Quote:"And it’s coming at a time when the 3amET show is seeing big ratings in the A25-54 demographic – even topping CNN prime time last week.
Just like when we highlighted the show’s ratings in September 2009 (which the FNC advertising department enjoyed as well, taking out full-page ads in the New York Post and others), the ratings for last week show Red Eye beating CNN again. This time, the show had better ratings in the A25-54 demographic than Campbell Brown at 8pmET and Larry King at 9pmET, and tied Anderson Cooper at 10pmET (Monday-Thursday)."
Quote:"MIAMI (AP)—A ban on the three-point stance? NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says it’s possible.
Concerned about concussions, Goodell said the league will keep looking for ways to make the game safer. Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation” hours before the Super Bowl, he didn’t rule out the idea of banning the three-point stance for linemen to reduce the ferocity of collisions at the line of scrimmage.
“As you’ll see tonight, you’ll see a lot of players that never get down in a three-point stance,” Goodell said Sunday. “So it’s possible that would happen.”"
// So, would a 4-point stance be legal in goal line defense? I do agree though, it would be a good idea to end the three point stance. I was taught a three point stance from a former Gopher football player, tha stance put more than half my weight on my hand, and coming out of the stance I basically would spear players with my head. Not a good way to asure longterm health.
Quote:"Researchers say that people who complain of boredom are more likely to die young, and that those who experienced 'high levels' of tedium are more than two-and-a-half times as likely to die from heart disease or stroke than those satisfied with their lot.
More than 7,000 civil servants were studied over 25 years – and those who said they were bored were nearly 40 per cent more likely to have died by the end of study than those who did not."
// This goes against everything my Scandinavian ancestry has taught me, and affirms everything my Hispanic ancestry said all along. Take the hot sauce over the mayo.
// There is so much in this article to comment on. Firstly, is unfettered consumption really masculine? I like the fact we're moving away from the Keynesian consumer society and are finding meaning in "the little things" like our ancestors before. The development of this after a severe recession shouldn't be surprising.
The sexual politics mentioned in this article are another interesting topic. Is it a technological change, where the glowing boxes in our lives are more important to us than real connections to other human beings, or is the changing sexual landscape in Japan a product of feminism and the changing role of women in a post-industrial society?
I might suggest reading this article twice and really reflecting on these changes (assuming these changing will happen in the US, which I think likely).
This Wikipedia article is about the Wikipedia article you are currently reading. This article is one hundred and fifity-two words long. It takes an average reader less than one minute to read. This article, the one you are currently reading, is written in English. It was written in February of 2010. It was written based on an idea from a Facebook status thread. Thanks Corey L. This article has had only one author. The author is fairly certain no one else has written a Wikipedia article about this Wikipedia article, the one you are currently reading. However, it is possible the concept of writing a Wikipedia article about the Wikipedia article being read has been written about by others. It does not matter as this Wikipedia article, and that one, is available for anyone to use under the GNU FDL free use license. This article is a stub. Please help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Quote:"Dr. Schneider estimated the actual lifetime-earnings advantage for college graduates is a mere $279,893 in a report he wrote last year. He included tuition payments and discounted earning streams, putting them into present value. He also used actual salary data for graduates 10 years after they completed their degrees to measure incomes. Even among graduates of top-tier institutions, the earnings came in well below the million-dollar mark, he says."
// So, really, I've just been wasting my time…Great.
Quote:"Could it be that blogs have become online fodder for the — gasp! — more mature reader?
A new study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile. Tech experts say it doesn't mean blogging is going away. Rather, it's gone the way of the telephone and e-mail — still useful, just not sexy."
// So, blogging is now the abode of old fashioned writers interested in depth and quality? Awesome. Via Seth S. Via Aaron G.
Quote:"Mike Miller, a chief planner with the Reigate and Banstead Borough Council, said the council was delighted with the decision, which it viewed as a vindication of the decision to challenge Fidler in court.
"This was a blatant attempt at deception to circumvent the planning process," he said, adding that Fidler now has one year to destroy the castle, remove the ruins and return the property to its original state.
The unusual castle, complete with cannon, ramparts and stained glass, was completed in 2002 and Fidler lived there with family for more than four years before the authorities started legal action against him."
// I really hate phrases like "planning process." It's redundant. Planning is a process. So just say planning. The castle guy didn't go along with the local planning requirements or rules.
Quote:"The new research suggests that standard tests may overlook patients who have some consciousness, and that someday some kind of communication may be possible.
In the strongest example, a 29-year-old patient was able to answer yes-or-no questions by visualizing specific scenes the doctors asked him to imagine. The two visualizations sparked different brain activity viewed through a scanning machine.
"We were stunned when this happened," said one study author, Martin Monti of Medical Research Council Cognitive and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. "I find it literally amazing. This was a patient who was believed to be vegetative for five years."
Ever since a research paper four years ago showed apparent signs of awareness in a vegetative patient — one who was included in the new study — families of patients have been clamoring for brain scans, said Dr. James Bernat of Dartmouth Medical School, a spokesman for the American Academy of Neurology."
Quote:"In an experiment performed in a Swiss laboratory, 10 robots with downward-facing sensors competed for "food" – a light-colored ring on the floor. At the other end of the space, a darker ring – "poison" – was placed. The robots earned points for how much time they spent near food as opposed to poison.
The experimenters, engineers Sara Mitri and Dario Floreano and evolutionary biologist Laurent Keller, also gave the robots the ability to talk with each other. Each robot can produce a blue light that can be seen by the others and which can give away the position of the "food" ring. Over time, the robots evolved to deceive each other about the food ring. "
// This ruined my day. Do we really need evil robots?
Quote:"Kids who had social problems also had problems in at least one of three different areas of nonverbal communication: reading nonverbal cues; understanding their social meaning; and coming up with options for resolving a social conflict.
A child, for example, simply may not notice a person's scowl of impatience or understand what a tapped foot means. Or she may have trouble reconciling the desires of a friend with her own. "It is important to try to pinpoint the area or areas in a child's deficits and then build those up," McKown explained."
// Funny, I would have guessed "being fat" to be right up there.
Quote:"The top 10 skills that students need to succeed based on the authors' surveys of more than 8,000 teachers include:
* Listen to others
* Follow the steps
* Follow the rules
* Ignore distractions
* Ask for help
* Take turns when you talk
* Get along with others
* Stay calm with others
* Be responsible for your behavior
* Do nice things for others."
// This I find funny, the common complaint against homeschooling is that it fails to teach kids how to socialize. But apparently, niether does the factory model of education.
Quote:"A "dark side" to the internet suggests a strong link between time spent surfing the web and depression, say psychologists.
British scientists found that the longer people spent online, the less likely they were to be happy."
// More reason to push away from the computer once and a while and seek the outside world. It probably doesn't matter if the internet is causal or not (a big discussion in the story). It's likely simply making the change towards spending less time on the Internet will positively effect these addicts.
Quote:"The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to purchase sixty Remington Model 870 Police RAMAC #24587 12 gauge pump-action shotguns for the Criminal Investigation Division. The Remington parkerized shotguns, with fourteen inch barrel, modified choke, Wilson Combat Ghost Ring rear sight and XS4 Contour Bead front sight, Knoxx Reduced Recoil Adjustable Stock, and Speedfeed ribbed black forend, are designated as the only shotguns authorized for IRS duty based on compatibility with IRS existing shotgun inventory, certified armorer and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts.
Submit quotes including 11% Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax (FAET) and shipping to Washington DC."
// Only the IRS could find a way to make buying guns unfun.
Quote:""Aid is bottlenecking at the Port-au-Prince airport. It's not getting into the field," said Mike O'Keefe, who runs Banyan Air Service in Fort Lauderdale.
Boxes of supplies are stacked to the ceiling in the dimly lit warehouse of the capital's hospital. In another storage area, medicine, bandages and other key supplies pile up on tables – watched over by a Haitian health worker who scrawls in a notebook, ticking off everything that comes in and out. Doctors say since locals took over the supply room, crucial time to save lives has been lost filling out unnecessary forms."
// Hey, local bureaucratic jerk, where do you think you'll file those inventory papers?
Quote:"Mr. Renken’s ministry is one of a small but growing number of evangelical churches that have embraced mixed martial arts — a sport with a reputation for violence and blood that combines kickboxing, wrestling and other fighting styles — to reach and convert young men, whose church attendance has been persistently low. Mixed martial arts events have drawn millions of television viewers, and one was the top pay-per-view event in 2009."
// Not sure what to think of this. I spent a lot of time learning martial arts, and I'm religious. But, combining the two? I don't get it.
Quote:"WOMEN use more brain power and take longer than men to understand jokes but derive more pleasure from a good punchline, according to scientists.
Experiments at Stanford University in California found that women use more parts of the brain than men to process jokes and have less expectation that they will find them funny.
The findings are part of an emerging body of research helping scientists to unravel the mystery of how our sense of humour works."
// Women also like slapstick comedy less, and wordplay more. I'd be interested in finding out why there's a big difference in reactions to comedians of different genders. Women laugh more readily at male jokes than men do at jokes told by women.
But I'm sure the feministas are right and men and women aren't really different at all.
As more and more people have relied on insurers or the government for medical coverage, reducing the amount of money they pay out-of-pocket for healthcare, the higher medical costs have gone.
So, what might be one answer to higher medical costs? This guy:
Eelkema is one doctor swimming against the tide. The number of solo family practitioners has fallen precipitously in the past two decades as medical care has grown more complex — along with the billing. But he’s also a potent symbol of the times: Doctors spend more of their day complying with insurance rules, which are usually well-meaning but take time away from patient care.
“What Eelkema is saying is, ‘I’m opting out of all the over-regulation and lack of support for primary care,’” said Dr. Patricia Fontaine, president of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians.
This is not a panacea for healthcare, but it is amazing how big of an impact could be made if doctors got back to treating patients with as little bureaucratic hassle as possible.
Quote:"WASHINGTON (AFP) – Healthy older adults need less sleep than their younger counterparts and, even with less sleep under their nightcaps, are less likely to feel tired during the day, a study published Monday showed.
The time spent actually sleeping out of eight hours in bed declined progressively and significantly with age, the study published in SLEEP, the official journal of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society, said.
Older adults, aged 66-83, slept about 20 minutes less than middle-aged adults (40-55 years), who slept 23 minutes less than young adults aged 20-30, the study said."
// Wow, forty extra minutes…times 365 days times 10 years…which is about 100 extra days of "wake time" a decade. Too bad retirees spend that time worried about their lawns, watching "60 Minutes" and talking about their grandkids.
Quote:"ABC News’ Mary Bruce Reports: Education Secretary Arne Duncan said today that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans” because it gave the city a chance to rebuild and improve its failing public schools.
In an interview to air this weekend on “Washington Watch with Roland Martin” Duncan said “that education system was a disaster. And it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that we have to do better. And the progress that it made in four years since the hurricane, is unbelievable.”
The Education Department confirmed the quote to ABC and Duncan released the following statement in response: “As I heard repeatedly during my visits to New Orleans, for whatever reason, it took the devastating tragedy of the hurricane to wake up the community to demand more and expect better for their children.”"
I really don’t have anything to say as this blog turns six years old. Nothing of any worth, anyway. If any readers have any thoughts, I’d like to hear them.
// Interesting article. But very one-sided. The underlying assumption that Keynesian economics is gospel and that government wealth redistribution is the path to prosperity is not supported by many economists. There are plenty of statistics showing free markets produce more wealth for more people than any other system. The article is another "I robbed from Peter to help Paul, why isn't Paul more supportive?" polemic. But ask a person if you want their permission to rob and plunder on their behalf, they will often say no. But, the article's explanations on the psychology of voters is interesting and should be understood by politicos trying to win elections and push policy.
Quote:"survey of 3,000 people tried to determine what tempts people to spend their money, how they react to temptation and how far they would go when tempted.
Sex was a main temptation for 50% of men, while for 56% of women food topped the list. The sexes also differed in their approach to straying. 1/2 of men thought it harmless to lust after someone other than their partner, compared to 33% of women.
"Our survey also revealed that one in four women (20 percent) and, shockingly, almost half of the men (43 percent) surveyed have been tempted to hook up with their friend's significant other," according to the survey.
The sluggish economy and high unemployment also increased competition and temptation in the workplace. 48% of people admitted they sneaked a look at a co-worker's pay slip. 15% of men and 10% of woman said they had sabotaged a colleague.
"…"
An equal number of men and 8% of women admitted to taking credit for someone else's work."
I’ve given the delicious.com blogging app an experimental run, and it’s time for feedback. The posts look terrible, and at least one person has suggested these posts have made the blog unreadable. I liked the app because it creates content with no added work from me as I’ve been using delicious.com for years now.
I’ve been hoping to continue to use the app until I finish up grad school and have more time to get back to “real blogging.” Then again, “real blogging” might be dead. So let me know whether it’s time to shut down the “links” posts.
