February 8
Health Care: Who Knows 'Best'? "...comparative research on effectiveness is only part of the strategy to improve care. A second science has captured the imagination of policymakers in the White House: behavioral economics. This field attempts to explain pitfalls in reasoning and judgment that cause people to make apparently wrong decisions; its adherents believe in policies that protect against unsound clinical choices. But there is a schism between presidential advisers in their thinking over whether legislation should be coercive, aggressively pushing doctors and patients to do what the government defines as best, or whether it should be respectful of their own autonomy in making decisions. The President and Congress appear to be of two minds. How this difference is resolved will profoundly shape the culture of health care in America." Interesting NY Review of Books article by
Jerome Groopman.
posted by cog_nate at 7:08 PM - 1 comment
He was an enigma, a man looking for a home, producing writing that was cryptic and full of longing.... the McSweeneys insisted that the use of the name was acceptable, even appropriate, given Timothy's background as an artist and search for connection and meaning through the written word.
The
real Timothy McSweeney, after whom
Dave Eggers'
website was named, has
died. (hattip:
Kottke)
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:29 PM - 9 comments The singer Pink's recent
performance at the Grammy's evoked
this reaction from comedian Joe Rogan:
Her performance was like Jimi Hendrix doing the star spangled banner while Michael Jackson moon walked and Susan Boyle sang back up. The song, "Glitter in the Air," is from Pink's 2008 album "
Funhouse." Much of that album was Pink's reflections on the breakup of her marriage to
motocross star
Carey Hart. But the story between Pink and Hart doesn't end there...
[more inside]
posted by bguest at 4:48 PM - 74 comments The United States and Australia have long shared a peaceful alliance, but it was not always so. In 1942, U.S servicemen and Australian soldiers fought openly and violently in what is known today as
The Battle of Brisbane.
[more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 at 3:56 PM - 25 comments "
Imagine, amid the grey serge of wartime France, a tribe of youngsters with all the colourful decadence of punks or teddy boys. Wearing zoot suits cut off at the knee (the better to show off their brightly coloured socks), with hair sculpted into grand quiffs, and shoes with triple-height soles - looking like glam-rock footwear 30 years early - these were the kids who would lay the foundations of nightclubbing. Ladies and gentlemen,
les Zazous."
[more inside]
posted by Paragon at 3:50 PM - 11 comments Found Functions. An elegant demonstration of beauty in mathematics (and landscape).
Nikki Graziano is a math and photography student at Rochester Institute of Technology; some of her photographs were recently featured in
Wired. Graziano "overlays graphs and their corresponding equations onto her carefully composed photos. ... Graziano doesn’t go out looking for a specific function but lets one find her instead. Once she’s got an image she likes, Graziano whips up the numbers and tweaks the function until the graph it describes aligns perfectly with the photograph."
posted by jokeefe at 3:49 PM - 24 comments
Came across
this video today and thought I'd share.
The original track of Darth Vader's voice as performed by the British actor that played him,
David Prowse. Imagine how
different Star Wars would have been if they had left it like this.
From the 2004 documentary
Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy.
posted by WhoseVoice at 1:18 PM - 49 comments Hi, I'm Vincent "Vinny" Van Gogh...artist, mad man, dead guy.
I live with James T Kirk and Jesus in the City of Industry--where we pretty much just watch TV all day.
This is my blog about it.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:32 AM - 26 comments
The Qanat; a water management system from C7th BC still in use today;is one of the wonders of the world, and keeps the desert
alive.
This fascinating
17 min video from UNESCO is a good introduction to the subject.
Cooling provided by Qanat’s is still in use in
Yazd, Iran.
Modern warfare scores a
gigantic fail in the battle for hearts and minds.
(
wiki)
posted by adamvasco at 7:11 AM - 19 comments
Slacker is a unique film written and directed by Richard Linklater that follows the life of various characters in a Austin, Texas. Mind-numbingly boring or oddly captivating, Slacker provided an inspiration to other independent movies of the era and helped established the image of slacker as we see it today. Quoting
Ebert, "We don't get a story, but we do get a feeling. "
A Salon retrospective.
posted by mikepaco at 5:45 AM - 74 comments
February 7
Prophetic Pictures from Menominie, Wisconsin. In 1905, high school senior Albert Hansen took photogaphs of his graduating classmates at Menominie HS. Not as they were -- but as they believed, or hoped, or feared they would be in the decades to come.
Dorothy M. Jesse was going to be a mathematician, and
Fred Quilling a pharmacist.
Alice M. Tilleson would be a prominent socialite, whose "eccentric ideas with reference to danger, force her to cling to that old fashioned vehicle, the automobile, instead of the new wheel-less aerial motor car." William C. Klatt, a future physician,
would operate on disembodied heads. And Hansen himself
was destined for the hobo's life. The Wisconsin Historical Society has
the whole collection available online, together with the text from the yearbook and the truth, as best the Society could learn, of how the graduates' actual future compared with prophecy. (Spoiler: Fred Quilling really did become a pharmacist.) Just one of the many remarkable collections at
Wisconsin Historical Images.
posted by escabeche at 11:44 PM - 25 comments
The Who Dat nation is composed of
long-suffering,
widespread,
well-dressed,
ballsy,
divinely inspired (?),
stubborn,
parading,
boundary-crossing,
musical, and - as of tonight -
very happy citizens.
What's the deal with "Who Dat," anyway?
posted by honeydew at 10:39 PM - 84 comments "Your responsibility is to defend Yertle. You may argue that Yertle is the king and, as protector of the realm, has a right to order his subjects to do whatever he thinks is necessary. He thought it was necessary to see what was beyond his pond and pressed other turtles into service so that he could see that far. They were hurt in the line of duty, so he wasn't personally liable for Sadie's injury. He did not realize how young she was, or he wouldn't have ordered her to join the stack of turtles."
Turtle on Trial, a lesson from the
ABA for
Law Day, May 1.
posted by ocherdraco at 9:34 PM - 17 comments You may be active in social media on your own account. That’s good. But please remember that whether you are on your own time or company time, you’re still a member of our team. And the judgment you exercise on your own time reflects on the judgment you exercise at work.
There’s only one you – at play and at work.
posted by h0p3y at 5:40 PM - 68 comments "If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun and just end it all right away."
Audio recordings from interviews with former slaves, conducted by WPA folklorists and others, including the Lomaxes and Zora Neale Hurston. Only these
twenty-six audio recordings of people formerly enslaved in the antebellum American South have ever been found.
posted by Miko at 1:25 PM - 15 comments In Texas, two nurses anonymously reported a doctor to the
Texas Medical Board for what they considered to be malpractice. The doctor complained of harrassment and local law enforcement found out who filed the complaint. Now
one nurse is being prosecuted for reporting. The charges against the other nurse were
dropped due to prosecutor's discretion.
The medical board has warned of a dangerous chilling effect if the charges are pursued. But, the sheriff and the DA are convinced that the case is valid. Regardless of the outcome, a civil suit has already been filed against the hospital, the doctor, the sheriff and the DA's office on behalf of at least one of the nurses alleging violations of her First Amendment rights, among other things.
Is it a case of prosecutorial misconduct or a vindictive nurse trying to get a doctor ousted? Trial begins Feb. 8.
posted by Leezie at 7:14 AM - 49 comments February 6
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