Month: August 2015

Modern infidelity

Puppy Rave

that looks like a fun rave.

A symphony of failure

James Mickens gives us a light-hearted survey of the bleak, hideous security present and why things are going to get much, much – much – worse in the future.

Jehovah Witnesses changing Medicine

He had performed 4 or 5 surgeries on Jehovah’s Witnesses but this had been one of the largest. “It’s very stressful as a surgeon, dealing with a tumor that has the potential for massive bleeding and knowing you don’t have the option of transfusion. It’s like being a trapeze artist with no safety net.”

Actual Heroes

Heroes who saved over 1b lives each

C8

DuPont and the Chemistry of Deception

A man-made compound that didn’t exist 100 years ago, C8 is in the blood of 99.7% of Americans, as well as in newborn human babies, breast milk, and umbilical cord blood. A growing group of scientists have been tracking the chemical’s spread through the environment, documenting its presence in a wide range of wildlife, including Loggerhead sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, harbor seals, polar bears, caribou, walruses, bald eagles, lions, tigers, and arctic birds. Although DuPont no longer uses C8, fully removing the chemical from all the bodies of water and bloodstreams it pollutes is now impossible. And, because it is so chemically stable — in fact, as far as scientists can determine, it never breaks down — C8 is expected to remain on the planet well after humans are gone from it.

2021-09-03: C8 effects

For 6 disease categories, the Science Panel concluded that there was a Probable Link to C8 exposure: diagnosed high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, testicular cancer, kidney cancer, and pregnancy-induced hypertension.

Hiroshima

The original New Yorker article from 1946 which won the Pulitzer prize.

Entire issue devoted to the telling of the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Follows the fate of 6 survivors and describes their experiences.

CSI Bog

Since the 18th century, the peat bogs of Northern Europe have yielded 100s of human corpses dating from as far back as 10 ka BP. Like Tollund Man, many of these so-called bog bodies are exquisitely preserved—their skin, intestines, internal organs, nails, hair, and even the contents of their stomachs and some of their clothes left in remarkable condition. Despite their great diversity—they comprise men and women, adults and children, kings and commoners—a surprising number seem to have been violently dispatched and deliberately placed in bogs, leading some experts to conclude that the bogs served as mass graves for offed outcasts and religious sacrifices. Tollund Man, for example, had evidently been hanged.

Art by powerwashing

Poland’s Solina dam, completed in 1969 and the tallest dam in Poland, has been collecting dirt and grime on its walls for decades. But when it came time for the 82m dam to get a good powerwash, the energy company Polska Grupa Energetyczna had an idea.

PGE worked with emerging comic book artist Przemek “Trust” Truściński to design a giant eco-mural honoring the wild and plant life found in the Bieszczady Mountains in southeast Poland, where the dam is located. 90m wide and 54m tall, the mural is painted with a technique called “reverse graffiti.”

Surveillance Philosopher

ARE YOU THE SOCRATES of the National Security Agency? That was the question the NSA asked its workforce in a memo soliciting applications for an in-house ethicist who would write a philosophically minded column about signals intelligence. The column, which would be posted on a classified network at the NSA, should be absorbing and original, asking applicants to submit a sample to show they had what it takes to be the “Socrates of SIGINT.”