Here’s an excellent video that crams a huge amount of information about life expectancy into less than seven minutes. The speaker is Dr. Aaron Carroll, a pediatrician who also writes extensively about healthcare and related matters (here, and here, for … Continue reading
At the Mayo Clinic, a blind man with retinitis pigmentosa describes his first impressions of his new bionic eye. The vision is primitive, but he is able to see something, and his description of the experience is worth listening to. … Continue reading
It takes a minute to figure out what you’re looking at on this graph, but once you get the point it’s quite interesting. A title’s horizontal position represents how long ago the story (novel, movie, or whatever) first appeared, with … Continue reading
A retired police dog named Judge had an impressive career in the West Deptford Township Police Department in New Jersey, among other things assisting in the arrest of 152 suspects. In 2013, having served six years on the force, the … Continue reading
A poll released January 29 by the Pew Research Center (link) points out interesting differences and similarities between scientists and the general public in the U.S. on a variety of subjects of broad interest. Scientists polled were selected from the … Continue reading
How would Mars, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter, and Saturn look from the Earth’s surface if they were as far away as we are from the Moon? Link: http://youtu.be/usYC_Z36rHw For details, including a concise explanation of how it was made, click … Continue reading
The fastest way to get back to where you were after climbing a tall broadcast tower as in the previous post: Link: http://youtu.be/r3q3ZC5fcnY by … Continue reading
Broadcast towers have lights on them so aircraft can see them at night, and from time to time the lamps in them burn out and need to be replaced, which means someone has to climb the tower. This isn’t the … Continue reading
I don’t recall where I first heard about this, but it’s now traditional in Japan to perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at New Year. According to Mental Floss (link), the tradition dates back to World War I, and it’s become so … Continue reading
Many years ago I heard T.R. Reid, then Tokyo bureau chief for The Washington Post, recount on NPR’s Morning Edition that KFC had convinced Japan that the American thing to do on Christmas was to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken. This … Continue reading