Good Reads

[Laurel]

Thirty years ago this week

http://voiceseducation.org/sites/default/files/images/stanislav_petrov1.jpg

Thirty years ago, on 26 September 1983, the world was saved from potential nuclear disaster.

In the early hours of the morning, the Soviet Union's early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. Computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched. The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own.

But duty officer Stanislav Petrov - whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches - decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.

This was a breach of his instructions, a dereliction of duty. The safe thing to do would have been to pass the responsibility on, to refer up.

But his decision may have saved the world.​

- read the full article Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world (from The BBC)​

 

[Laurel]

"But but but the Friendzone! And men having to buy women drinks!"

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article8842445.ece/ALTERNATES/w460/10_SULTAN_ALAM22Y.jpg

A hidden form of abuse known as “breast ironing”, in which girls as young as 10 have their chests pounded with hot objects to disguise the onset of puberty, could be taking place in Britain.

The mutilation is a traditional practice from Cameroon designed to deter unwanted male attention, pregnancy and rape by delaying the signs that a girl is becoming a woman. Experts believe that the custom is being practiced amongst the several thousand Cameroonians now living here.

A conference on how to prevent the abuse both in the UK and overseas is being held today in Ealing, west London. Its organisers, a charity called CAME Women’s and Girl’s Development Organisation (Cawogido), is already working with the Met Police and social services to tackle the problem.​

- read the full article 'Breast ironing': Girls ‘have chests flattened out’ to disguise the onset of puberty (from The Independent)​

 

[Laurel]

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20130921_STP003_0.jpg

FLIES live shorter lives than elephants. Of that there is no doubt. But from a fly’s point of view, does its life actually seem that much shorter? This, in essence, was the question asked by Kevin Healy of Trinity College, Dublin, in a paper just published in Animal Behaviour. His answer is, possibly not.

Subjective experience of time is just that—subjective. Even individual people, who can compare notes by talking to one another, cannot know for certain that their own experience coincides with that of others. But an objective measure which probably correlates with subjective experience does exist. It is called the critical flicker-fusion frequency, or CFF, and it is the lowest frequency at which a flickering light appears to be a constant source of illumination. It measures, in other words, how fast an animal’s eyes can refresh an image and thus process information.

For people, the average CFF is 60 hertz (ie, 60 times a second). This is why the refresh-rate on a television screen is usually set at that value. Dogs have a CFF of 80Hz, which is probably why they do not seem to like watching television. To a dog a TV programme looks like a series of rapidly changing stills.​

- read the full article Slo-mo mojo: Small creatures with fast metabolisms see the world like an action replay (from The Economist)​

 

[Aphro]

"But but but the Friendzone! And men having to buy women drinks!"

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article8842445.ece/ALTERNATES/w460/10_SULTAN_ALAM22Y.jpg

A hidden form of abuse known as “breast ironing”, in which girls as young as 10 have their chests pounded with hot objects to disguise the onset of puberty, could be taking place in Britain.

The mutilation is a traditional practice from Cameroon designed to deter unwanted male attention, pregnancy and rape by delaying the signs that a girl is becoming a woman. Experts believe that the custom is being practiced amongst the several thousand Cameroonians now living here.

A conference on how to prevent the abuse both in the UK and overseas is being held today in Ealing, west London. Its organisers, a charity called CAME Women’s and Girl’s Development Organisation (Cawogido), is already working with the Met Police and social services to tackle the problem.​

- read the full article 'Breast ironing': Girls ‘have chests flattened out’ to disguise the onset of puberty (from The Independent)​

Jesus Christ. I just read that article. And like female genital mutilation, it's women performing this crime on their daughters and granddaughters. A woman's sexuality is so threatening, it must be cut out, excised and burned off? What a sad, sad situation. They don't mention if this is a particular religion practising this barbarism.

My breasts developed fast when I was 12 and my mum said she’d have to iron them so they’d disappear and come out later. There’s a particular leaf in Cameroon that people use. They put it in the fire and then when it was really hot they press it and massage it on the breast. It was very painful and I cried a lot. But that didn’t work, so later they used a long stick like a pestle heated in the fire. They repeated it after two days and again until the breasts disappeared. It was so painful I couldn’t sleep. When I was 18 my breasts did develop but with a lot of malformation.

How awful!

I would wonder if later, the woman had a child, would she be able to breastfeed it, or would the ducts have been so damaged as to no longer be able to produce milk.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

"When we send people, they could scoop up the soil anywhere on the surface, heat it just a bit, and obtain water," Leshin said.

He also said that only two percent of all martian soil contains water, so that hardly equates to "anywhere on the surface." The article also noted that when the samples were heated to 835 degrees Celsius that the extracted water was only a few percent by weight.

Eight hundred degrees Celsius sounds like a far greater energy expenditure than merely "heat it just a bit." At that rate, taking a shower would require something along the lines of a small strip mine operation.

Hopefully "when we send people" they will not have relied too heavily on Leshin's optimism when packing their expendables.

 

[Laurel]

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70119000/jpg/_70119818_yoga624a_pdc_3173.jpg

The precision of the poses is remarkable - and for Nick, a man in his early 40s, apparently effortless.

We're in a small yoga studio above a pub in west London, daylight filtering in through slatted blinds. Nick holds Warrior 2 - arms stretched horizontally, one knee bent, one straight behind him. Then he offers to demonstrate a handstand, and lifts himself on the palms of his hands, knees and feet together.

He is a model of balance and control.

"That's six years in prison," he grins.

Prison was Villa Devoto, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

"It was the worst place I had seen in my life," Nick says. "They don't have cells, they have open wings, where you can have anything from 100 to 400 people per wing. There were no beds so you'd literally be like sardines sleeping on the floor."

He demonstrates this, lying on his side on his yoga mat, his head propped on his hand.​

- read the full article How yoga is helping prisoners stay calm (from The BBC)​

 

[Laurel]

http://media.wbur.org/wordpress/11/files/2013/09/0920-atlanta-wedding-e1379700230238-624x413.jpg

Hosts of a cancelled wedding donated an elaborate reception to Atlanta’s homeless last Sunday.

Carol and Willie Fowler teamed up with Hosea Feed the Hungry, a local organization serving families in need, to turn the wedding-that-wasn’t into the first annual Fowler Family Celebration of Love, feeding 200 unexpected guests.

“We’re very pleased that she’s handling it so well,” Carol Fowler told Here & Now about her daughter. “She was also very delighted to see and know that others had an opportunity to enjoy something, rather than just allow it to go to waste.”

Elizabeth Omilami, head of Hosea Feed the Hungry, told Here & Now that the children who attended the event will never forget it.

“The passed hors d’oeuvre were very interesting because the children were wondering, ‘could we take the whole tray, or do we just take one off of the tray?’” Omilami said. “So this was an educational opportunity as well, because now they all know how to eat at a four-course meal and the etiquette involved in that.”

Fowler had this message for other families:

“Events are canceled, and sometimes for unknown reasons. Do no allow that opportunity to go to waste. Call up your favorite charity. Give them an opportunity to use that for people that will not have an opportunity, perhaps in life.”​

- read the full article Atlanta Wedding Reception Donated To The Homeless (from WBUR)​

 

[Laurel]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YsqJ3tBWT_o/UhZTP_fObPI/AAAAAAAAE_8/f5FnzqghsGQ/s1600/Timelines.png

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_MGfpjpdBTM/UkJ24RCANeI/AAAAAAAAFgs/MWmwkSwN0Cs/s1600/Timelines+1.png

Humans are good at a lot of things, but putting time in perspective is not one of them. It's not our fault—the spans of time in human history, and even more so in natural history, are so vast compared to the span of our life and recent history that it's almost impossible to get a handle on it. If the Earth formed at midnight and the present moment is the next midnight, 24 hours later, modern humans have been around since 11:59:59pm—1 second. And if human history itself spans 24 hours from one midnight to the next, 14 minutes represents the time since Christ.

To try to grasp some perspective, I mapped out the history of time as a series of growing timelines—each timeline contains all the previous timelines (colors will help you see which timelines are which). All timeline lengths are exactly accurate to the amount of time they're expressing.​

- see the whole timeline from now to the beginning at Putting Time in Perspective (from wait but why)​

 

[oggbashan]

Time lines

Looking at Laurel's post above made me think.

My eldest aunt was born in 1897.

The oldest great-aunts, that I knew to speak to, were born before 1865.

As a child I learned many things from them about their history and what had happened in their lifetimes. One of the great-aunts remembered the impression that the Great Exhibition of 1851 had on her mother. The Crystal Palace, built for that Exhibition, was moved but was destroyed by fire in 1936 - my parents watched it burn.

But my great-aunt was talking to me about the Great Exhibition of 1851 after I had been to the Festival of Britain in 1951. My eldest aunt took me to it and bought me a couple of souvenirs which I still have. The great-aunt had a couple of her mother's souvenirs of the 1851 Exhibition.

 

[Laurel]

http://theamericanscholar.org/uploads/2013/09/barney_google.jpg

Soon after they arrived in America, British settlers got busy with an important task: reinventing their language. This called for repurposing old words and coining new ones. Colonists called the plump, smelly rodents they encountered in swamps muske rats. Other forms of wildlife were named katydids, bobcats, catfish, and whippoorwills. To these settlers, sleigh improved on sledge, and the help reflected their values better than servants. “The new circumstances under which we are placed,” observed Thomas Jefferson, “call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects.”

“Necessity,” he concluded, “obliges us to neologize.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Jefferson is the first person known to have used the term neologize, in an 1813 letter. It is one of 110 words whose earliest use the OED credits to him. Others include indescribable, pedicure, and electioneer.

Once they caught wind of all the new words being coined across the Atlantic, self-appointed guardians of the King’s English were rather cross. When Jefferson used the new word belittle in his 1781 book Notes on the State of Virginia, a British critic exclaimed, “It may be an elegant [word] in Virginia, and even perfectly intelligible; but for our part, all we can do is to guess at its meaning. For shame, Mr. Jefferson!” Undaunted, the third president proceeded to coin Anglophobia.

Contempt for the New World’s neologisms continued unabated in the old one. Historically, the British have looked upon American word inventions with all the enthusiasm of an art museum curator examining Elvis-on-velvet paintings. In a famous exchange with American lexicographer Noah Webster, an English naval officer named Basil Hall expressed dismay about the many new words he heard while visiting America in the late 1820s. Webster defended the verbal creativity of his countrymen. If a new word proved useful, he asked, why not add it to the vocabulary? “Because there are words enough already,” responded Hall.

What were language purists to do? Despite the best efforts of Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Swift, et al., there has never been a governing body that approves “correct” English. Unlike French, say, or Japanese, English is an open-source language. Anyone is free to suggest new words or phrases. The only criterion for their success is that users adopt them.​

- read the full article Is There a Word for That? (from The American Scholar)​

 

[lovetoread]

http://theamericanscholar.org/uploads/2013/09/barney_google.jpg

Soon after they arrived in America, British settlers got busy with an important task: reinventing their language. This called for repurposing old words and coining new ones. Colonists called the plump, smelly rodents they encountered in swamps muske rats. Other forms of wildlife were named katydids, bobcats, catfish, and whippoorwills. To these settlers, sleigh improved on sledge, and the help reflected their values better than servants. “The new circumstances under which we are placed,” observed Thomas Jefferson, “call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects.”

“Necessity,” he concluded, “obliges us to neologize.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Jefferson is the first person known to have used the term neologize, in an 1813 letter. It is one of 110 words whose earliest use the OED credits to him. Others include indescribable, pedicure, and electioneer.

Once they caught wind of all the new words being coined across the Atlantic, self-appointed guardians of the King’s English were rather cross. When Jefferson used the new word belittle in his 1781 book Notes on the State of Virginia, a British critic exclaimed, “It may be an elegant [word] in Virginia, and even perfectly intelligible; but for our part, all we can do is to guess at its meaning. For shame, Mr. Jefferson!” Undaunted, the third president proceeded to coin Anglophobia.

Contempt for the New World’s neologisms continued unabated in the old one. Historically, the British have looked upon American word inventions with all the enthusiasm of an art museum curator examining Elvis-on-velvet paintings. In a famous exchange with American lexicographer Noah Webster, an English naval officer named Basil Hall expressed dismay about the many new words he heard while visiting America in the late 1820s. Webster defended the verbal creativity of his countrymen. If a new word proved useful, he asked, why not add it to the vocabulary? “Because there are words enough already,” responded Hall.

What were language purists to do? Despite the best efforts of Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Swift, et al., there has never been a governing body that approves “correct” English. Unlike French, say, or Japanese, English is an open-source language. Anyone is free to suggest new words or phrases. The only criterion for their success is that users adopt them.​

- read the full article Is There a Word for That? (from The American Scholar)​

Omg, if I have to hear one more lecture about proper English or even the one where we had to dumb down the language I may explode.

 

[oggbashan]

Omg, if I have to hear one more lecture about proper English or even the one where we had to dumb down the language I may explode.

It is a good thing that we don't have the French attitude to the use of our language. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) compilers do not dictate what words mean, they record how they are used, and how their meaning changes.

US English isn't British English. But British English isn't fixed either. Although some regional dialects might be obsolescent, regional differences in word use continue to develop.

Now we have district uses in London. What is current in Hackney can be meaningless in Shepherds Bush. We have 'youff' words but as soon as the OED records them, they are passé, out of date.

All that is common is the ability to speak a sort of 'standard' English that can be understood from Land's End to John O' Groats.

The same is true in US English. Words have different meanings in different States, and even within States, or cities. Sub-cultures have their own words, phrases and even grammar. But all understand the language of public broadcasting.

As for English as it is spoken in Africa, in the Indian Sub-Continent, in SE Asia - it is all English - but with subtle and no-so-subtle differences from British or US English.

Because English is so flexible, it is becoming the world language by default.

The English Language is like Kipling's:

There are Nine and Sixty Ways of constructing tribal lays:
And - Every - One - Of -Them - Is - Right!

 

[Balladeer08]

The same is true in US English. Words have different meanings in different States, and even within States, or cities.

I got an object lesson in this when I was 12. We lived in a semi-rural part of Minnesota, then moved to Los Angeles.

In Minnesota at that time, the word "queer" meant ODD. As in "You have some queer ideas."

In L.A., it meant homosexual.

When you combine that with the homophobia of the time, I wound up in a number of fistfights with no idea what the hell had started them.

Once I figured it out, I stopped getting in fights by accident.

But it was a great way to provoke fights on purpose. The rule at our school was that whoever threw the first punch was in the wrong. 8)

 

[Laurel]

http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_640x430/public/trees.png

Childhood can be a dangerous time—especially if kids insist on not listening to their parents. Looking to curb incidents of youthful disobedience, Jas. W. and Chas. Adlard published The Accidents of Youth, a book of short cautionary tales (only slightly less horrifying than these), in 1819. The authors hoped the stories would encourage children to improve their conduct, presumably by scaring the crap out of them with tales of the extreme consequences of foolish activities that had been forbidden by parents.
[...]
1. Climb Trees

In “The Climbers,” Little Henry had a bad day. It all started when one of his friends, George, wanted to climb a tree to look for a bird’s nest. When the group of boys found it—all the way out on the end of a skinny limb—they were quick to recognize that the branch wouldn’t hold “the least boy among us.” But Henry and George's friend Charles called them all cowards and went to get the nest. His friends laughed as the bough began to bend, which made Charles afraid—and also made him stick with his foolish journey out to the nest. When the branch broke, “poor Charles fell to the ground … [he] could not speak, and the blood ran from his mouth and nose. … He seemed to be dead.”​

- read the full article 10 Things Kids Shouldn't Do According to an 1819 Book of Cautionary Tales (from Mental Floss)​

 

[Laurel]

http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2013-09-25/feat_pierson40__01__300.jpg

As a 22-year-old marine, Ramona Pierson spent most days stuck in an office at the El Toro air station near Irvine, Calif. She excelled at math and was doing top-secret work, coming up with algorithms to aid fighter attack squadrons. Pierson enjoyed the covert puzzling. She was also an exercise addict: After clocking out each day, she would head off for a 13-mile run. Her male counterparts were impressed enough with the workout regime to nominate her the fittest person on the base.

At about 4 p.m. on a weekday in April 1984, Pierson finished her work, went home, leashed her dog, Chips, and set off on her usual run through a suburban neighborhood. She stopped at an intersection, bouncing in place as she waited for the light to change. As she started across the street, a drunk driver ran the red. Chips got hit first and died instantly. The car plowed into Pierson and then ran her over as the driver kept going. Both of Pierson’s legs were crushed; her throat and chest were ripped open, exposing her heart. Her aorta sprayed blood, and she sputtered as she tried to breathe. Just before everything went black, Pierson says, she felt “my life’s blood emptying out of my neck and my mouth.”

Passersby saved her life. One massaged her heart to keep it beating; another used pens to open her windpipe and vent her collapsed lung so she could breathe. The crude handiwork kept Pierson alive long enough to get her to a hospital.

She spent the next 18 months in a coma, being fed through a hole in her chest. Then one day, to her doctors’ surprise, she woke up. Weighing 64 pounds, she was bald, with a cubist face, metal bones, and a body covered in scars. And she was blind. The one part of her that wasn’t ruined was her mathematical mind.​

- read the full article Declara Co-Founder Ramona Pierson's Comeback Odyssey (from Bloomberg Businesswekk)​

 

[gravyrug]

http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2013-09-25/feat_pierson40__01__300.jpg

As a 22-year-old marine, Ramona Pierson spent most days stuck in an office at the El Toro air station near Irvine, Calif. She excelled at math and was doing top-secret work, coming up with algorithms to aid fighter attack squadrons. Pierson enjoyed the covert puzzling. She was also an exercise addict: After clocking out each day, she would head off for a 13-mile run. Her male counterparts were impressed enough with the workout regime to nominate her the fittest person on the base.

At about 4 p.m. on a weekday in April 1984, Pierson finished her work, went home, leashed her dog, Chips, and set off on her usual run through a suburban neighborhood. She stopped at an intersection, bouncing in place as she waited for the light to change. As she started across the street, a drunk driver ran the red. Chips got hit first and died instantly. The car plowed into Pierson and then ran her over as the driver kept going. Both of Pierson’s legs were crushed; her throat and chest were ripped open, exposing her heart. Her aorta sprayed blood, and she sputtered as she tried to breathe. Just before everything went black, Pierson says, she felt “my life’s blood emptying out of my neck and my mouth.”

Passersby saved her life. One massaged her heart to keep it beating; another used pens to open her windpipe and vent her collapsed lung so she could breathe. The crude handiwork kept Pierson alive long enough to get her to a hospital.

She spent the next 18 months in a coma, being fed through a hole in her chest. Then one day, to her doctors’ surprise, she woke up. Weighing 64 pounds, she was bald, with a cubist face, metal bones, and a body covered in scars. And she was blind. The one part of her that wasn’t ruined was her mathematical mind.​

- read the full article Declara Co-Founder Ramona Pierson's Comeback Odyssey (from Bloomberg Businesswekk)​

This is amazing stuff. I love the idea of her software. It could make education a wonderful, ongoing thing for a whole lot more people.

 

[Laurel]

This is amazing stuff. I love the idea of her software. It could make education a wonderful, ongoing thing for a whole lot more people.

She's amazing.

 

[Laurel]

http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BB_515_UC_0320_0219.jpg

In a Reddit AMA session a few months ago, Bryan Cranston was asked when he thought his character on Breaking Bad broke bad. His response: “My feeling is that Walt broke bad in the very first episode. It was very subtle but he did because that’s when he decided to become someone that he’s not in order to gain financially. He made the Faustian deal at that point and everything else was a slippery slope.”

The story of Faust, the man who made a deal with the Devil, dates back many centuries and has taken many forms, from folktales to puppet shows to plays to novels. Since Johann Wolfgang von Goethe completed Part I of his play Faust in 1808, variations on the tragedy have inspired at least a dozen operas, as well as numerous art songs and concert works.

The tale’s lengthy heritage suggests that there’s always been something intriguing about watching a man freely sacrifice his soul for a chance at happiness. I’ll focus on works derived from Goethe’s telling of the story, both because it’s inspired so much music and because it’s the version I’ve actually read.

As we all anxiously await the final episode of Breaking Bad, it’s impossible not to wonder/theorize/obsess over how the story will end. Taking Cranston’s use of “Faustian” here further than he probably intended, I’m going to recast the main roles in Faust with characters from Breaking Bad, looking at each character through the lens of a Faust-based work from the classical music canon. The exercise might give us some clues about what will happen to these characters, or, failing that, provide something to mull over while waiting to see what actually happens.​

- read the full article Breaking Bad’s Faustian Cast (from OUPBlog)​

 

[Laurel]

While researching the etymology of the word "fave", a noun that's in the process of being verbed1, I noticed that, according to Google's ngram viewer, the word was much more popular in the 1600-1700s than it is now.

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/fave-etymology.gif

A bit of investigation reveals that Google's book-scanning software is at fault; it can't recognize the long s commonly used in books prior to the 1800s. So each time it encounters "save" with a long s, it sees "fave":

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/fave-us-01.gif

[1] "Fave" (n., adj.) is slang for "favorite", a usage that started in the US in the 1920s, as in "Teddy Roosevelt was totally my fave President". Recently, "fave" (v.) has come to mean liking or marking an item as a favorite on social media services like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, Stellar, etc. (IMPORTANT: It's "fave", not "fav". Let's get this one right, people.) ?

​

- read the full article God fave the Queen! (from Kottke)​

 

[Balladeer08]

While researching the etymology of the word "fave", a noun that's in the process of being verbed1, I noticed that, according to Google's ngram viewer, the word was much more popular in the 1600-1700s than it is now.

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/fave-etymology.gif

A bit of investigation reveals that Google's book-scanning software is at fault; it can't recognize the long s commonly used in books prior to the 1800s. So each time it encounters "save" with a long s, it sees "fave":

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/fave-us-01.gif

[1] "Fave" (n., adj.) is slang for "favorite", a usage that started in the US in the 1920s, as in "Teddy Roosevelt was totally my fave President". Recently, "fave" (v.) has come to mean liking or marking an item as a favorite on social media services like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, Stellar, etc. (IMPORTANT: It's "fave", not "fav". Let's get this one right, people.) ?

​

- read the full article God fave the Queen! (from Kottke)​

Funny. Those are, of course, "S" in a weird font.

 

[Laurel]

http://www.nybooks.com/media/photo/2013/09/04/h_epstein_1-092613_jpg_230x1117_q85.jpg

The Lower East Side of New York was one of the most densely populated square miles on the face of the earth in the 1890s. The photo-essayist Jacob Riis famously described it as a world of bad smells, scooting rats, ash barrels, dead goats, and little boys drinking beer out of milk cartons. Six thousand people might be packed into a single city block, many in tenements with sanitary facilities so foul as to repel anyone who dared approach. City health inspectors called the neighborhood “the suicide ward”; one tenement was referred to—in an official New York City Health Department report, no less—as an “out and out hog pen.”

Diarrhea epidemics blazed through the slums each summer, killing thousands of children every week. In the sweatshops of what was then known as “Jewtown,” children with smallpox and typhus dozed in heaps of garments destined for fashionable Broadway shops. Desperate mothers paced the streets trying to soothe their feverish children, and white mourning cloths hung from every story of every building. A third of the children born in the slums died before their fifth birthday.

In the European farming villages where many of these immigrants came from, people spent most of their time outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine, and most never encountered more than a few hundred people in a lifetime. “Crowd diseases”—measles, dysentery, typhoid, diphtheria, trachoma, and so on—were rare, and the immigrants had little idea of how to prevent them. Some parents vainly tried to administer folk remedies; others just prepared the little funeral shrouds in silence.

It was in the 1890s that Sara Josephine Baker decided to become a doctor. Not the Josephine Baker who would become celebrated as a cabaret star and dance at the Folies Bergère in a banana miniskirt but the New York City public health official in a shirtwaist and four-in-hand necktie, her short hair parted in the middle like Theodore Roosevelt, whom she admired. By the time Baker retired from the New York City Health Department in 1923, she was famous across the nation for saving the lives of 90,000 inner-city children. The public health measures she implemented, many still in use today, have saved the lives of millions more worldwide. She was also a charming, funny storyteller, and her remarkable memoir, Fighting for Life, is an honest, unsentimental, and deeply compassionate account of how one American woman helped launch a public health revolution.​

- read the full article The Doctor Who Made a Revolution (from The New York Review of Books)​

 

[Laurel]

FYI

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/23/23716/16x9/760.jpg?1903

• All national parks and zoos will be closed, but animals will be fed and cared for by Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA)
  
• No trash collection in Washington, D.C., which means the only solution is for residents to eat their own garbage
  
• Those who died and are honored in the Holocaust Museum will become de-memorialized and will no longer be resting in peace
  
• Old man with giant beard who walks hundreds of steps to light the gas lamp in the Statue of Liberty every night will be unemployed
  
• You will still be able to send and receive mail, but any attempt to poison government officials will have to be held off until they return to their offices after the shutdown ends
  
• This probably won't have any actual effect on your marriage, but it's better to blame it on this than facing what the real issues are
  
• Any harm that may occur to you during the shutdown will still affect your body in real life. Essentially, if you die in the shutdown, you die for real.
  
• Most government workers will be furloughed—a procedure that involves halting their pay, sending them home, and then castrating them with a gelding knife in front of their spouses
  
• Realistically, you won't be affected by this very much in your day-to-day life, but you'll feel the full effects during the 2014 midterm election when you lose your seat in Congress

- read the full article What A Government Shutdown Means For You (from The Onion News Source)​

 

[Balladeer08]

FYI

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/23/23716/16x9/760.jpg?1903

• All national parks and zoos will be closed, but animals will be fed and cared for by Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA)
  
• No trash collection in Washington, D.C., which means the only solution is for residents to eat their own garbage
  
• Those who died and are honored in the Holocaust Museum will become de-memorialized and will no longer be resting in peace
  
• Old man with giant beard who walks hundreds of steps to light the gas lamp in the Statue of Liberty every night will be unemployed
  
• You will still be able to send and receive mail, but any attempt to poison government officials will have to be held off until they return to their offices after the shutdown ends
  
• This probably won't have any actual effect on your marriage, but it's better to blame it on this than facing what the real issues are
  
• Any harm that may occur to you during the shutdown will still affect your body in real life. Essentially, if you die in the shutdown, you die for real.
  
• Most government workers will be furloughed—a procedure that involves halting their pay, sending them home, and then castrating them with a gelding knife in front of their spouses
  
• Realistically, you won't be affected by this very much in your day-to-day life, but you'll feel the full effects during the 2014 midterm election when you lose your seat in Congress

- read the full article What A Government Shutdown Means For You (from The Onion News Source)​

I think if the Government shuts down, we should pro-rate it and take that amount off of our taxes.

 

[Laurel]

Just bought this on Kindle. And holy hell is Jacques Monod a sexy beast in that pic.

http://www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/bravegenius_monodfakeID.jpg

What makes a good life, a meaningful life, a life of purpose? And how can one live it amidst pain and destruction; how can the human spirit soar in the face of crushing adversity? The meaning of life resides in the answers to these questions, which countless luminaries have been asking since the dawn of recorded time, and which an unlikely duo of Nobel-laureate friends — revered writer, journalist and philosopher Albert Camus and pioneering biologist Jacques Monod — set out to answer during one of the darkest periods of human history, the peak of World War II. In Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize (public library), molecular biology and genetics professor Sean B. Carroll — not to be confused with the cosmologist Sean Carroll, who also authors fascinating works, but of a rather different nature — tells the story of how each of these extraordinary men lived through the terrifying reality of the war and emerged as an exceptional mind of creative brilliance and humanistic genius, a story of “the transformation of ordinary lives into exceptional lives by extraordinary events — of courage in the face of overwhelming adversity, the flowering of creative genius, deep friendship, and of profound concern for and insight into the human condition.”

It was the Occupation of Paris that served, as Carroll poignantly puts it, as the “perverse catalyst” that sparked each man’s genius and propelled them into intersecting trajectories of greatness as they entered each other’s lives.​

- read the full article Brave Genius: How the Unlikely WWII Friendship of a Scientist & a Philosopher Shaped Modern Culture (from BrainPickings)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.wweek.com/portland/imgs/media.images/10629/news_casadiablo2.widea.jpg

The manager at the McDonald’s on Northwest Yeon Avenue glanced at the money in the customer’s hand, a $2 bill that looked as if its edges had been dipped in blood. He grew tense, shook his head and turned away.

“Oh, no,” he says. “We’re not allowed to accept those.”

McDonald’s employees had seen the mystery money before—crimson-stained, smeared, always $2 bills—as have food carts, bars, retail stores and other businesses across the Portland area.

The bills have amused some people and alarmed others, who aren’t sure if the stains come from real blood, if the cash is counterfeit, or if the bills were marked by an exploding dye pack during a bank robbery gone wrong.

Thousands of these tainted bills are in circulation around the city, but their source is no longer a mystery: They’re a marketing gimmick for Casa Diablo, a Northwest Portland strip club that is taking U.S. currency and smearing it with blood-red ink.

Casa Diablo has made headlines in Portland for its vegan menu and its successful battle against local opponents to open a second club on Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard.

Johnny Zukle, the club’s manager, says he’s the one red-inking the bills—which are legal tender—to suggest they’re stained with blood. He says he wants the strip joint to remind patrons of the vampire-infested cantina in the 1996 Robert Rodriguez film, From Dusk Till Dawn.​

- read the full article Blood Money (from Willamette Week)​