firehose

The totally improvised, 7 1/2 minute filibuster from an episode of "Parks & Recreation", in which Patton Oswalt outlines his vision of "Star Wars: Episode VII" could not possibly have been more perfect, could it? Well, yes, it could, actually.

LeadSongDog writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting that the 'Pebble' smartwatch has matched the $15M record for Kickstarter funding after initially being panned by the VC crowd." One advantage that the Pebble has over rumored watches from big names like Google and Apple is existing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Like this

If Yahoo! succeeds in its attempt to acquire Tumblr, it will end up with one of the hottest Internet properties in today’s Web, with access to the coveted youth market and a foothold in mobile.

RIP, Ian Curtis

Ouya's E3 presence will be open to the public, as it plans to show off games for its console in a parking lot down the street from the Los Angeles Convention Center where E3 will be held in June. The information comes from an email to registered Ouya developers from head of developer relations, Kellee Santiago.

Santiago says Ouya will provide developers with "everything you'll need to put on a killer game demo," such as an Ouya console, controllers and TV, during the convention's entire three-day stretch from June 11 to June 13. Registered developers, of which there are over 10,000, have until May 28 to submit a form declaring their intent to show off their game at the Ouya lot, with hourly time slots available for each of the three days.

Continue reading Ouya booth to be open to the public in a parking lot outside of E3

Ouya booth to be open to the public in a parking lot outside of E3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 18 May 2013 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stephanie Tillman


Stephanie Tillman


Stephanie Tillman

Stephanie Tillman

wabby994:

no but nothing will ever beat 2006

Yep. This is the one that made Peter’s Mum go “WHUT??” :)

Wait, is Westeros in Europe?

iamsonothere:

I just needed this on my dash right now.

Me too.

Still remembering a long train ride from Blackpool to London with this charming and very, very smart man, discussing politics and (specifically) the politics of rebellion. CRIPES but I miss him. And it was always a pleasure to write for Sarek and think of that wise glint in his eye (and his lovely gravelly voice).

While many of us today use our cell phones as cameras, "point and shoot" had a very different effect when your camera was shaped like a handgun. Here are some of the weirdest vintages cameras, from cameras shaped like pistols and watches to one that could photograph an entire train at once.

Read more...

secretlymisha:

as far as i can tell from my dash there’s some sort of gay musical olympics going on that only europe was invited to

That would about sum it up, yeah. :)

An anonymous reader writes "For years, Bell Mobility customers in northern Canada were charged 75 cents a month for 911 emergency service. The problem is that cellphone users outside Whitehorse, Yukon, don't have access to 911 service. The Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories ruled against Bell this week, following a class action lawsuit which challenged the phantom cellphone 911 billings. Subject to a possible final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, Bell will likely owe 30,000 northern cellphone subscribers some bucks."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Abrahamson creates whimsical balloon sculptures of pop culture characters. This Xenomorph might look deadly, but outlast it for a few days, and it will simply deflate.

Read more...

Terminal Lance “Presidential Service”

By Max on May 17th, 2013

I thought the reaction to this photo was interesting:

Yes, the President of the United States of America had a boot Corporal hold an umbrella for him while he gave a speech.

The reactions were interesting because people let their political butthurtedness flow into their opinions on the matter. People seem to forget that we’re Marines, and this is exactly the kind of shit that Marines do. Somehow, holding an umbrella for the President and the Turkish Prime Minister is seen as demeaning, while all of the other bullshit that Marines do every day is not. I find it entertaining to see Marines on my Facebook page saying things like, “I would have told him to fuck off and hold his own umbrella.”

No you wouldn’t.

Shut up.

We’re Marines, if the President of the fucking United States asks you to hold a fucking umbrella, you hold a fucking umbrella. As well, the day I give a shit about a boot Corporal holding an umbrella is the day I’ve forgotten what the Marine Corps is. Honestly, holding an umbrella for the President is probably the least demeaning thing I could imagine doing as a Marine, as opposed to the other bullshit I had to do every day. No one would think twice about asking a boot to police call cigarette butts across the entire base at 5am, but the minute this boot has to hold an umbrella for the Commander in Chief, people get upset.

He’s the President, he rates an umbrella.

Get over it.

Comments are closed.

Original Source

	rachel shared this story from Houghton Library Blog:
	today, in Harvard Owns This

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rachel shared this story from The Daily Otter.

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Someone made a GIF of Eddie the sea otter playing making a basket. Submitted by Pete!

	rachel shared this story from Everyone's Blog Posts - My Modern Metropolis:
	Neat!

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The SS Ayrfield is one of many decommissioned ships in the Homebush Bay, just west of Sydney, but what separates it from the other stranded vessels is the incredible foliage that adorns the rusted hull. The beautiful spectacle, also referred to as The Floating Forest, adds a bit of life to the area, which happens to be a sort of ship graveyard.

Originally launched as the SS Corrimal, the massive 1,140-tonne steel beast was built in 1911 in the UK and registered in Sydney in 1912 as a steam collier which was later used to transport supplies to American troops stationed in the Pacific region during World War II. The ship went on to serve as a collier between Newcastle and Miller's terminal in Blackwattle Bay.

Eventually, in 1972, the SS Ayrfield was retired and sent to Homebush Bay which served as a ship-breaking yard. While many ships were taken apart, about four metallic bodies of vessels that are over 75 years old currently float in the bay, though none are enveloped by nature quite like the Ayrfield. The ship continues to attract visitors to its majestic presence, rich with mangrove trees.

Top image by Andy Brill

Image by Neerav Bhatt

Image by Steve Dorman

Image by Rodney Campbell

Image by Louise Evangelique

Image by Louise Evangelique

via [Bhakta's Weblog, Oddity Central]

The first paragraph is bonkers; further down it gets interesting (#killme) #no2WomensBodiesAreNotOnFire

It seems so intuitively right. You’re facing the risk of delivering your baby early and the doctor prescribes bed rest. What could be more cozy and safe? Why wouldn’t you endure a little extra annoyance (you’re pregnant, after all) if it would help keep your tiny, oh-so-vulnerable fetus floating inside the fortress of your womb as long as possible? Even the words “bed” and “rest” feel so inherently soothing and therapeutic.

Think again.

Bed rest, a growing body of research suggests, may be bad for you.  And for physicians to blithely prescribe it is, in a word, “unethical,” argue a trio of doctors from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

In a paper called “‘Therapeutic’ Bed Rest in Pregnancy: Unethical and Unsupported by Data” recently published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, Dr. Christina A. McCall and her colleagues make a powerful case against the practice many perceive as cuddly and innocuous.

They cite the medical paradox in which bed rest remains widely used despite no evidence of benefits and, on the contrary, “known harms.” They further suggest that in its current form, strict bed rest should either be discontinued or else viewed as a “risky and unproven intervention” requiring rigorous testing through formal clinical trials.

“If we have anything to learn from the history of medicine it is that instincts and good intentions are a highly fallible compass without the check of scientific controls.”

In an email exchange, Dr. McCall clarifies that she is talking about strict bed rest here and adds:

“If a woman feels that increasing her daily rest lessens anxiety or improves symptoms (whatever they may be), then we are not suggesting this should be discontinued. We are merely suggesting that every woman receive INFORMED CONSENT regarding the literature on bed rest and the autonomy to make her own decision. A note from Dr. [David. A] Grimes (my co-author)… “if we have anything to learn from the history of medicine it is that instincts and good intentions are a highly fallible compass without the check of scientific controls.”

Research suggests that the potential harms for women on bed rest (a broad term that can include everything from total inactivity to limits on strenuous endeavors like household chores, exercise and sex) can be significant. They range from potentially dangerous blood clots and bone demineralization to muscle and weight loss, financial harship due to restrictions on working and a range of psychological suffering, notably depression. A report earlier this month, for instance, found high rates of depression and anxiety among hospitalized pregnant women on bed rest and suggested that all women facing this type of confinement undergo mental health screening.

No Benefits

Dr. McCall’s conclusions are based on a broad review of the medical literature that found bed rest offers no benefit for the most common conditions it’s prescribed for: threatened abortion, hypertension, preeclampsia, pre-term birth, multiple gestations or impaired fetal growth.  (Another study published in the same issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology found that activity restriction did not reduce the rate of pre-term birth in women with a short cervix.)

Even beyond these physiological considerations, Dr. McCall asserts that prescribing bed rest is morally questionable and “inconsistent with the ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice.”

Still, the practice remains deeply ingrained. Here are the numbers, according to an accompanying editorial:

As many as 95% of obstetricians report recommending activity restriction or bed rest, in some form, in their practices. Nearly 20% of gravid women in the United States — approximately 800,000 per year — will be placed on bed rest between 20 weeks of gestation and delivery.

Questioning the wisdom of bed rest — which has been used for centuries and viewed mostly as an inconvenient, potentially beneficial and essentially harmless cost of pregnancy — isn’t new. For years, data has been mounting on the negative effects of prolonged activity restriction in other medical arenas. Last year the influential American College Of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a practice bulletin challenging — but not fully condemning — the practice:

Although bed rest and hydration have been recommended to women with symptoms of preterm labor to prevent preterm delivery, these measures have not been shown to be effective for the prevention of preterm birth and should not be routinely recommended. Furthermore, the potential harm, including venous thromboembolism, bone demineralization, and deconditioning, and the negative effects, such as loss of employment, should not be underestimated.”

What About Maternal Harm?

But Dr. McCall and her colleagues go further, suggesting that bed rest should be limited to formal clinical trials, with written protocols, approval from an institutional review boards and informed consent. As it’s currently used, she writes, the practice undermines the spirit of the physician’s premier commandment — “do no harm” — in several ways:

“…bed rest conflicts with the ethical principle of justice. Justice requires that clinicians treat individuals fairly and that the provision of care not be discriminatory. Numerous Cochrane reviews regarding pregnancy and childbirth are available, yet the evidence frequently is ignored or interpreted selectively in a way that disregards maternal interests. For example, findings of fetal harm often lead to immediate prohibitions (such as caffeine or various medications), whereas findings of maternal harm or relative fetal safety are overlooked or slowly integrated into practice.”

Online Shopping, No Husband

For Kristen Rathjen, pregnant with twins and currently hospitalized and on bed rest at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the reasons for staying put are simple: she’s already about 2.5 centimeters dilated at 30 weeks pregnant, and she doesn’t want to give birth to a premature infant in an ambulance rushing from Mashpee, on Cape Cod, where she lives, into the city.

“I’m just doing what’s in the best interest of my child,” says Rathjen, a 32-year-old marine biologist. “Sure there’s stress, I’m not at home, I don’t have my husband or my pets and I’ve definitely gotten weaker. But the big stress of ‘How am I going to get here?’ is off my shoulders.”

So, for the next few weeks, Rathjen is resigned to forgoing work, accepting boredom and generally following her doctor’s advice. “I’ve got books, my laptop, crafts and really bad TV,” she said. “Plus, it’s given me time to research baby products and do some online shopping.”

Dr. Adam Wolfberg, a maternal-fetal specialist with Boston Maternal-Fetal Medicine, says despite the lack of evidence to support bed rest, there is something real, almost a kind of placebo effect, to women feeling like they are doing something to protect their babies, as opposed to doing nothing.

“Obstetrics is a field in which we have a very limited number of tricks up our sleeve when it comes to preventing preterm delivery. So to say, ‘I’m sorry ma’am, there is nothing we can do,’ is harder then saying, ‘Well, there’s no evidence bed rest helps, but it is something we can try.”

“Obstetrics is a field in which we have a very limited number of tricks up our sleeve when it comes to preventing preterm delivery,” he said. “So to say, ‘I’m sorry ma’am, there is nothing we can do,’ is harder then saying, ‘Well, there’s no evidence bed rest helps, but it is something we can try…The idea that there’s something they can do that’s proactive — that can be meaningful.”

In a recent post called “The Truth About Bed Rest” on the Isis blog Parenting Starts Here, Dr. Wolfberg lays out some other reasons why doctors — himself included — continue this “nutty” practice:

Why is it that most obstetricians I know still recommend bed rest, when peer-reviewed literature and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists suggest the practice doesn’t work and might even be dangerous? Here are some possible explanations:

•Bed rest seems logical: the reclining posture theoretically reduces the force of gravity on the cervix – another theory entirely lacking evidence.
•It feels better to prescribe bed rest than to tell a patient, “we really don’t have anything to offer you to reduce the chance that you will deliver early.”
•Women on bed rest are doing something, which feels a whole lot better than doing nothing.
•If bed rest isn’t recommended, and the patient delivers prematurely, they and their doctor will always wonder whether bed rest would have changed the outcome.

Dr. Wolfberg says despite his skepticism, he would not go so far as to brand bed rest as ethically unsound. “There are so many things in medicine we do without evidence, I really don’t think bed rest is unethical. In many ways, medicine isn’t just about evidence, it’s evidence plus — it’s experience and skill and intuition — not to say those are replacements for evidence. But evidence isn’t all there is.”

Of course, every woman is different and the complications of pregnancy vary, notes Angela Davids, who moderates an online forum, keepemcookin.com for women who have been prescribed bed rest. She tells me in an email that 76 percent of her forum participants deliver at 36 weeks or later:

Any one of them will tell you that bed rest helped to prolong their pregnancies, and I think that is what researchers need to look at. Instead of looking at 37 weeks of gestation as a measure of success, look at how many days of gestation there were following the diagnosis of a specific complication. Every additional day in the womb counts toward the health of a baby…

So, what’s an expectant mom to do?

Dr. Wolfberg offers this advice:

•Patients who are worried about pre-term labor, short cervix, or vaginal bleeding should consult their midwife or physician.

•In his own practice, Wolfberg says he works hard to identify patients who would benefit from progesterone and get them on that medication when appropriate.

•He says it is reasonable for women at high risk for pre-term delivery to limit strenuous activities or exercises.

•He says he’s never had a patient suffer long term consequences of bed rest, and notes that since he’s never met a mother who delivered prematurely who didn’t – irrationally – blame herself, he prescribes activity reduction because it’s something patients can do.

•If bed rest is going to interfere with a patient’s need to earn a living, hold down a job, or take care of her family, he says he support her decision to remain active (and cites the evidence that bed rest doesn’t help).

Beyond that, Dr. Wolfberg said, “if they do bed rest and fail, at least they feel like they did everything they could…we all need a little bit of magical thinking to get through the day.”

Oftentimes, what helps or hurts a pregnancy is in the eye of the beholder. A friend offers this memory of her six weeks on bed rest:

I started bleeding and the baby seemed like it was low, plus I’d had two prior miscarriages, so the doctor prescribed “modified bed rest,” meaning I could get up to eat, go to the bathroom, or recline on the sofa. It wasn’t fun — I spent alot of time reading and looking at the clouds…One day I wandered downstairs to rest on the sofa, and saw the 9/11 airplanes hit the twin towers. I think it was the stress that brought on the delivery — a late miscarriage at 19 weeks — and that was that.

Original Source

In the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the title hero sets out to find the Holy Grail with only a diary and a map without any labels — and he has to find the grail before anyone else does.

In this comic, Josh Mecouch of Formal Sweatpants shows us that there was an even more difficult final task than the one we saw in the film — and it's one that we non-adventurers often fail.

Comic illustration by Josh Mecouch, Formal Sweatpants. Published with permission; all rights reserved. Read more...

More about Comic, Comics, Film, Humor, and Watercooler

dawnmarble:

just wanted to relive this moment

Potent petals -- found in the form of floral liqueurs or bitters, distillates such as rose water or the blooms themselves -- have blossomed behind the bar in recent years as creative cocktail makers look to keep their concoctions in harmony with the calendar. The Box Social, Smallwares/Barwares, Urban Farmer, Little Bird, The Bent Brick and 23Hoyt are a handful of local spots you can sip your way through spring with seasonal cocktail specials.

Liwei Jiao sent in a selection of signs from a Chinese website that was originally part of a collection assembled in the Daily Mail. We've seen most of these Chinglish signs before, and have already discussed several of them over the years. But this one is new, at least to me, and unusually inept:

mínzú yuán 民族园 ([Minority] Nationalities Park)

The mistake arises from making the wrong choice among the multiple meanings of the word mínzú 民族 ("ethnic group; race; nationality; people").

The reason this mistranslation is particularly inappropriate is because of the infamous (but not historically accurate) sign at the entrance to Huangpu Park in semi-colonial Shanghai — "No dogs or Chinese allowed" — which is one of the most frequent instantiations of racism from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Nowtoo Sugi lives in Japan and likes to relax by creating awesome and unusually colourful works of latte art. It’s a truly delicious and delightful hobby.

Starting this past February, Sugi began using colored bartender syrups to, as the hobby artist says, “paint” on coffee. Sugi isn’t the only one to create colorful lattes, but is certainly one of the best. 

So, for example, Sugi uses Blue Hawaii syrup for, well, blue and strawberry syrup for red or pink. The colors are mixed with steamed milk for variation.

Head over to Kotaku to view many more examples of Nowtoo Sugi’s awesome latte art. Then visit Nowtoo Sugi’s YouTube channel to watch how some of these amazing works of beverage art were made.

[via Kotaku]

IndieWebCamp:

IndieWebCamp is a regular gathering of web creators building and sharing open web technologies to advance the state of the indie web, and empower users to own their own identities & content on the web. We get together for a weekend to talk about what has been done in the field, what still needs to be done, and then spend a day hacking and creating. There are workshops and breakout sessions.

The third annual IndieWebCamp will be June 22through June 23, 2013, immediately after Open Source Bridge 2013. Save the dates!

• RSVP on the 2013 Guest List
• http://lanyrd.com/2013/indiewebcamp/
• http://plancast.com/p/hhdw

Where

TBD, Portland, Oregon.

Geoloqi (now the Esri R&D Center, Portland) graciously provided the space for IndieWebCamp 2012.

DJO- Spock’s Bored (by dayjoborchestra)

Open always wins.

Nick Bilton on the pervasiveness of Google Glass at I/O.