November 2008
26 posts
The doctor will see all of you now - The Boston... →
Since July, Lindsey has been seeing his Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates patients only in groups, formally called shared medical appointments. It’s part of an ambitious plan by Harvard Vanguard to ease physician shortages, and reduce patient and doctor dissatisfaction over constantly feeling rushed during appointments. Many patients, it turns out, are willing to sacrifice privacy and...
“I’m sure I’m going to lose a lot of weight because Laura’s going to be the...”
– Wonkette : George W. Bush Will Really Miss Presidential Food
Study Suggests Some Cancers May Go Away -... →
And their new study, to be published Tuesday in The Archives of Internal Medicine, suggests that even invasive cancers may sometimes go away without treatment and in larger numbers than anyone ever believed. At the moment, the finding has no practical applications because no one knows whether a detected cancer will disappear or continue to spread or kill.
A fast, robust and tunable synthetic gene... →
Here we describe an engineered genetic oscillator in Escherichia coli that is fast, robust and persistent, with tunable oscillatory periods as fast as 13 min. The oscillator was designed using a previously modelled network architecture comprising linked positive and negative feedback loops.
(this is cool. but useful?)
“It’s hard to say what, if anything, Linden Lab can do to make Second Life...”
– Exclusive: Why Reuters Left Second Life, And How Linden Lab Can Fix It
Congressman Dingell Loses Committee Chairmanship,... →
Mere days after being ousted as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, veteran lawmaker Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) has been hospitalized.
HOT Lanes Will Devour Acres of Beltway's Trees -... →
My family was just talking about this today — I haven’t seen the Braddock Rd. interchange yet, but I hear it’s pretty dismal.
Segway inventor touts island as an energy model -... →
Dean Kamen has totally lost it, “yes” or “but we knew that”?
Host - The Atlantic (April 2005) →
David Foster Wallace, embedded in the John Ziegler radio show, April 2005. Besides being a fascinating illustration of a certain cultural place and time, this is the same guy that Nate Silver had that terrifying “push poll” interview with recently. Worth reading.
Governor Cool - The Daily Beast →
“At the RGA yesterday, I tried to throw Pawlenty off his Minnesota nice routine, as well. And I also failed.”
He really is super-nice in this interview.
Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying... →
And above all, a depression circa 2009 might be a less visible and more isolating experience. With the diminishing price of televisions and the proliferation of channels, it’s getting easier and easier to kill time alone, and free time is one thing a 21st-century depression would create in abundance.
Detroit must die / American cars are still... →
Here’s the upshot: The American auto market is the biggest in the world. Our near-religious adoration of cars isn’t vanishing anytime soon. There are hundreds of billions of dollars still to be made. Let prehistoric Big Auto die now, put the old, tired, sickly circus elephant out of its misery, and watch what happens. Innovation would skyrocket. Entrepreneurs would flood in. New and...
“To gauge this strategy’s effectiveness, I called Sonja Eddings Brown, the...”
– No Gays for a Day day - Los Angeles Times
Google Book Search Settlement: A Reader's Guide |... →
Generally, opinions are split between excitement for users (“better access to zillions of out-of-print books”) and suspicion of Google (“one library to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them”).
“‘And this also,’ said Marlow suddenly, ‘has been one of the...”
– Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Interview: Cute With Chris →
“My show appeals to the kind of teenager who hates teenagers. These are sort of the disenfranchised, edgy teen girls who grow up to be fantastic women. The teenagers who come to my show — I am shocked and amazed at how incredibly cool, poised and composed they are. I don’t remember teenagers being like that when I was a teenager. They’re all really intelligent, interesting people with great...
This. Fucking. Election. →
Hey, do you remember when…
Townsfolk destroy Palin effigy with explosives -... →
Story Highlights
# Giant effigy of Sarah Palin blown up at fireworks display in southern England
# Caricature destroyed as part of traditional celebrations in town of Battle
# Event believed to date back to 1646
# Awesome.
Whatever: How to Make a Schadenfreude Pie →
Nick-from-Virginia wants to make this for election night. It sounds like a capital idea.
Obama says he didn't know aunt's illegal status -... →
This is a sad (and hopefully not important) development in what I was sure was going to be a really sweet story. :(
Forget robo-calls—Obama's text messages are this... →
Having campaign volunteers visit voters door-to-door is the “gold standard” of voter mobilization efforts, Green and Gerber write. On average, the tactic produces one vote for every 14 people contacted. The next-most-effective way to reach voters is to have live, human volunteers call them on the phone to chat: This tactic produces one new vote for every 38 people contacted. Other...