on the Wikipedias. Turns out that, in addition to having an amazing, amazing name, this guy was a bit of a badass:
Department of Justice worker Judith Coplon had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for stealing and attempting to pass on defense...
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Ken Burns: Is it the end of civility (again)? →
Ken Burns has a new miniseries out, Prohibition. It’s a collaboration with Lynn Novick on, unsurprisingly for people in the United States, prohibition in the United States. The first part aired yesterday, and the second and third air today and tomorrow.
Burns wrote a piece for USA Weekend about the social climate of the 1910s and 1920s, with an emphasis on how it was a similar situation to...
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Drunken parrot season begins in Darwin, Australia →
Australian Geographic:
Carers in Darwin say they are bracing for hundreds of sick birds, as the annual ‘drunk lorikeet’ season rolls around. It happens each year towards the end of the dry season and the beginning of the wet in October-November.
Experts say they are not sure if the lorikeets are actually drunk, but they do have tell-tale symptoms. “They exhibit odd...
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R.I.P. The Andy Rooney Game →
I couldn’t resist one more Andy Rooney related link. Joe Mande has been editing Andy’s segment’s down to the just the first and last lines since 2007 — new to me though. As a swan song, Mande posts his top five favorite entries of all time and boy, they’re great.
(Via David Cairns.)
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Duck survives 100km/h car crash, makes full... →
How does this even happen? Incredible.
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Wikipedia: Meego (TV series) →
Here’s Wikipedia’s synopsis of CBS’s short-lived TV series Meego:
Meego ([Bronson] Pinchot) is a 9,000-year-old shape-shifting alien from the planet “Marmazon 4.0”. After Meego’s ship crashes, he is discovered by three children; Maggie (Michelle Trachtenberg), Alex (Jonathan Lipnicki), and Trip Parker (Erik von Detten, later played by Will Estes). The children...
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Taking iPads into battle →
W.J. Hennigan wrote a pretty nice piece for the Los Angeles Times about the use of smartphone and tablet technology by the U.S. military:
Frustrated that he had to flip through dozens of maps stuffed inside his chopper, Carlson, 31, loaded the documents onto his personal iPad, enabling him to zoom in, zoom out and quickly move from one map to another.
Carlson’s brainstorm shortened the...
September 2011
51 posts
2 tags
Economists say adult circumcision not best... →
Oren Dorell, USA Today:
A group of top world economists said Wednesday that adult male circumcision, a global priority for preventing HIV infection, is not nearly as cost-effective as other methods of prevention.
A successful adult male circumcision effort would require “a large public campaign to get people into the clinic,” said Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus...
