Pages

The single worst moment of my life… was the moment I was born.

Sanjay Gupta interviews Dr. Jack Kevorkian. For the youngsters in the audience, Kevorkian was big news in the 1990s as he blatantly broke Michigan laws against euthanasia.

After helping more than 100 people die, Kevorkian entered prison in 1999 at the age of 71. He was released on parole a couple of years ago after [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

The Future Well: Redesigning Healthcare

I’m a big fan of Dr. Jay Parkinson and his efforts at Hello Health. I posted about the project a little less than a year ago. Here’s Jay at the Gov 2.0 Expo talking up his new initiative The Future Well.

“Healthcare simply isn’t designed from the ground up to be a pleasant experience for the [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

BP CEO Tony Hayward Is a Sociopath - Updated

(Whoops! Misspelled his name. Name has been corrected and symptoms of sociopathy have been added in an update.)

Deeply disturbing comments from BP CEO Tony Howard Hayward suggest he doesn’t see clean up workers as human.

“I’m sure they were genuinely ill, but whether it was anything to do with dispersants and oil, whether it was food [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Help Don Get a Liver

I don’t know Don personally, but we have several mutual friends. They care about him deeply and would like to ask for your help.

Visit A Benefit for Don Waugh to see how you can help.

In 2004, his liver began to fail, and in March of this year it has escalated to stage 4 liver failure [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

BP Flu

There is an excellent chance their health will never recover.

One fisherman said he felt like he was going to die over the weekend.

“I’ve been coughing up stuff,” Gary Burris said. “Your lungs fill up.”

So, Rand Paul, while accidents may happen, where’s the accident in not giving clean-up workers protective gear? Telling people that no harm [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

The BP Flu

Some of these workers will end up with life-long health problems. BP will continue to make astronomical profits and ultimately their fine will be a pittance.

“Fishermen here and in other small communities dotting the southern marshes and swamplands of Barataria Bay are getting sick from the working on the cleanup, yet BP is assuring [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Too Fat to Fight

Mission: Readiness, a “bi-partisan organization of senior retired military leaders” released a report today saying that our ability to invade countries and wage war is jeopardized because kids today are fat dumb crooks (.pdf).

“75% of young Americans are ineligible to serve their country because they have either failed to graduate high school, engaged in criminal [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

The Department of Play

I think this should be a cabinet-level department in the executive branch. And it should be for adults too, not just kids.

The Department of Play (DoP) is a working group of researchers, students, and community practitioners at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media who share a common value: the design of new technology and [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Food, Inc. Review

Brad Blog has a terrific review of Food, Inc. If you haven’t seen this documentary yet, do yourself a favor and rent it immediately.

  • Share/Bookmark

Politics Monday - Refusing to Listen

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding among some American people and some members of Congress about how their country works.

I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve heard or read Tea Party protesters claim that politicians “refuse to listen.” Erm, no. They may not be listening to you, but they are listening [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

A less-deadly processed meat paste sausage

All I really want to share is the title of this post and the image below, but I suppose I should put it into some context.

The folks at Fast Company learned that hot dogs are the “perfect plug for a child’s airway,” and decided to design a new hot dog delivery system.

Fast Company’s Hot [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Are cell phones killing us? Even more important, is my beloved Wi-Fi giving me cancer?

Hmmm, independent research consistently shows that cell phones increase the risk of tumors and cancer. Fortunately, research by the cell phone industry shows there is no risk! Whew, that was close.

Christopher Ketcham has a great article in GQ about the controversy surrounding cell phones. Increasingly, the evidence is confirming that cell phones are a real [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Terry Pratchett on Assisted Death

Terry Pratchett, best-selling author of the Discworld series, has posterior cortical ­atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s ­disease, a degenerative disorder of the brain for which there is no cure. He knows that he is going to die, and he has come to terms with that. What he has not come to terms with is [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Promote Your Farmers’ Market

Eat local advocates might be interested in applying for a grant to help promote farmers’ markets.

“The Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP) was created through a recent amendment of the Farmer-to-Consumer Direct Marketing Act of 1976. The grants, authorized by the FMPP, are targeted to help improve and expand domestic farmers markets, roadside stands, community-supported agriculture [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Bruce Sterling on Healthcare 2.0

The following is post 45 of 152 (so far) in Bruce Sterling’s State of the World 2010, an annual conversation over at the WELL between Sterling and the WELL netizens. The discussion ranges far and wide, and brief essays like the following on the networked future of healthcare pop up regularly. I put the passage [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Fast food burgers injected with ammonia

Yuck. Why does anyone eat burgers from fast food restaurants? (Other than to get their junky fix of fat and salt.)

“The company says its processed beef, a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips, is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide.”

Not only is the beef used the worst part of the cow, [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Elmo and his elbow; or Sleeve sneezing

One of the things I find most fascinating about 2009 is the nation-wide effort to change American sneezing habits. I’m not exactly sure when this started, or who started it, but there has been a concerted effort to teach kids to sneeze into their arm if they don’t have a tissue. For example, here’s Elmo [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

What part of health care is being reformed?

Since there was so much focus on the public option, the rest of the health care reform bill got a little overshadowed. One FB friend asked – “What exactly did we get with this compromisedtohell health care reform bill?” For those of you wondering the same, I thought I’d touch on a few things the [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Health Care Optimism

The news media is driven by criticism, concern-trolling, and prophecies of doom. Contemplation, reflection, and pragmatic analysis have no place in what passes for public discourse. Mostly. There are still a few nooks and crannies where you can find knowledgeable people thinking carefully about a topic. Maggie Mahar is one of those, and she’s been [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Some positive news about the health care reform bill

While a public option is an important part of health care reform it’s still only one small part of the health care reform legislation. As for the rest, Jonathan Gruber, a health economist at MIT, likes what he sees.

“My summary is it’s really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Would you eat meat grown in a vat?

Hank Hyena at H+ estimates that tank-grown protein will be on our grocery shelves in 3-10 years.

“In-Vitro Meat — aka tank steak, sci fi sausage, petri pork, beaker bacon, Frankenburger, vat-grown veal, laboratory lamb, synthetic shmeat, trans-ham, factory filet, test tube tuna, cultured chicken, or any other moniker that can seduce the shopper’s stomach [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

How a Virus Invades Your Body

Cool animation and explanation of how a virus invades your body.

David Bolinsky did the animation. Here he is talking at TED in 2007.

Here is his short piece “The Inner Life of a Cell.” It took more than a year to create these 8 minutes of animation.

  • Share/Bookmark

You lie death panel jackass

Really?

Why is our public discourse so shallow, frivolous, and inconsequential?

This jackass bullshit will take up another few news cycles.

After being bandied about for the last 8 months I bet most people still don’t know what “public option” means.

Oh, I think I just answered my question. (Corporate power has no interest in [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Health Insurance Reform in Cartoon

Clear explanation of why we need health insurance reform (h/t tiny little dots)

Animated by Andy Lubershane.

  • Share/Bookmark

The Public Option is Popular, Moral and Inexpensive, Therefore it Must Die

Mostly I’m just posting this because the headline (which I used as the headline for this post) is so great.

Here’s the article that goes along with the headline.

“The reality, however, is that a healthcare reform bill with a robust public option is both extraordinarily popular and fiscally responsible, while, on the other hand, the kind [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Interview with Congresswoman Kosmas (D-Fl)

Pushing Rope posted this hour-long interview between the Orlando Sentinel editorial board and Representative Kosmas.

 

I listened to about 5 minutes before I got too bored to continue, but Hussey listened to the whole thing and offers up some of the key points in the post.

  • Share/Bookmark

The Double Down Sandwich from KFC

Consumerist, via Foodgeekery, reposts this cell phone recording of KFC’s latest sally in the War on American health.

And, Patton Oswalt thought the “sadness bowl” was the lowest KFC could sink.

Obesity actually shrinks your brain, which might explain why logic and reason don’t mean diddly-squat in our health care debates.

  • Share/Bookmark

More Debunking of the Health Care Bill Critics

The following is an exchange cut and pasted from the comments section of Common Sense from a Common Man.

To his credit Peter “Fleckman” Fleckenstein A) read the bill B) tweeted his commentary, and C) allows contrary voices to speak out on his blog post. For a topic that has drawn such heat he manages to [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

Debunking Health Care Reform Critics

There is an anti-Health Care Reform email circulating that claims to “read the bill” and points to specific problems. The email is taken from this post by Gary North.

North writes – “Here are some of the bad highlights. After you read them, you will begin to see what you will be facing if this bill [...]

  • Share/Bookmark

The High Cost of Cheap Food

Time Magazine looks at America’s Food Crisis and How to Fix It.

“But cheap food is not free food, and corn comes with hidden costs. The crop is heavily fertilized — both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the [...]

  • Share/Bookmark