20160130 - hamamelis

Witch-hazel (Hamamelis⁾ is a genus of flowering plants in the family Hamamelidaceae, with three species in North America (H. ovalis, H. virginiana and H. vernalis), and one each in Japan (H. japonica) and China (H. mollis). The North American species are occasionally called winterbloom.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hazel

20160129 - bronte

Brontë family

The Brontës were a nineteenth-century literary family associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte (1816–1855), Emily (1818–1848), and Anne (1820–1849), are well known as poets and novelists. Like many contemporary female writers, they originally published their poems and novels under male pseudonyms: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Their stories immediately attracted attention, although not always the best, for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.
The three sisters and their brother, Branwell, were very close and during childhood developed their imaginations first through oral storytelling and play set in an intricate imaginary world, and then through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories set therein.
The deaths of first their mother, and then of their two older sisters marked them profoundly and influenced their writing, as did the relative isolation in which they were raised.
Their home, the parsonage at Haworth in Yorkshire, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum, has become a place of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bront%C3%AB_family

20160128 - shakespeare - 2

William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon".^{[3][nb 2]} His extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, which has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, and religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, and these are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, however, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but for all time". In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been repeatedly adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular, and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
In 2016, celebrations will commence in the United Kingdom and across the world to honour The Bard's 400th anniversary.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare

20160127 - shakespeare

20160126 - famous birthdays

Douglas MacArthur 1880


Stephane Grappelli 1908


Cora Baird 1912


William Prince 1913


James Van Heusen 1913


William Hopper 1915


Derek Bond 1919


Page Cavanaugh (Page Cavanaugh Trio) 1922


Anne Jeffreys 1923


Paul Newman 1925


Joan Leslie 1925


Roger Vadim 1928


Jules Feiffer 1929


Mary Murphy 1931


Claude Gray (The Tall Texan) 1932


Huey "Piano" Smith 1934


Bob Uecker 1935
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http://www.on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/birthdays/jan26.htm

20160125 - weather

20160124 - zika

WHO: More Research Needed in Zika Defects Link

Date:

January 26, 2016

Source:

AP / Powered by NewsLook.com

Summary:

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that it suspects a link between the mosquito-borne Zika virus and a rare birth defect involving abnormally small heads, but the evidence so far is circumstantial. (Jan. 26) Video provided by AP

 

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/1fbcf0265444494d86e3347e72ebcb92.htm

20160623 - schengen

The Schengen Agreement led to the creation of Europe's borderless Schengen Area. The treaty was signed on 14 June 1985 by five of the ten member states of the then European Economic Community near the town of Schengen in Luxembourg but was only partially implemented until 1995. It proposed the gradual abolition of border checks at the signatories' common borders. Measures proposed included reduced speed vehicle checks which allowed vehicles to cross borders without stopping, allowing residents in border areas freedom to cross borders away from fixed checkpoints and the harmonisation of visa policies.^[1]
In 1990 the Agreement was supplemented by the Schengen Convention which proposed the abolition of internal border controls and a common visa policy. The Schengen Area operates very much like a single state for international travel purposes with external border controls for travellers entering and exiting the area, and common visas, but with no internal border controls. It currently consists of 26 European countries covering a population of over 400 million people and an area of 4,312,099 square kilometres (1,664,911 sq mi).^[2]
Prior to 1999, the Schengen treaties and the rules adopted under them operated independently from the European Union; however, the Amsterdam Treaty incorporated them into European Union law, while providing opt-outs for the only two EU member states which had remained outside the Area: Ireland and the United Kingdom. Schengen is now a core part of EU law and all EU member states without an opt-out which have not already joined the Schengen Area are legally obliged to do so when technical requirements have been met. Several non-EU countries are also included in the area...................


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement

20160122 - watching

How to Begin People Watching

People watching involves observing people to get a feel for the beauty and rhythm of the community around us. Watching people is amazing. You can have some of the funniest laughs ever with you and your friends, especially in a place full of bad scruffs. For some people watchers, it's about creativity, using the moments of watching in trying to guess at another person's story just from mere observation, and embracing the fun of what is, in effect, an amateur social science.

People watchers observe speech in action, relationship interactions, body language, and activities; it's also common to include listening in to conversations. Indeed, all the senses can be put to good use when people watching, even down to trying to guess a person's perfume or aftershave as they walk by. Here are some suggestions for enjoying the art of people watching...............................


 http://www.wikihow.com/Begin-People-Watching

20160121 - talking

'It's not what you say, 

it's the way that you say it'

A laugh or a growl says more to a human than a joke or an angry word, and we pay more attention when we hear an emotional sound than we do if someone puts the feeling into words. We also interpret emotions much faster than words, within a tenth of a second. These are the findings of research published in Biological Psychology.

Previous studies carried out at Cornell University have suggested that while human feelings themselves are individual and subjective, shared patterns of activity in the brain enables them to be converted into a standard code.
Researchers from McGill University in Canada wanted to know whether the brain would register a different reaction in response to sounds, as opposed to words. Sounds that convey emotions include laughing, growling or crying.
The team selected three basic emotions: anger, sadness and happiness. They played a combination of sounds reflecting those emotions to 24 participants, while simultaneously playing nonsense phrases.
Sentences, such as, "The dirms are in the cindabal," were chosen so as not to give any linguistic hint as to which feelings were being expressed. At the same time, an electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to record how quickly the participants' brains responded to the cues.
As the participants listened to the phrases, spoken with different emotions, they tried to identify which emotions were being expressed.

Sounds of emotion more readily understood

The EEG was able to measure to a millisecond the brain's response to emotions, as compared with words. The researchers could also observe which emotions, if any, were most quickly recognized through sounds, the extent of the brain's response and whether emotional sounds have a stronger effect on individuals who are anxious.............................


 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/305452.php

20160120 - walking

Why walking is the ideal speed to see the world

How do you walk 500 miles? 

Extreme hiker Sarah Marquis explains how pain gives way to pleasure during an epic trek through the wilderness.

Sarah Marquis will call her parents to let her know she’s coming to visit — and she’ll be there in a week. That’s because her preferred mode of transport is on foot, and from her house in the Swiss Alps to her folks up north is a seven-day, cross-country hike. She wouldn’t choose to arrive a moment sooner. “Walking is the perfect speed for us,” says Marquis, who believes that modern-day commuters, hurtling through the world at unnatural speeds, have lost a profound connection to their surroundings. Marquis has made a career out of walking extreme distances, up to 12,000 miles in one trip, and sharing her stories of endurance in a series of books and lectures. She describes her most recent expedition, a 500-mile, three-month-long trek through Western Australia’s Kimberley National Park.
The first step is simply being present. In June 2015, Marquis was dropped off by helicopter at the mouth of the Berkeley River, the starting point of her journey, in a desolate patch of “crocodile country” roughly 60 miles from the nearest town. “I had this amazing feeling of freedom mixed with fear, mixed with, ‘I have to get out of here, now,’” she says. For 10 days, she walked with a singular purpose to dodge crocodiles and reach her destination as quickly as possible. Gradually, her fear gave way to a growing awareness of her surroundings. “You start to notice little things in the landscape, like a nice little patch of grass that’s greener than the rest,” she says. The process is not so much a conscious struggle with fear, she says, as it is as a shift in focus to tune into strange, new sensations.
When you walk everywhere, every sense is heightened and attuned to unexpected pleasures. Marquis can pick up the trace scent of water from a distance of several kilometers. “The air is usually saturated with tannin from the plants, the trees and the grass, but as soon as you get closer to the water, the air becomes really sharp,” she says. “It’s difficult to explain.” As her sense of smell sharpened, so too did her palate — on this trip she had a ration of 100 grams of flour a day, and then she had to find all other food along the way. So the edible flowers of the Grevillea tree, for instance, were a sugary treat, until the nectar struck her as too sweet and cloying. Meanwhile, the bland heart of the Pandanus spiralis palm tree became one of her favorite wild delicacies. “It’s like eating a cookie,” she says. “Really. Now that I’m talking about it, I can feel the taste in my mouth.”



 http://ideas.ted.com/why-walking-is-the-ideal-speed-to-see-the-world/

20160119 - threats to humans

The human race faces one its most dangerous centuries yet as progress in science and technology becomes an ever greater threat to our existence, Stephen Hawking warns.
The chances of disaster on planet Earth will rise to a near certainty in the next one to ten thousand years, the eminent cosmologist said, but it will take more than a century to set up colonies in space where human beings could live on among the stars.
“We will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period,” Hawking said. His comments echo those of Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, who raised his own concerns about the risks of self-annihilation in his 2003 book Our Final Century.
Speaking to the Radio Times ahead of the BBC Reith Lecture, in which he will explain the science of black holes, Hawking said most of the threats humans now face come from advances in science and technology, such as nuclear weapons and genetically engineered viruses.


“We are not going to stop making progress, or reverse it, so we must recognise the dangers and control them,” he added.
The Cambridge scientist, who turned 74 earlier this month, said his expectations were reduced to zero when he learned he had a rare and slowly progressing form of motor neurone disease at the age of 21. But reflecting on more than 50 years since the diagnosis, he said he had been very fortunate in almost every other way. In Hawking’s area of theoretical physics, his disability was not a major handicap.......
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/most-threats-to-humans-come-from-science-and-technology-warns-hawking/ar-BBop0uY?jid=50077&rid=1&FORM=MDU155&OCID=MDU155

20160118 - 9th planet ?

Scientists: 

Good evidence for 9th planet in solar system

CAPE CANAVERAL,  — Scientists reported Wednesday they finally have "good evidence" for Planet X, a true ninth planet on the fringes of our solar system.

The gas giant is thought to be almost as big as Neptune and orbiting billions of miles beyond Neptune's path — distant enough to take 10,000 to 20,000 years to circle the sun.

This Planet 9, as the two California Institute of Technology researchers call it, hasn't been spotted yet. They base their findings on mathematical and computer modeling, and anticipate its discovery via telescope within five years or less.

The two reported on their research Wednesday in the Astronomical Journal because they want people to help them look for it.

"We could have stayed quiet and quietly spent the next five years searching the skies ourselves and hoping to find it. But I would rather somebody find it sooner, than me find it later," astronomer Mike Brown told The Associated Press.

"I want to see it. I want to see what it looks like. I want to understand where it is, and I think this will help."

Once it's detected, Brown insists there will be no Pluto-style planetary debate. Brown ought to know; he's the so-called Pluto killer who helped lead the charge against Pluto's planetary status in 2006. (It's now officially considered a dwarf planet.)

 http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-good-evidence-9th-planet-solar-system-171654347.html

20160117 - taalcafe

Bibliotheek Rotterdam opent drie Taalcafés

2015-09-10 10:55:06

In de Week van de Alfabetisering, 7 tot en met 13 september, opent Bibliotheek Rotterdam drie nieuwe Taalcafés in de bibliotheken Delfshaven, Charlois en Hoogvliet.
Lezen en schrijven is essentieel voor de toekomst van iedereen. Daarom is taalvaardigheid en het voorkomen van taalachterstand een van de belangrijke pijlers in de visie van Bibliotheek Rotterdam en openen wij in de Week van de Alfabetisering drie nieuwe Taalcafés. Op 8 september in Bibliotheek Delfshaven, op 9 september in Bibliotheek Charlois en op 11 september in Bibliotheek Hoogvliet. Dit naast de huidige Taalcafés in de Centrale Bibliotheek en Bibliotheek Feijenoord. In het najaar staan er meer op de planning. Houd hiervoor onze website in de gaten.
Wat is een Taalcafé?

Het Taalcafé is de plek om op een laagdrempelige manier kennis te maken met de Nederlandse Taal. Iedereen die moeite heeft met de Nederlandse Taal is daar welkom om, samen met een vrijwilliger, te oefenen met praten en lezen. Deelnemers kiezen zelf waar het gesprek over gaat. Ook helpen wij deelnemers een stapje verder. We zoeken samen naar andere vormen van onderwijs, passend bij de vraag en de mogelijkheden.
De Taalcafés worden mede mogelijk gemaakt door de Stichting Lezen & Schrijven. Daarnaast werken wij per vestiging met lokale samenwerkingspartners. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan DOCK, Albeda, Zowel, Beekhuizen Bindt.

 http://gebiedsgids.nl/delfshaven/item/Bibliotheek-Rotterdam-opent-drie-Taalcafeacutes-091011

20160116 - quote

20160115 - wikipedia

Wikipedia just turned 15 years old. 

Will it survive 15 more?

Andrew Lih is an associate professor of journalism at American University and the author of the book “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia.” As Wikipedia turns 15, we invited him to discuss what Wikipedia has achieved in its time online — and what’s next for a site that has lately been besieged by internal conflict and controversy.

On Jan. 15, Wikipedia officially celebrates 15 years as the Internet’s “free encyclopedia,” cataloging humankind’s achievements in real time and, more importantly, rescuing desperate students facing school assignment deadlines. In that time, it has hastened the end of Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia and supplanted Britannica as the dominant reference work in English. While the digital landscape has changed drastically over the last decade, Wikipedia has not, and still delivers that rare site that strives for neutrality and accuracy, all with no commercial advertisements.
It’s hard to overstate how influential Wikipedia has been, not just as a free alternative to traditional knowledge sources, but as a vanguard for maintaining and delivering up to date information. Each month, nearly 100,000 volunteers from around the world actively contribute content to Wikipedia so that anyone may freely read, copy or redistribute its articles.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/01/15/wikipedia-just-turned-15-years-old-will-it-survive-15-more/

20160114 - skyscrapers

Skyscrapers are boring:

One architect against the tyranny of the tower

Jan 14, 2016 / Dan Kedmey

Architect Ole Scheeren fights against the rigid hierarchy of the skyscraper.

When Ole Scheeren (TED Talk: Why great architecture should tell a story) unveiled his design for a complex of residential towers in Singapore, his clients were stunned. “There was a moment of silence, and I could feel that there was a degree of disbelief in the room.” Why? Because Scheeren had turned 12 towers on their sides, and stacked them like Lincoln Logs. It would take him two weeks to convince the clients that the plan could even work — but he relishes conversations in which he can challenge the ingrained notion that the only way is up. He invites us to reimagine our cities’ skylines via two of his iconic buildings.

The steel loop of Beijing’s CCTV building 

Scheeren, then a partner at Dutch architecture firm OMA, designed the headquarters for one of China’s largest broadcasting companies. From the very beginning of the design process, he knew that he wanted to avoid a regular skyscraper design. “A tower is a very isolating structure for the people who occupy it, who are simply stacked floor by floor,” Scheeren says. “We took the needle of the tower and bent it back into itself to create a loop of interconnected activities, like a tube folded into space. It’s a system that has no beginning or end, that is not about the hierarchical top and bottom.” ................



 http://ideas.ted.com/skyscrapers-are-boring-one-architect-against-the-tyranny-of-the-tower/

20160113 - poor sleep

Poor Sleep Tied to Hardened Brain Arteries in Older Adults

by Agata Blaszczak-Boxe, Contributing Writer

Older people who sleep poorly may have a slightly increased risk of having hardened blood vessels in the brain, and oxygen-starved brain tissue, according to a new study.
Both of these issues may contribute to a greater risk of stroke and cognitive impairment, the researchers said.
"The forms of brain injury that we observed are important because they may not only contribute to the risk of stroke but also to chronic progressive cognitive and motor impairment," study author Dr. Andrew Lim, a neurologist and scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto, said in a statement. [7 Things That May Raise Your Risk of Stroke]

The researchers had shown that fragmented sleep — which is sleep interrupted by frequent awakenings or arousals — was linked with an increased risk of dementia and cognitive decline, Lim told Live Science. "However, there were gaps in what we knew about underlying brain changes that may link sleep fragmentation with these neurological outcomes," he said.
In the new study, the researchers looked at the brains of 315 people who underwent autopsies after they died. The people were 90 years old, on average, when they died, and 70 percent were women. At some point before they died, the people in the study had had their daily activity and sleep monitored for at least one full week. Based on the data from the monitoring, the researchers assessed the quality of the people's sleep.
Of all the people whose brains were examined, 29 percent had had a stroke and 61 percent showed damage in their blood vessels in the brain, which ranged from moderate to severe.
The researchers found that the people whose sleep was often interrupted were 27 percent more likely to have hardened arteries in the brain than people who slept without interruption.
The people whose sleep was often interrupted were also 31 percent more likely to have damage to brain tissue due to lack of oxygen, compared with those who slept without interruption.
The study found an association, not a cause-and-effect relationship, between poor sleep and brain problems. It's possible that interrupted sleep could be either a cause or a consequence of the hardening of blood vessels in the brain and damage to brain tissue, or that some other unknown underlying factor contributed to both sleep problems and the damage in the brains, the researchers said.
Its also unclear what mechanisms might explain the link, but one possibility is that interrupted sleep may impair the circulation of blood to the brain, thus contributing to these issues, they said.
The findings suggest that if the link is confirmed, sleep monitoring could be used as a way to identify older people who are at risk of stroke, the researchers said.
The new study was published today (Jan. 14) in the journal Stroke.


 http://www.livescience.com/53386-poor-sleep-tied-to-hardened-brain-arteries.html

20160112 - fairy tales

Fairy tales as you’ve never seen them before

Russian artist Uldus creates surreal photographic portraits of maidens, demons, heroines and gnomes

Russian artist Uldus (TED Talk: Wry photos that turn stereotypes upside down) makes fantastical and intricate photographic portraits of people — as they imagine themselves to be. In the process, she smashes stereotypes about modern Russian culture. In her latest series, Russ Land — a Slavic name for Russia — she’s diving into the past, deep into the magical world of pre-Christian Russian fairy tales and folklore. Exploring ancient pagan archetypes, femininity and magic, Uldus’ modern take on traditional tales provides a visual way into the complexity of Russian identity. She shares the stories behind the images.


 http://ideas.ted.com/gallery-fairy-tales-as-youve-never-seen-them-before/

20160111 - max moszkowicz

Max Moszkowicz sr. (Essen (Noordrijn-Westfalen), Duitsland, 5 oktober 1926) is een Nederlands voormalig advocaat.

Jeugd en huwelijk

In 1933 vluchtten Moszkowicz' Joodse ouders uit angst voor het opkomend nationaalsocialisme naar Nederland en vestigden zich met hun gezin in Maastricht. Tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog verloor Moszkowicz zijn vader, moeder, broer en zus. Zij werden om het leven gebracht in Duitse vernietigingskampen. Zelf overleefde hij Auschwitz en Mauthausen en werd eind '45 – toen een jaar of 19 – weer naar Nederland gebracht. Na zijn terugkeer uit Duitsland werd hij opgevangen door een katholiek gezin in Limburg. Op 5 oktober 1948 huwde hij in Maastricht Maria Bertha (Berthe) Bessems, een lid van deze familie. Zij kregen vier zonen, David, Max jr., Robert en Bram.

Advocaat

Moszkowicz maakte na de oorlog alsnog het gymnasium af en begon een studie medicijnen te Utrecht. Al snel verwisselde hij deze studie voor rechten aan de Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Na zijn afstuderen vestigde hij zich als advocaat in Maastricht. Zijn zonen studeerden eveneens rechten en gingen de advocatuur in voor de familiefirma, die na zijn pensioenering geleid werd door de broers David en Max jr. Als strafpleiter groeide Moszkowicz uit tot een van de bekendste van Nederland. Hij is vaak geroemd om zijn vakkennis en pleidooien. Moszkowicz verdedigde bekende namen uit de Amsterdamse onderwereld, zoals de topcrimineel Klaas Bruinsma en de Heineken-ontvoerders Cor van Hout en Willem Holleeder. Moszkowicz heeft wel aan kritiek blootgestaan omdat hij goed geld verdiende aan het verdedigen van harde misdadigers. Hij pareerde dit met de opmerking dat hij nooit de misdaad verdedigde, maar de mens.
Moskowicz verdedigde in principe elk soort verdachte, met uitzondering van personen die verdacht worden van oorlogsmisdaden tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Naar eigen zeggen vloeit dit voort uit de afweging dat hij dan "wegens persoonlijke omstandigheden niet in staat zou kunnen zijn om de best mogelijke verdediging van zo'n cliënt te garanderen".

Nevenactiviteiten

• Naast zijn activiteiten als advocaat en manager heeft Moszkowicz sr. onder het pseudoniem 'Mr. Raab' vele jaren lang een wekelijkse column in De Telegraaf geschreven. Hierin verhaalde hij over zijn belevenissen als advocaat. Op basis hiervan zijn boeken verschenen en is ook een televisieserie gemaakt.
• Van 1963 tot 1967 was hij lid van het hoofdbestuur van de VVD.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Moszkowicz

20160110 - david bowie

David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), known as David Bowie^, was an English singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, arranger, painter, mime, and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, and was considered by critics and other musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His androgynous appearance was an iconic element of his image, principally in the 1970s and 1980s. Bowie stopped concert touring after 2004, and last performed live at a charity event in 2006. In 2013, he returned from a decade-long recording hiatus, remaining musically active until his death from liver cancer three years later.
Born and raised in Brixton, south London, Bowie developed an early interest in music although his attempts to succeed as a pop star during much of the 1960s were frustrating. "Space Oddity" became his first top five entry on the UK Singles Chart after its release in July 1969. After a three-year period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with his flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by his single "Starman" and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved to be one facet of a career marked by reinvention, musical innovation and visual presentation...............


 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie

20160109 - death and dying

 

What doctors don’t learn about death and dying

Oct 31, 2014 

Dying and death confront every new doctor and nurse. In this book excerpt, Atul Gawande asks: 

Why are we not trained to cope with mortality?

I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them. I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in my first term — but that was solely a way to learn about human anatomy. Our textbooks had almost nothing on aging or frailty or dying. How the process unfolds, how people experience the end of their lives and how it affects those around them? That all seemed beside the point. The way we saw it — and the way our professors saw it — the purpose of medical schooling was to teach us how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise.
The one time I remember discussing mortality was during an hour we spent on The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy’s classic novella. It was in a weekly seminar called Patient-Doctor — part of the school’s effort to make us more rounded and humane physicians. Some weeks we would practice our physical examination etiquette; other weeks we’d learn about the effects of socioeconomics and race on health. And one afternoon we contemplated the suffering of Ivan Ilyich as he lay ill and worsening from some unnamed, untreatable disease.

The first times, some cry. Some shut down. Some hardly notice.

In the story, Ivan Ilyich is forty-five years old, a midlevel Saint Petersburg magistrate whose life revolves mostly around petty concerns of social status. One day, he falls off a stepladder and develops a pain in his side. Instead of abating, the pain gets worse, and he becomes unable to work. Formerly an “intelligent, polished, lively and agreeable man,” he grows depressed and enfeebled. Friends and colleagues avoid him. His wife calls in a series of ever more expensive doctors. None of them can agree on a diagnosis, and the remedies they give him accomplish nothing. For Ilyich, it is all torture, and he simmers and rages at his situation............................


 http://ideas.ted.com/death-and-the-missing-piece-of-medical-school/

20160108 - snowflakes

Gallery: 

How to draw snowflakes the size of soccer fields

How does snow artist Simon Beck trace massive, intricate patterns in the snow? With a little math and a lot of legwork.

Simon Beck (TEDxKlagenfurt Talk: Snow art) believes that anyone can make a “snow drawing.” Just tread a simple shape into the snow, again and again, until a spectacular pattern emerges. The geometry, he says, is the easy part. He has taught novices to trace out a Koch snowflake, an elaborate lacework of triangles, in as little as 10 minutes. But it takes a rare talent to stamp out the pattern for hours on end. One false turn can spoil a day’s work. “It takes quite a lot of concentration and care not to make a mistake at some point,” he says, “which of course cannot be undone.” We asked Beck to walk through some of his fanciest footwork to date.

A straightforward challenge 

“It was actually quite easy,” Beck says of this roughly 150-meter star he stamped across Lac Marlou, a frozen lake outside a ski resort in the French Alps. He created the work for Russian news channel RT, beginning with the station’s insignia in the central square. From there, he created the radiating points of the star and walked straight lines across the arms. A straight line is a deceptively simple challenge. Beck fixes his gaze on a distant marker and walks toward it. “It might just be a little bump in the snow, an ice crystal shining in the sunlight,” he says. If his attention wanders even for a moment, he risks shifting his gaze to the wrong marker and straying off course.


 http://ideas.ted.com/gallery-how-to-draw-snowflakes-the-size-of-soccer-fields/