David Sedaris – Socialized Medicine in Old Europe
My rule: See Sedaris in New Yorker, Share.
He’s stopping by Penn State in 2 weeks. Very excited to see him a third time.
Mar 31, 2012, 12:16pm
Ron Burgundy on The Dan Patrick Show
Is this what we have to look forward to over the next year and a half? In-character marketing? I wonder if I’d get tired of it. Based on this, no. Bring it on.
Also, how many sports show hosts can play with RB at all, let alone how well DP did here.
Mar 31, 2012, 12:03pm
7:25pm Fri Mar 30, 2012
There are so many amazing things about the self-driving car that I didn’t take the time to think past how it would improve things for current drivers.
With blind drivers, I imagine a lot of things would need to be changed a bit. In the video, I was curious how the drive-thru person would react. What about the gas station?
How far can it go? Can you send your kids to school in a self-driving car?
Found at 9to5 Google.
11:29am Fri Mar 23, 2012
Prepared to be confused …
You know what. I don’t have anything else to add. A ticket oak? It just makes no sense. I guess that’s the idea?
6:01pm Wed Mar 14, 2012
Terry Moore: How to tie your shoes
This video is actually from 2005, and posted last May. I watched in a few days ago and haven’t had a shoelace come untied yet. Of course, I haven’t been walking around very much, and my dress shoes are the real problems, they will be the real test. It’s a little harder to tie this way, but not impossible. It could just be because I’m so used to the old way. I’ll be curious if it does work if eventually it won’t feel weird.
This may change my life. In undergrad I decided that if my shoe came untied during the day it was bad luck.
10:21pm Mon Mar 12, 2012
This TED Talk, The happy secret to better work, was just loaded with facts and studies. One caught my attention a little more than the others. That when someone smiles at you, you mimic the smile and use that to determine if the smile is genuine.
Ok, when someone smiles at you, you smile back. Makes sense. But mimicking their smile? I had no idea. But how to test that is what actually happens? They made people hold a pencil in their mouth which inhibited their ability to mimic the smile. Those subjects were less accurate in determining if a smile was genuine.
Much more on smiling in this NY Times story.
Seems like there are a lot of possibilities here. Are some people’s smiles more easily mimicked? Does this lead to success being famous or holding higher political office. Is there smile compatibility? Do people have a smile-type they look for in a mate? Could dating sites use this to find a match where each person is the others smile-type?
Who knew there was so much research in smiling?
8:58pm Sun Mar 11, 2012
I have a couple of TED videos queued up to share. Most of them I have something to add besides just posting. This one, I can just post. Don’t worry, it’s not a sad talk, or one that makes you think to much.
8:55pm Sun Mar 11, 2012
One of the books currently in my Kindle app is Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
One study he brought up in the book was the Baker-baker Paradox. The situation is that one person works as a baker and the others last name is Baker. The idea is that you are much more likely to remember the profession than the name. How much more likely? Not sure. Most of the Google hits were excepts from books and not the original study. Everyone just states the theory and not the data.
I’m terrible with names. The book suggested to tie the sound of the name to something you will remember. That seems more likely than just repeating a person’s name.
I mentioned I didn’t find a ton about the study, but I thought this article was interesting.
9:09pm Fri Mar 2, 2012
I love Costco and I especially love when they sell things in sizes that are unimaginable or multi-packs of unlikely things. A few years ago it was TVs. They can 2 or 3 packs of TVs. I wanted to get myself a 6-pack of big screens.
In an email ad this week, I saw my next multi-pack interest: tables. I know, tables seem boring. But what if I told you Costco was selling them in packs of 21. I thought you’d be interested. They aren’t evil, they throw in the cart. These aren’t just flimsy card tables, they are commercial quality.
If it all seems too perfect, it actually is. I read the only review, which gave the tables just 4-stars. The reason? The cart doesn’t hold 21. Sure enough, the description says the cart is only for 10 tables. Which really gets you. Even if you get an extra cart, you still have that 21st table.
$2k is a little heavy for me right now, and I don’t have room, or the need, for 21 tables. I’ll be on the lookout for Costco’s next marvelous multi-pack.
When doctors ditch pens, medical errors drop
The title alone just makes sense, the type of thing that you don’t really need a study to find. I find the description of what this software actually does even more interesting.
The computer system studied here reviewed the patient’s current medications, alerted the prescriber to any potential conflicts, and then sent the order off, electronically, to the pharmacy
Wow, even less in need of a study. Of course, that’s more because of the title of the blog post. The importance of the study is to find how much more accurate. The post says errors drop 60% and the NPR blog post says that the software UI still needs work, so that number should get better.
I was still curious what the 60% meant. It’s a good number, but if there were 1,000 errors before vs 10 errors, that’s a big difference. I tried to read through the study. During the study there were 1,923 admissions, and 11,168 errors. That’s 5.8 per person! That sounds crazy, no? Thankfully the serious rate was less than 3 serious errors per thousand admissions.
I’d say that 60% is a strong number. The study to do is which is more cost effective, this software or giving everyone in the hospitals lessons to improve their handwriting.
Mar 1, 2012, 6:53pm
6:34pm Thu Mar 1, 2012
Why don’t you watch this ad first.
Ummm.
Now I’ve never had spam, so maybe I’m not supposed to get it. Here’s what I see:
1) My egg carton is making noise, muffled screams even.
2) Sir Can-O-Lot is a tiny egg sized knight.
3) He wants you to mix things up and try Spam with eggs.
I do like the idea of pushing Spam as a complementary ingredient. According to the article, that is their “Break the Monotony” campaign, mentioned in the ad, that started a few years ago.
Why a knight? He’s not a tiny cute and cuddly cartoon character you’d expect. Is spam trying to be harder than that? AdAge mentioned a crusade against the routine campaign, which makes sense, but I’m not a fan of.
It’s their 75th anniversary, they couldn’t have gone with tradition, even if the campaign is going against tradition?
Looking forward to the Sir Can-O-Lot pack-ins so kids can get their own cuddly knight.
From AdAge