Dr. Hansen, who has been doing research on obese monkeys for four decades, prefers animals that become naturally obese with age, just as many humans do. Fat Albert, one of her monkeys who she said was at one time the world’s heaviest rhesus, at 70 pounds, ate “nothing but an American Heart Association-recommended diet,” she said./via Monkeys Fattened Up to Study Human Obesity - NYTimes.com.
One example — before the action was taken, JC Penney held the number one spot for the search term ‘living room furniture,’ and after it stood at number 68 — is enough to show the awesome power Google holds over the results it delivers, but the story also serves to show how truly broken search is, as well as Google’s seeming nonchalance about the issue./via NYT uncovers the tawdry, seedy tale of the SEO games of J.C. Penney — Engadget.
We now believe that the “how” of a communicative act is of huge importance. We would say that Mao posted that power comes from the barrel of a gun on his Facebook page, or we would say that he blogged about gun barrels on Tumblr—and eventually, as the apostles of new media wrestled with the implications of his comments, the verb would come to completely overcome the noun, the part about the gun would be forgotten, and the the (sic) big takeaway would be: Whoa. Did you see what Mao just tweeted?
/via News Desk: Does Egypt Need Twitter? : The New Yorker.
This is completely missing the point. The tools Mao used when he communicated weren’t important because he was the establishment. He was the elite. He had his choice of tools to broadcast. Social media means more people have access to broadcast tools. The tool is important only in the way that it modifies the status quo. The content of the message is still the most important thing. The difference is now we are hearing the message of the young street protester broadcast to the world, rather than the voice of Mao. How people communicate does matter if the choice is between yelling in a street, broadcasting to the world, or as Rob Hyndman mentions, shooting someone.
Those who propose the United States somehow adopt an approach of “noninterference” should remember that silence will be interpreted as complicity by Egyptians. America, after all, far from a bystander, is the Egyptian regime’s primary benefactor. The billions it has given Egypt in economic and military aid means that the United States, more than any other country, enjoys significant leverage with Egypt. Now is the time to use it./via Pharaoh’s End - An FP Round Table | Foreign Policy.
I can also report that there’s an almost eerie workplace cultural emphasis on safety. Posters plastered on almost every available surface exhort you to know what you’re doing ahead of time, understand and avoid the risks, don’t be careless, wear your helmet, check — are your shoelaces tied? — there was even (near the exit) a poster urging everybody to “take safety mindedness away — most accidents happen at home!” Everything, and I mean everything, was tagged, bagged, festooned with padlocks, controlled with keys, labelled, numbered, and itemised. It was like being in the middle of a wartime scare orchestrated by a committee who were terrified of forgetting where they’d left their screwdriver./via “Nothing like this will be built again” - Charlie’s Diary. Awesome essay from Charlie Stross about a tour he went on of a working nuclear plant.
Eating a diet high in processed food increases the risk of depression, research suggests.
