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mefi
Down syndrome and Alzheimer's.
People with Down syndrome are much more likely to develop Alzheimer's, and at a much earlier age: three-quarters of them will get it by the age of 65, compared with one-tenth of the general population. This
Globe and Mail article looks at a relatively new phenomenon due, in no small part, to longer life expentancies among those with Down syndrome.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 9:26 AM on May 5, 2007
(12 comments)
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is (
a) Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, (
b) facing a five-count indictment from the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, (
c) the author of
The Apprentice, a book that is,
in the words of The New Yorker's Lauren Collins, "Libby's 1996 entry in the long and distinguished annals of the right-wing dirty novel," or (
d) all of the above. Via
Making Light.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 5:06 AM on November 1, 2005
(37 comments)
Google Blog Search
-- in beta, of course. Works by crawling blogs'
RSS feeds. Should Technorati be nervous?
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 5:51 AM on September 14, 2005
(36 comments)
The weather just got a lot more accessible.
The National Weather Service's weather data is now freely available in
XML format for
SOAP clients; it had previously been only available through commercial providers or in a difficult-to-decipher format. Not knowing anything about web services, I'm not sure about the implications, but I imagine that anyone who knows their
SOAP could build their own weather app really easily.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 9:25 AM on December 4, 2004
(18 comments)
Highway Route Markers
collects highway signs from around the world.
The Upstate New York Roads Site lists (and reproduces) every exit sign for many of the state's freeways. Let me reiterate: Every. Exit. Sign. The net has something for everyone, even those of us with an unhealthy obsession with road signs.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 1:34 PM on October 28, 2004
(7 comments)
The
Directory of Open Access Journals, launched this month by Lund University Libraries in Sweden, links to peer-reviewed online scholarly journals whose entire content is freely available. (More inside.)
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 12:31 PM on May 24, 2003
(11 comments)
British books, built badly.
British publishers' habit of putting out hardcovers with glued (rather than sewn) bindings and non-acid-free paper makes many rather expensive books start to fall apart after only a few years,
Slate's Christopher Caldwell reports.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 7:01 AM on March 10, 2003
(16 comments)
"My daughter can't be bulimic.
I don't diet. We don't talk about calories or fat or weight loss. Much of our family life centres around food. Look at my job as a restaurant critic!" Joanne Kates is the restaurant critic for the
Globe and Mail; her daughter suffered from anorexia. Today, the
Globe published their story in their own words.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 11:10 AM on January 25, 2003
(8 comments)
Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé, but the wine's popularity
has more to do with clever marketing than the quality of the wine itself. "Why it was decided to make the region's humblest juice—a wine mainly borne of its worst vineyards, a wine barely removed from the fermentation vat, a wine that is nothing more than pleasantly tart barroom swill—its international standard bearer is a question that will undoubtedly puzzle marketing students for generations to come."
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 5:32 AM on November 23, 2002
(22 comments)
Ellen Feiss speaks!
In her first-ever interview, she breaks her silence and answers the question
many of you have been asking: "by the time I made it it was like 10, so I was really tired. The funny thing was, I
was on drugs! I was on Benedryl, my allergy medication, so I was really out of it anyway. That's why my eyes were all red, because I have seasonal allergies. But no one believes me." (via
MacRumors; see also
Wired)
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 3:01 AM on November 22, 2002
(48 comments)
Canadian novelist
Yann Martel, whose novel,
Life of Pi (
excerpt,
review),
won the
2002 Booker Prize,
has been accused of plagiarizing Brazilian novelist Moacyr Scilar's 1981 novella,
Max and the Cats, which shares a similar premise.
Martel freely admits that the premise of Scilar's work, which he discovered via a half-remembered (and scathing) critique, inspired
Life of Pi, but he has not read it. The issue is
whether a premise is intellectual property or whether such ideas are recycled all the time. While this would ordinarily be a literary tempest, Canada and Brazil have had a shaky relationship over trade in recent years;
this may not help the situation.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 12:20 PM on November 7, 2002
(29 comments)
Sprawl-induced aberrant driving behavior
is a theory proposed by University of Ottawa
geography professor Barry Wellar. Suburban roads, built for speed, encourage aggressive driving and bad habits that drivers can sort of get away with in the suburbs, but that carry over to other areas. So that's why it always seems that they're trying to run me off the sidewalk.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 3:34 PM on August 29, 2002
(11 comments)
Rumpole and the Angel of Death.
Leo McKern
dies at 82. "Author John Mortimer created Horace Rumpole with only one actor in mind, and as the blustering, grumbling barrister, McKern did not disappoint."
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 5:45 AM on July 24, 2002
(11 comments)
A handheld device that translates simple spoken phrases.
"American troops in Afghanistan are using a revolutionary device that instantly translates soldiers' voices into native languages.
. . . The soldier speaks into the machine, which recognizes the words and translates them into another language." Simple phrases only — and a long way from a
Star Trek universal translator — but kindling for the science-fiction-addled imagination nonetheless.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 7:30 PM on June 10, 2002
(11 comments)
Where have all the bees gone?
Wild bee populations appear to be declining (members of a local naturalists' mailing list I subscribe to report seeing substantially fewer bumblebees in recent years), and domestic honeybees are susceptible to mites. Since one third of our crops require pollination, this is not just an environmental concern but also a very real threat to our food supply. Find out what's being done about it. Fascinating stuff, if a little frightening.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 8:15 AM on May 27, 2002
(19 comments)
Wacky news is on the rise,
and not just here at MetaFilter: it's showing up more and more on mainstream news media sites desperate for your attention (and in traditional print and broadcast media, too). For better or for worse, it's not just for
FARK anymore. We've discussed many a weird news item here (much to mathowie's annoyance); what about weird news as a trend?
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 11:46 AM on February 16, 2002
(13 comments)
Newspapers lose the web war.
While newspapers recognized the risk the web posed to their core business, they often erred by forcing their new online ventures into the mold set by their pre-existing business model. A look at what made newspapers succeed or fail online from a Harvard Business School professor. (Warning: business-speak; via CNet.) Has your local newspaper done a good job on the web?
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 9:06 AM on February 1, 2002
(8 comments)
The trouble with "orphan diseases":
"most people with orphan diseases are treated only with horribly blunt instruments. The dearth of drug treatments for them is a reflection of basic economics. The profit-driven pharmaceutical industry has little incentive to pour research money into discoveries that will not return big dividends. Small patient populations hold out little potential reward." An orphan disease is a
rare disorder that affects fewer than one in 20,000 people; there are apparently more than 6,000 of them.
posted to MetaFilter by mcwetboy
at 6:37 AM on January 22, 2002
(17 comments)
