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Thanks to Kaplan’s enduring fascination with her disease, Jeannie Peeper can now realistically imagine a time—perhaps even a few years from now—when people like her will take a pill that subdues their overactive bones. They might take it only after a flare-up, or they might take a daily preventative dose. In a best-case scenario, the medication could allow surgeons to work backwards, removing extra bones without the risk of triggering new ones.
At 54, with an advanced case of FOP, Peeper does not imagine that she’ll benefit from these breakthroughs. But she is optimistic that her younger friends will, and that one day, far in the future, second skeletons will exist only as medical curiosities on display. All that will remain of her reality will be Harry Eastlack, still keeping watch in Philadelphia, reminding us of the grotesque possibility stored away in our genomes.
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“For instance, our parser correctly analyzes the made-up sentence above.” Syntactic Ngrams over Time | Research Blog. That’s pretty damn cool.
"In Wallace’s book, a Canadian terrorist informant of foggy allegiance asks an American undercover agent a form of the question: “If Americans would choose to press play on the film Infinite Jest, knowing it will kill them, doesn’t that mean they are already dead inside, that they have chosen entertainment over life?” Of course vanishingly few Americans would press play on a film that was sure to end their lives. But there’s a truth in this absurdity. Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love."
From Here You Can See Everything - The Morning News. Well, shit… I had precisely zero interest in David Foster Wallace before, but now I might actually have to read one of his books.
"The dates in the selector seem to indicate when the element — rather than the product itself — was created. A strange naming convention."
Apple Store moves to SASS, drops XHTML — martenbjork.com Never seen anyone do that before, but I like it! For timely content like this, it makes a lot of sense to use this sort of convention.
"In the wake of the devastating tornado in an Oklahoma City suburb, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) rejected comparisons between federal aid for this disaster and the Hurricane Sandy relief package he voted against. That was a “totally different” situation, Inhofe told MSNBC."
Inhofe: Tornado aid ‘totally different’ from Hurricane Sandy aid. “Totally”, dude.
Why I'm Not a Vegan - NYTimes.com
Advocates of veganism could make a lot more progress in saving the world from harmful impacts of raising livestock if the practice of choosing a vegetable-based diet wasn’t so often presented as an all-or-nothing choice. So while I think VB6 is a gimmicky way of reducing meat consumption, I applaud whatever works for getting people to think critically about their diet.
A By-the-E-Book Education, for $5 a Month - NYTimes.com
Wow, there’s a lot to like about this novel educational system that’s gaining ground in Kenya. The core concepts are probably applicable beyond the limited scope of the poor rural African settings it was designed for.
A Web Series For Kids Aims To Be The “Elmo for Engineering”. This has potential…
(Source: youtube.com)
"As the Savage-Giuliano disagreement suggests, maintaining a relatively meaningful organic standard in the Central American coffee business—one that adds value to both bean and the bean grower’s bottom line—may, under current conditions, require something that’s all too rare in the organic/conventional debate: compromise."
Coffee Leaf Rust: It’s Coming for Your Morning Joe - The Atlantic
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The exasperation, of course, is not over the content of the study; it is over the fallacious inference that communicating the “97% of scientists believe …” message is an effective way to dispel public controversy over climate change.
If it were, then the controversy would have been solved by now. “Scientific consensus” has been the dominant theme of climate communication for the better part of a decade. And cultural polarization over that time has not abated—it has only intensified.
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But here’s another piece of advice: use scientific methods to test and refine communication strategies.
It’s ironic that it’s necessary to say this. But it is. It really really really is.
""Flickr Pro is no longer available for purchase, but many of the Pro-only features are now part of free Flickr accounts."
Flickr: Help: Free Accounts, Upgrading and Gifts. Flickr no longer wants my money? Oh great, this bodes well for the long-term future of the service. UPDATE: Looks like I spoke too soon: they didn’t just retire the old paid version, they also introduced a new paid version that costs twice as much. Oh well…
How Wrong Is The Latest “Dirty Dozen List?” « Biology Fortified, Inc.
TL;DR: “Very wrong”. You should freely buy whatever fruits and vegetables you want, because year after year the USDA tests random samples from supermarkets and verifies that they’re well within the safety limits set by the EPA. That large coffee you had this morning is probably riskier than the worst offender on the “dirty” list, and the beer you had with dinner is way worse. So please, don’t let scaremongers make you afraid of fruits and vegetables: they’re unequivocally good for you, regardless of whether they’re organic or conventional.
This is why people should learn statistics — Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
