Dr. Michael DeBakey, the man whose research and surgical efforts forever changed many processes related to heart surgery, passed away last Friday at the age of 99.
In March, Dr. DeBakey was interviewed by Esquire for their “State of the American Man” feature, in which they interviewed men born each decade.
In addition, he contruibuted to Esquire’s “What I’ve Learned” series.
If world leaders were doctors, I think they would be more concerned with the welfare of people. There would be less poverty. There would be medical care for everybody, no matter whether people paid for it or not.
In any good society, every member should be interested in the health of every other member. Because if any member is unhealthy, it’s a burden on the society.
Focused on the death of Tony Snow and in turn sidelining the efforts (60,000 operations) and impact of Dr. DeBakey (creation of more than 70 surgical instruments), Merlin describes his frustration and disappoint.
After he corrected their already correct usage of the word ‘pasty’ last week, Stephen Dubner of the Freakonomics blog recieved a special and edible gift from The Economist in his mailbox. [WaxyLinks]
And news to him and me, this situation is defined as Muphry’s Law.
Muphry’s law states that “if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.”
After being in the Upper Peninsula for a week earlier this month — where pasties are probably more popular than burgers — I don’t know that I will ever question their popularity.
What I Learned Today posted about Pope Benedict XVI’s text messaging. Today he sent an additional text blast to thousands of Australian youth that looked like this:
Young friend, God and his people expect much from u because u have within you the Fathers supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus - BXVI
At this time it’s required you be a Telstra subscriber to sign up for his daily inspirational messages.
In addition to our energy and financial crises, the New York Times reports that America is current dealing with another crisis: a shortage of 4s. [H&FJ]
When prices passed $4, many stations ran out of 4s, and managers improvised by photocopying signs or stenciling numbers by hand.
The makeshift digits are legal as long as they are similar to the neighboring numbers, said John Browne, the assistant director of enforcement for the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs’ petroleum unit.
“As long as the color and size are correct and it is apparent what the number is, they are fine,” said Mr. Browne, who inspected Mr. Nair’s handiwork last Friday at the Lukoil station.
Oddly related: Sesame Street recorded the counting song “1 2 3 4” with Feist in April and it hit YouTube yesterday. Because everyone really loves 4s as long as their not adjacent to a $. [JoshuaBlankenship]
Guardian’s Laura Barton reviewed the new self-titled Fleet Foxes record — which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite records this year — and explains how the music became “entangled” in her environment.
It came to me one week in May, at the end of seven curious days in which I had both sailed on an airboat through the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana, and walked from Camber Sands to Rye alone at three o’clock in the morning. I was listening to Fleet Foxes almost constantly that week, and the music became entangled with the strange landscapes before me: swamp water, cypress trees, hanging moss, alligators, osprey, night heron; it wrapped itself up with a Sussex countryside turned fabled land beneath the night sky, verges dewing, trees in heavy blossom, the stream and, far beyond, the sea, still and silvery under the moonlight.
I love thinking about how the contexts people hear music affects the way the music is received.
Back in early 1992, a container ship leaving Hong Kong accidentally spilled its contents in the Pacific Ocean: almost 29,000 plastic bath toys including many classic yellow rubber-duckies. [France]
Ten months after the incident the first Floatees began to wash up along the Alaskan coast. The first discovery consisted of ten toys found by a beachcomber near Sitka, Alaska on 16 November 1992, about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from their starting point. Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham contacted beachcombers, coastal workers, and local residents to locate hundreds of the beached Floatees over a 530 mile (850 km) shoreline. Another beachcomber discovered twenty of the toys on 28 November, and in total 400 were found along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Alaska in the period up to August 1993. This represented a 1.4% recovery rate. The landfalls were logged in Ingraham’s computer model OSCUR (Ocean Surface Currents Simulation), which uses measurements of air pressure from 1967 onwards to calculate the direction of and speed of wind across the oceans, and the consequent surface currents. Ingraham’s model was built to help fisheries but it is also used to predict flotsam movements or the likely locations of those lost at sea.
Many of these ducks landed on Pacific beaches in Japan, Australia and North America, but a few of “the friendly floatees” caught the northern ocean currents and took “the VERY long trek through the Arctic Sea.” Some of these started landing on English beaches in 2007.
Strange Maps has the detailed story and a map of the ducks’ journies.
