How the stork is involved...

Oh, so that's how the stork is involved...

Patients Like Me

PatientsLikeMe - No it's not that patients like ME, but rather about patients LIKE me -- an interesting "social media" healthcare site based on "patients helping patients." Nicely done, and featured in a NY Times piece called Practicing Patients.

Word of the Day

Microceph

13 Days in October - 5 Years in Iraq

Watched Thirteen Days (Costner film about the Cuban missile crisis) yesterday. Very well done. Apparently a lot of the dialog was taken from tapes and note from the time. I was only 11 years old at the time, and only have vague memories of unease from the time.

What struck me about the situation was the dynamic between the politicians/leaders and the military. Now since the film was from the point of view of the Kenneth o'Donnell (Kennedy's chief of staff) and secondarily, the Kennedy brothers, the Army (Maxwell Taylor) and Air Force Curtis "bomb 'em to the stone age" Lemay come off as wanting a full scale invasion as a face-saving for the Bay of Pigs, while the administration was able to see the potential for escalation between the USA and USSR.

That's one thing that struck me as differing from today's environment - an administration that was capable of foresight. Admittedly today's global situation is probably as more complex than the Cold War as the Cold War was than the WWII era. But it helps to have leaders that recognize that complexity and plan and act accordingly.

A Great Moment in Creationism

In Minnesota, local academic and public skeptic expelled from a showing of EXPELLED!, a film promoting creationism/intelligent design, but they allow in his family and friend.

The punchline is in who the friend is...

...Richard Dawkins!

heh...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Priceless. Makes me wish I was Irish.

Friday Fun: Research On My Peeps

The history of St. Patrick's Day - And no, I'm not Irish -- I'm Hungarian.

Peeps Research - Just in time for Easter.

Also for Easter, a crocheted bunny, saved from a research lab, but unfortunately suffering the effects of experimentation, losing its brain from time to time. (My wife is usually a sucker for bunny-based cuteness, but she didn't think this was cute, rather ugly and sick. I guess I haven't had enough effect on her after 39 years to get her to appreciate sick.)

Improv Everywhere - And by everywhere, they mean a mall food court (youtube version), Grand Central Station (YouTube), giving a band their best gig ever, and more.

Clusterflock - My favorite new aggregation blog for fun and miscellany.

The Young Ones - Where are they now?

My iTunes by the Numbers

I picked up this useless meme from India on Clusterflock who got it from her (his?) friend Cynthia “Cindy” Closkey.

Total length (in Music)
5900 items
18:12:41:07 total time
25.37 GB

First and last songs (by title)
“A-Tisket A-Tasket” Manhattan Transfer, Swing
“2000 Light Years from Home” The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request

Shortest and longest songs
Once I deleted all the junk at either end (pdf booklets, streams, and the like):
"Horn Intro” (0:10) by Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News
"In C” (1:16:17) by Terry Riley, In C

Sort by album (first and last)
ABBA - Gold - Greatest Hits, ABBA (only one song - Dancing Queen - I swear)
2400 Fulton Street (Disc 2) - Jefferson Airplane

Top five most played songs
"Blackbird", The Beatles
"Proof", Paul Simon
"Float On", Modest Mouse
"Jersey Girl", Tom Waits
"Your Feet's Too Big" The Ink Spots

First five songs in Party Shuffle
"Christo Redento", Donald Byrd
"Crosseyed and Painless", Talking Heads
"The Book of Love", The Monotones
"Ground Round 6 Encore (Nelly is a nice girl)", PDQ Bach/Peter Schickele
"Tower of Song", Leonard Cohen

Five artists with most recently added songs
The Fleshtones
Eric Clapton
Blind Boys of Alabama
KT Tunstall
Amy Winehouse

Largest counts on artist search
Philip Glass - 106
Manhattan Transfer - 101
Van Morrison - 86
Beach Boys - 82
Beatles - 77
The English Concert - 76 (Classical Movements)
Academy of Ancient Music - 71 (Classical Movements)
Glenn Gould - 69 (Includes movements of two versions of the Goldberg Variations)
John Hartford - 62
Paul Simon - 58

Powerful PSA

Amazing slow motion video, with a heart-stopping last scene.

Link

Phantastic Photoshop Phaces

If Celebs Moved to Oklahoma. Don't mean to dump on OK again - that was the site-owners name - probably could be renamed "If Celebs Didn't Have Trainers and Plastic Surgeons". (Scroll down for Michael Douglas & Catherine Zeta-Jones and further for John Travolta - hysterical)

Inequity? Nah...

Just realized why marathons for breast cancer but not for prostate cancer - you'd need porta-johns every mile for the latter's survivors.

Question for Blockbuster

A frustration with my Blockbuster "All Access" subscription triggers this question...

How come Blockbuster will rent "unrated" versions of slasher crap, gross-outs like "Jackass", and bloodier battle scenes and not legitimate "art house" movies like "Lust, Caution", "Henry & June", and "The Cook, The Thief, his Wife, and Her Lover" that happen to have been slapped with NC-17 ratings? (They do offer an R-rated version of "Lust, Caution" - the one that was made for the mainland China market - but not the version that fully reflects the director's vision.)

I can accept not putting them on shelves in stores where insufficiently parented children might pick them up, but since the online service relies on a credit card to access, there's no reason adults shouldn't have access to them.

It's not like the policy is just a simple, straightforward "no NC-17" since they list "Last Tango in Paris" and John Waters' "A Dirty Shame" in their offerings.

Don't mean to pile on Oklahoma, but...

...in addition to the yesterday's post on Oklahoma's attack on education, here comes an Oklahoma state rep spewing hate with the proposition that, more than terrorism, Gays Are Biggest Threat to U.S."

Okie "Science"

From Bad Astronomy Blog || Oklahoma: One Step from Doom:

"The Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed a bill that says that a student can receive a passing grade in an Earth Science class if they say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the Earth an hour ago, and then planted false memories into every single living creature on Earth to make it seem like they’ve been around longer.

Of course, that’s not the intent of the bill. The intent is that a student can say the Earth is 6000 years old and still get a passing grade. The bill itself says that a student cannot be graded down if they say that what they are being taught interferes with their religious beliefs."

If it existed, I'd say American science education is going to hell in a handbasket.

Experience by Association?

"Saying that Hillary has Executive Branch experience is like saying Yoko Ono was a Beatle," - Kos commenter, via Andrew Sullivan

Heavy.com

Heavy.com - Videos, humor, community and other time-wasting tools - An interesting YouTube alternative.

More videos from the "Knob Hockey" channel at Heavy.com

Shark sighted jumping over Project Runway

Pop bimbo - no that's too strong a term - maybe bimbette - Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham a judge at Project Runway finals?!?

Sure feels like a shark jump moment for what has been one of the better "reality" contest shows on TV, tainting the best season yet, if broad consistency of participating talent in the contestants is a measure of a good season.

Best Sports Movie Ever

North Dallas Forty