March 31, 2012
Where does it hurt?
Deep vein thrombosis is generally a topic that comes up with regards to airline seating and other periods of prolonged immobility (previously). Anna Brown was a homeless woman and constantly on the move, so doctors in the emergency room thought that her complaints of leg pain were just drug-seeking behavior. Unfortunately, drug seeking is a major problem in ERs in the United States. [more inside]
Anatomy of a Massacre
On March 11 United States Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales allegedly murdered 17 Afghan civilians. A reporter from Australia's SBS is the first journalist to interview survivors of the deadly Kandahar massacre.(via)
Ultrarunner Micah True Disappears
Micah True, an ultrarunner profied in Christopher McDougall's book, Born to Run, has gone missing in New Mexico, after heading out for a 12 mile run on Tuesday. Known as Caballo Blanco in McDougall's book, he helped launch the recent barefoot running craze.
Guardian feature on the future of computing education in UK
The Guardian has a feature today on computer science education in the UK It includes short interviews with teenagers who use coding (for fun or work), an article on encouraging girls to get involved in computer science, an editorial encouraging an overhaul of the UK's system of teaching computing, and some discussion of Young Rewired State, a group that offers "festivals of code" to help kids learn to "program the world around them", and also encouraging use of open data.
Response Records: Answers to Hit Songs
Before hip-hop beefs, there were response records, also known as answer songs, usually replies to well-known songs. There are a few key eras: blues and R&B recorded music in the 1930s through 1950s, including a number of responses to "Work With Me, Annie" (1954), recorded by Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, with answers including "Annie had a Baby," and "The Wallflower" by Etta James; and Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog" (1953), with a quick response by Louis Innis and Charlie Gore, made a mere week after the original was released, and Rufus Thomas' "Bear Cat" (1953), Sun Records' first hit. Country, rock & roll, doo-wop and pop music picked up where the blues left off, with most activity in the 1950s to 60s. Two examples from this era are "Are You Lonesome To-night" and "Who Put The Bomp," and responses to both. The most well known from the next decade was Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" (1974), a response to Neil Young's "Southern Man" (1970) and "Alabama" (1972). Until the 2000s, no answer songs had charted as high as the original hits. That changed with Frankee's "F.U.R.B. (Fuck You Right Back)" (2004), a response to Eamon's "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" (2003), which was the first answer song to reach number 1 in the UK. Six years later and across the pond, Katy Perry's "California Gurls" was a response to "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z. It was the first answer song to reach No. 1 in the Billboard Hot 100. More Responses inside. [more inside]
No Chevy, Just Chase.
“What a privilege it is to experience the ‘charmed’ life of another and as a result to appreciate what is valuable in our own.”
After 61 years of marriage, Charles D. Snelling killed his Alzheimer's-stricken wife before turning a gun on himself. Months before, in response to a David Brooks column, he submitted a 5,000-word personal essay where he reminisced on his life, his marriage, his wife's disease and his role as a caretaker.
A Game of Lessons
With Season 2 of Game of Thrones to begin on Sunday, it's important to review the various life and parenting lessons we've learned from the show.
The Baseball Methuselah
At the age of 49 years and 4 months, Jamie Moyer of the Colorado Rockies is the oldest baseball player to ever earn a regular roster spot on a Major League Baseball team (Satchel Paige pitched 3 innings in a 1965 game at age 59 as a publicity stunt). There are many current players, including some of the game's best, who weren't even born when Moyer made his MLB debut, making Moyer's feat all the more impressive.
Just a click away
Voting via clicker with real time data visualization is happening in schools, churches, and loads of other organizations throughout the world. This NY Times piece examines how clicker voting is shaking things up.
Bike Parkour
Urban Trials Riding in Melbourne looks a lot like bike parkour; amazing and more than a bit insane.
New Google Maps
Facebook and socially agressive narcissim
Researchers have established a direct link between the number of friends you have on Facebook and the degree to which you are a "socially disruptive" narcissist.... [more inside]
"And with millions of chicks checking in daily, there's never been a better time to be on the hunt...."
A column by John Brownlee over at Cult of Mac yesterday highlighted his privacy concerns about the app Girls Around Me -- which used a mashup of FourSquare check-ins, Google Maps and Facebook public profile information to show the user women who were nearby. In response to the story, Foursquare cut off the app's API access to their data, effectively knocking it out of commission. CNET: How to prevent friends checking you into locations at Facebook Places. [more inside]
"If the end is right it justifies the beans."
The Online Musical started as a 2010 University of Virginia student project to create an interactive online musical based on audience feeback , called Musical: The Online Musical. It continued after that project finished, moving on to mini musicals (Thomas Jefferson: The Musical, Pokemon: The Musical, Where's Waldo?: The Musical), and other musical works (a dub step treatment of Les Miserables). Their most recent project is less musical, more dystopian: The Beanie Baby Hunger Games. [more inside]
"This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me." ~ John Steinbeck
Language of the Land: Journeys into Literary America: The inspiration for this exhibition was the Library of Congress's collection of literary maps--maps that acknowledge the contributions of authors to a specific state or region as well as those that depict the geographical locations in works of fiction or fantasy. Throughout the exhibition, these colorful and varied maps reflect the contributions of authors to specific states or regions and locate their imagined people and places. Through these maps, authors' words, images, and characters, Language of the Land presents a tapestry of the impressions that endure in our collective imagination of the American land and its culture. [more inside]
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