July 8, 2012
Silently ravaging the heart
Chagas' disease can cast a silent, lifelong shadow. 'Chagas is a potentially fatal parasitic disease most often found in Latin American immigrants. There had been little awareness of it in the U.S., but' it is slowly making its way into the United States. 'Chagas affects an estimated 300,000 people in this country and about 13 million worldwide, chiefly in Latin America, where it is a leading cause of heart failure.' [more inside]
A Historic Restoration Project In A Galaxy Far, Far Away
After leading several expeditions into Tunisia to visit the filming locations for Tatooine landmarks, tour guide Mark Dermul was dismayed by the state of the Owen Lars homestead. A joke about restoring it turned into serious thought which led to fundraising and planning and delays due to social unrest, and finally in June, the "Igloo" was restored to its former glory.
The Most Outstanding Camouflage $5 Billion Can Buy
After spending $5 billion dollars to develop the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), the US Army is abandoning the grey-green pixelated camouflage because it has routinely failed to hide soldiers from view in nearly every environment it has been tried in, and considers adopting the UCP "a colossal mistake" and a "fiasco". [more inside]
road trip to the American past
motor life blog is Charlie Beesly's fun collection of (mostly) found photos celebrating cars and their owners. Don't miss the winsome training wheels post and the early Kodacolor collection. We've seen some of Charlie's other themed found photos here previously.
Google seeks to "Legalize Love"
During the Global LGBT Workplace Summit of July 5 and 6, 2012 in London, Google announced the "Legalize Love" campaign . Launched in Poland and Singapore and eventually
intended for every country where the company has an office, it will focus on places with homophobic cultures, where anti-gay laws exist. [more inside]
Kumaré Sutra
"At PSFK Conference NYC, Vikram Gandhi spoke about his latest movie Kumaré - The True Story of A False Prophet. While he was born in New Jersey, the film director spoke about how he had been noticing how the Indian-heritage culture he had experienced as he grew up, was being used by Americans and other Westerners to help solve their emotional and spiritual issues. To explore this idea further he dressed up as a guru, created a backstory with YouTube video and website, spoke like his grandmother and recruited followers in Arizona. What's unique is that throughout the film is that he tells everyone he was an illusion and asks his followers to look in a mirror to solve their own problems." [more inside]
Baked salmon, oyster rolls, codfish cakes, Baptist cakes, cream of corn soup, green turtle soup, scootin-long-the-shore, Plymouth succotash, Indian pudding, beggar’s pudding, flummery, syllabubs...
12-Steps for the 21st Century
Alcoholics Anonymous and similar 12-step programs have recently attracted calls to review their long-standing policies: supporting young people, rethinking transphobia, welcoming agnostic viewpoints, and challenging the need for anonymity. [more inside]
Royal Canadian Masochism & Phallus
In Canada an active duty RCMP officer is under investigation for posting sexually explicit photos on the private Fetlife service. Further details of the alleged photos seem to describe a relatively hardcore but completely consensual male/female bondage scenario. [more inside]
Am I a girl yet?
Cuteypietiffany is a video blogger and Tgirl documenting her transition experience. She talks about coming out at work and to her friends, taking hormones, dealing with mood swings, and the anxiety of switching in and out of boy mode.
'Desperate residents turned to a renowned free-diver for a solution.'
"Local marine experts believed the problem could be solved only if it could be determined why the sharks were venturing so close to the beaches. This meant finding someone with the knowledge, expertise, and courage to spend an extended period of time in the water with the animals themselves, unraveling the mystery. They called Belgian Fred Buyle, the world's foremost shark tagger, a gifted free-diver able to hold his breath for seven minutes and swim to depths below 300 feet." Meet The Shark Whisperer [more inside]
Ernest Borgnine 1917-2012
Ernest Borgnine, Oscar-winning actor whose career spanned 60 years, died today at the age of 95.
Born in Hamden, Connecticut to Italian immigrants, Borgnine spent 10 years in the Navy before trying his hand act acting at the behest of his mother. After making his acting debut on Broadway in 'Harvey', Borgnine's big movie break came in From Here to Eternity in 1953. This was followed in 1953 by an Oscar for his role in Marty. Some of Borgnine's other memorable performances
included roles in Bad Day at Black Rock, The Wild Bunch, Ice Station Zebra, The Dirty Dozen, and
The Poseidon Adventure. [more inside]
Fashion inspired by games
The man in your picture is almost unrecognizable
Former all pro NFL running back, 38 year old Priest Holmes feels that all NFL players suffer from the violence of the game, but believes running backs are at an increased risk if they average dozens of carries a game for years at a time. Holmes recalled how hits changed the color of the sky. Another former NFL running back, 32 year old Jamal Lewis talked about his memory losses and head trauma. Both men could encounter the cognitive decline lesser known former Chargers running back 45 year old Steve Hendrickson has experienced. [more inside]
Wait, wait...
But it is already too late. CNN has been carefully orchestrating its transformation into a shockingly efficient news distribution company. They have been planning to saturate every screen in reach with this story as fast as possible, and the producer’s initial go-ahead pulled the trigger. On the air, Wolf Blitzer is sending the coverage to the Courthouse steps. And as planned the reporter is putting her phone down to go on the air, which cuts herself off from the only CNN employee with access to the opinion. We’re getting wildly differing assessments: SCOTUSblog compiles first-hand accounts of the minutes between 10:06 and 10:15am on June 28, when CNN and FOX misreported and retracted that the mandate had been struck down.
Kansas City
"Kansas City gets the All-Star Game, and it’s likely that this will be the last time Kansas City will be in the national sports spotlight for a long time." Joe Posnanski on the downfall and charm of Kansas City, which "used to be in the spotlight with regularity. There have been 10 Final Fours here, more than any other city. The NCAA was based here. There were two World Series here, a Davis Cup semifinal, numerous NFL playoff games including the Christmas Day game that is one of the best ever played. Tom Watson stayed here, so did George Brett ... But times have changed. Unless something dramatic changes -- and it almost certainly won’t -- there won’t ever be a Super Bowl here, a U.S. Open here, another Final Four here. There’s a beautiful arena downtown that was built largely for an NBA or NHL team that almost certainly won’t ever come. Another World Series seems as distant as anything. The All-Star Game won’t come back for a long time."
Charming 90-year+ old yoga instructor - a new model of ageing
Ida Herbert (brief text article ). Also 3:51 minute news item (youtube) shows her in action. "A new model of ageing."
Aye mere watan ke logo
Given how little thought India’s contribution to the World Wars gets in our collective historical memory, it is almost strange to think that in the First World War India made the largest contribution to the war effort out of all of Britain’s colonies and dominions. Close to 1,700,000 Indians – combatants and non-combatants – participated in WWI. My own area of interest is India’s role in the Mesopotamian theatre. [more inside]
If you've got nothing to hide
"Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We're extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program." - the EFF announces that three former employees of the NSA have come forward to testify in their lawsuit against the NSA over the domestic spying program.
I Used to Love Her, But I Had to Flee Her: On Leaving New York
anyone who goes into science expecting employers to clamor for their services will be deeply disappointed
design...planet...design...planet....
Apple is abandoning EPEAT
Apple’s mobile design direction is in conflict with the intended direction of the standard. Specifically, the standard lays out particular requirements for product “disassemble-ability,” a very important consideration for recycling: “External enclosures, chassis, and electronic subassemblies shall be removable with commonly available tools or by hand.” Electronics recyclers need to take out hazardous components such as batteries before sending computers through their shredders, because batteries can catch fire when punctured.[more inside]
Hey Sandy
Exploring The Adventures Of Pete And Pete’s genesis and highlights -- The AV Club talks to Adventures of Pete & Pete creators Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi in this four part series.
What does 390 million tonnes of silt look like?
Interesting aspects of the American Civil War
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic, recently touched on a couple of interesting aspects of the American Civil War. First, Racism Against White People briefly looked at how Southern intellectuals argued that Northern whites were of a different race. Then a subthread in the comments on that post spawned an investigation of American Exceptionalism in History and the notion of preserving democracy in the context of the American Civil War. After all, "if a government can be sundered simply because the minority doesn't like the results of an election, can it even call itself a government?" Definitely check out the comments of both posts.
INTERVIEWER: "Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?" HEMINGWAY: "Getting the words right."
To Use and Use Not: [NYTimes.com] "In an interview in The Paris Review in 1958 Ernest Hemingway made an admission that has inspired frustrated novelists ever since: The final words of “A Farewell to Arms,” his wartime masterpiece, were rewritten “39 times before I was satisfied.” A new edition of “A Farewell to Arms,” which was originally published in 1929, will be released next week, including all the alternate endings, along with early drafts of other passages in the book."
Does anesthesiology have a problem? Final version of report suggests Fujii will take retraction record, with 172
In the wake of a very thorough and damning statistical analysis of 168 of his papers, published in March, Japanese investigators have concluded that Yoshitaka Fujii, fabricated his results in at least 172 published studies; shattering the previous record for most retracted papers. Considered an expert in postoperative nausea and vomiting, his "incredibly nice" findings drew scrutiny in 2000, but he continued to publish prolifically for more than a decade. Here are the published results of the Japanese Society of Anesthesiology's Special Investigation Committee, with an annotated list of all of his papers (PDF). The Retraction Watch also considers not only the depth of Fujii's betrayal but also whether the discipline of anesthesiology itself has a problem as it weighs in. [more inside]
The Phi does for radio what Apple did for computing
The Phi is a PCIe card which turns your computer into a software-defined radio which "could record FM radio and digital television signals, read RFID chips, track ship locations, or do radio astronomy. In principle it could perform all of these functions simultaneously." While the Phi isn't the first such device available for purchase, it is the first to target hobbyists and eventually consumers, but how will the FCC handle software-defined radio?
Release of nuns
2 powerful sets of photographs: Heads and Néosurréalisme à tendance sociale by French photographer Yves Lecoq.
Also, the more whimsical Mad Bunny's secret life, (not the film) Men in Black and Voyages au bout de mon lit. [more inside]
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