Thoughts and Such

Mobile phone radiation 'protects' against Alzheimer's

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:27:45 -0500

Mobile phone radiation 'protects' against Alzheimer's :

After all the concern over possible damage to health from using mobile phones, scientists have found a potential benefit from radiation.

Parkour Motion Reel by “saggyarmpit” This is a...

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:40:00 -0500

Parkour Motion Reel by “saggyarmpit”

This is a really neat concept. There’s a similar one below, but a bit more violent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcBSEbhWAfk

Zombie Attack? We're Doomed.

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:19:00 -0500

Math researchers have concluded that if the world were attacked by zombies, the kind from movies and pop culture, the world would be doomed. The study by Canada’s University of Ottawa and Carleton University was published in the journal Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress. Based on mathematical models, while zombies move slowly, they could infect and “zombie-ize” more people than victims could fend off with pitchforks, flaming torches or shotguns.

—The New Physician, Nov 2009

(This one’s for Dennis)

Candy and Violence

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:16:00 -0500

Research suggests that children who ate candy every day grew up to become adults more prone to violence. In research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, the study, begun in 1970, of nearly 17,500 participants, found 10-year-olds with a daily sweet tooth were more likely to have been convicted of a violent crime by age 34. The study sought to examine what effect childhood diets could have when they became adults.

—“Side Effects”, The New Physician, Nov 2009

Exam Frustrations/New Year's Resolutions

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:46:58 -0500

1. Never leave questions blank on a scantron. Especially if you already circled the correct one on the test.

2. Do not transfer answers incorrectly from the test to the scantron. Especially if the one you circled is the right answer.

3. Double check again after transferring answers to a scantron. You always manage to go wrong somewhere.

4. Listen to lectures and/or make sure to look at all slides. Annoying professors test only from lecture and little of the syllabus material.

— Adhering to these rules would make the difference between a B and an A. Sigh.

"We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness..."

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:01:00 -0500

““We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird,
and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.””

- Cousin’s wedding invitation.

jennsfer: The Fun Theory (via paulgatzke)

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 04:36:21 -0500

jennsfer:

The Fun Theory (via paulgatzke)

The Overnight Haul at the Snowed in Airport. Still didn’t...

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:15:00 -0500

The flight that just couldn't.

We found Angeline and camped out at D1.

Snow covered conveyer belt.

The on ramp and the slide.

Gurneys! Or, just snow and luggage cart.

Better dressed homeless/flightless.

Guess it's better than being down there.

More cancellations and damage control.

The Overnight Haul at the Snowed in Airport. Still didn’t get more than 3 hours of sleep tonight. I’m now running on about 9 hours of sleep over the past 3 nights. This is a series of the quiet and sleepiness of the overnight haul.

Stuck at the airport overnight, early evening edition. What a...

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:58:00 -0500

First glimpse of potential!

Passing by fellow traffic

The De-Icer Pad machine.

In action, action we never got to see.

Beautifully eerie and quiet snow scene

Shoveling snow. Lots and lots of it.

Calling it a night with wine.

At Vino Volo's with wine tastings.

Rockers looking out to the "sun."

Rockers on the inside, and unhappy man.

Stuck at the airport overnight, early evening edition. What a nightmare roller coaster of a day.

Stuck at the airport due to snow. More pictures to come. They...

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 10:32:00 -0500

Out my window on the first snow day

The first flurries of snow last night

Freshly fallen snow this morning

The airplane has a blindfold on!

Stuck at the airport due to snow. More pictures to come. They finally let us start boarding, 1.5 hours late, but still no guarantees we’ll get of the tarmac for another 1-1.5 hours.

Robin, did you get out on time? Hope you’re happily in the air, unlike the two of us. (Sorry to hear you’re still on the tarmac). Jealous that you got off of it an hour later!

6:45 am - meet Robin and we make a dash for the train (6:55 depart time)

6:55 am - stumble down to the platform. Train is running late. Whew.

7:30 am - train arrives at airport. Get in line to check bags in.

8:20 am - finally get bags checked, run to security check, which turns out to be empty. (Too many canceled flights I suspect.)

9:00 am time of scheduled flight - told ten minutes beforehand that the plane was on hold before takeoff. Too much snow on the runway. Not allowed to board. They don’t want us to get stuck on the tarmac sitting on the plane.

10:30 am - resigned to eating breakfast sandwich (which I hate). Still too much snow, not going to be able to take of for several hours, but it looks like we just got clearance to board.

10:40 am - They spoke too soon. The airport has officially been closed. No planes are going to be coming in or taking off until further notice.

12:05 pm - made some announcement and it looks like we’ll be getting out of here, in bit. Someone swore that they said “3 hours”. But it seems like we’re cleared for takeoff! Yay!

12:20 pm - boarded plane

1:00 pm - plane was in a long line, destined for the de-icer (a plane carwash)

1:50 pm - “we are the next in line for the de-icing pad”

2:20 pm - (after watching another plane and a half get de-iced) “we are sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the wind has picked up and we will be turning back around to the gate.”

3:00 pm - get off plane. Line up for another half hour of waiting to talk to someone about our flight situation. No flights tomorrow. One flight on Monday routing through Chicago. CHICAGO, yeah, right. We book it anyway and have Diana’s boyfriend start the new ticket search. He finds cheap tickets for tomorrow morning but none for today. We scramble over to the US Airways terminal to see if they’ll take any notice of us and take us on board. Their planes seem to be flying (they ended up all coming back around, LUCKY ROBIN FOR GETTING HOME), we figure they’ll be able to take us. It also turns out that they still have room on their flights.

5:00 pm - The physical lines are terribly long and NOT MOVING, phone lines are all tied up for hours. We finally sit down, take advantage of their incredibly slow internet and settle on the cheap tomorrow flight. God-willing that the weather is suitable for flying, we will be on that plane and home tomorrow afternoon.

Vivid Dream, Overslept

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:57:41 -0500

I overslept this morning due to the craziest dream. I’d written a great account of it, but I had the misfortune of hitting “create post” when my internet was spazzing out.. and I lost that great literary piece and that bit of my life. All I can remember now is the vivid image of my own wrist without flesh, an upset father, a creepy stalker man, a beautiful woman whose mother was belittling here, a cousin, and a necklace.

Anyway, the test is over, its time to clean up, go out, and be merry.

Mr. Donut! Now in stop-action delightfulness.

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:41:04 -0500

Mr. Donut! Now in stop-action delightfulness.

This is adorable. I wonder if it’s his favorite movie?

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:42:55 -0500

This is adorable. I wonder if it’s his favorite movie?

Community Service in Medical School

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:49:00 -0500

Prime example of how med students are guilted into doing community service:

“I know you’re all up to your eyeballs in MCBM, but please take a 2 minute study break to read about this opportunity.

[Student org] has established a partnership with a local charter school that is in desperate need of tutors. They’ve lost two of their core science teachers this year and their kids are scrambling to try to learn Chemistry and Biology with long-term substitutes (not easy).

We’re trying to set up a program where we’ll send tutors to the school twice per month for an hour. The kids need help in the following subjects:

Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Algebra II, Pre-Calculus, Geometry

Since nobody here can pretend they did poorly in math or science in high school, I hope you can all donate an hour or so of your time every month to these kids!”

ilovenyao: 45 Breathtaking Examples of Slow Shutter Speed...

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:02:41 -0500

ilovenyao:

45 Breathtaking Examples of Slow Shutter Speed Photography @ SmashingApps

Chinese “blow-up” bra with “God’s...

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:17:00 -0500

Chinese “blow-up” bra with “God’s Hand” technology. Pretty funny digital enhancements too, the flowers on the bra really “grow” during the pumping activity.

All they want for Christmas: Letters to Santa aren't toy-centric, but where's 'please'?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:25:27 -0500

All they want for Christmas: Letters to Santa aren't toy-centric, but where's 'please'?:

I always wondered where those letters to the North Pole actually went.

Ovaries Must Suppress Their Inner Male

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:35:40 -0500

Ovaries Must Suppress Their Inner Male:

The nerdier version of the same story. Pretty crazy stuff.

Why Do Women Outnumber Men in College?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:46:00 -0500

Why Do Women Outnumber Men in College?:

Link to another interesting article with more explanations rather than just stats, this is my condensed version:

“In 1960, the labor force participation of female college graduates in their twenties and thirties was low: only 39 percent of 30-to-34-year olds were employed and 47 percent of those employed were teachers; 73 percent had children at home… But beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, young women’s expectations of their future labor force participation changed radically. Rather than follow in their mothers’ footsteps, they aimed to have careers, not just jobs.

… Adding to the possibility of a greater investment in professional careers was the availability of the contraceptive “pill.” Women could better plan their futures. With a resurgence of feminism, young women also felt more empowered. They had greater guarantees by the government that job discrimination by employers against women would not be tolerated… Since 1980, the wage premium for a college degree has risen, especially for women.

… It also could be that the rise in divorce rates since the 1960s and women’s greater responsibility for children have prompted women to see an investment in college as an insurance policy for their future financial lives.

… Another aspect in the reversal of the college gender gap, rather than just its elimination, is the persistence of behavioral and developmental differences between males and females. Boys often mature more slowly than girls. In grades K-12, boys tend to have a higher incidence of behavioral problems (or lower level of non-cognitive skills) than girls. Girls spend more time doing homework than boys. These behavioral factors, after adjusting for family background, test scores, and high school achievement, can explain virtually the entire female advantage in getting into college for the high school graduating class of 1992, the authors figure. It allowed “girls to leapfrog over boys in the race to college.” Similarly, teenage boys, both in the early 1980s and late 1990s, had a higher (self-reported) incidence of arrests and school suspensions than teenage girls.

… Women’s relative numbers in college have increased ever since the 1950s, with a pause when many men went to college to avoid serving in the Vietnam War. The decline in the male-to-female ratios of undergraduates in the past 35 years is real, and not primarily due to changes in the ethnic mix of the college-aged population or to the types of post-secondary institutions they attend.”

Leaving Men Behind: Women Go to College in Ever-Greater Numbers

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:36:00 -0500

Leaving Men Behind: Women Go to College in Ever-Greater Numbers:

Link to an article that has a few explanations and consequences for one of our lecturers’ comment about men being outnumbered by women in earning postsecondary school degrees. Here’s a quickie excerpt of the stats:

“But then things changed. More and more women began to go to college. By the 1980s, the majority of new freshman each year were females, and since then the gender gap has only grown. Between 1970 and 2000, the overall number of women enrolled in postsecondary institutions grew by 136%, while their numbers in professional school grew by a whopping 853%.

… In 2004, 9.9 million women were attending the nation’s accredited postsecondary schools, compared to only 7.4 million men.

… By 2020, some studies say that 156 women will earn B.A.s for each 100 men. “