February 2011
106 posts
January 2011
136 posts
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Les Savy Fav, Sleepless in Silverlake (via Greg Rutter)
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2:35
Some terms relating to drunkenness from Francis Grose's "Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" [1811]
ADMIRAL OF THE NARROW SEAS. One who from drunkenness vomits into the lap of the person sitting opposite to him.
ALTITUDES. The man is in his altitudes, i.e. he is drunk.
TO CAT, or SHOOT THE CAT. To vomit from drunkenness.
CORNED. Drunk.
CUP-SHOT. Drunk.
DUTCH FEAST. Where the entertainer gets drunk before his guest.
HALF SEAS OVER. Almost drunk.
NAZY. Drunken. Nazy cove or mort; a drunken rogue or harlot.
SURVEYOR OF THE HIGHWAYS. One reeling drunk.
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Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong →
newsweek.com
In just the last two months, two pillars of preventive medicine fell. A major study concluded there’s no good evidence that statins (drugs like Lipitor and Crestor) help people with no history of heart disease. The study, by the Cochrane Collaboration, a global consortium of biomedical experts, was based on an evaluation of 14 individual trials with 34,272 patients. Cost of statins: more than $20 billion per year, of which half may be unnecessary. (Pfizer, which makes Lipitor, responds in part that “managing cardiovascular disease risk factors is complicated”). In November a panel of the Institute of Medicine concluded that having a blood test for vitamin D is pointless: almost everyone has enough D for bone health (20 nanograms per milliliter) without taking supplements or calcium pills. Cost of vitamin D: $425 million per year.
Sharon Begley on unreliable medical research.
The Atlantic last year published a superior piece on the same subject, Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. Ioannidis also gets a mention in a fascinating New Yorker piece, The Truth Wears Off, on the so-called “decline effect.” Another related read: Meet the Ethical Placebo: A Story that Heals.
“In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down the women’s cheeks”
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Chemical Signals in Women’s Tears Dampen Arousal, Scientists Say
I can corroborate this.
(via nostrich)
“I was always fascinated by people who are considered completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all.”
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Johnny Depp (via vanityfair)
Too true!
(via roelofbotha)
“The 19th century American humorist Josh Billings, perhaps, put it best: “It ain’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that just ain’t so.”
—On Early Warning Signs § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
“Billions of years ago, a Mars-sized body smashed into the young Earth, causing a chain reaction that created the Moon. Earth’s atmosphere became full of rock vapor and the sky rained down magma. Yes, it was literally Hell on Earth.”
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Clouds made of rock vapor once rained magma on ancient Earth
cf,
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