Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Time for the Health Department to shut down he lumbersexual trend. Photo: Cavan Images/Corbis This is going to be hard for all of us to accept, because beards are glorious and men with beards are divine. They look magnificent on the chins of many, and men have even found new ways of elevating the beauty…
Unlike early birds (people who have a genetic tendency to go to bed and wake up early), late risers, also known as night owls, have a natural tendency to go to bed late and sleep even later. And that’s just fine. Although you may sleep through the early morning hours, which many early birds claim…
When Billy Rios needed emergency surgery last summer after cerebral spinal fluid began leaking through his nose, he was only partly focused on his life-threatening condition. That’s because Rios was distracted by the computerized drug-infusion pumps Stanford Medical Center used to administer medication to him and other patients. As a security researcher, Rios realized he’d…
Entry Text What doctors at Washington, D.C. hospitals discovered inside a 62-year-old patient looks like a giant egg, and parts of it had a “firm and rubbery” texture similar to a hard-boiled egg. But this was no egg.It’s called a peritoneal loose body, and according to one of the doctors that had it surgically removed,…
google_ad_section_start A memorial outside the Tulane University School of Law on February 2, 2015. Student Sara LaMont was allegedly shot … Late last November, as Tulane’s campus was winding down for Thanksgiving break, University President Michael Fitts sat on an airplane, reading through a sheaf of documents. In his hectic first year on the job,…
Religious leaders, who are all, “I don’t want the Affordable Care Act and its free birth control pills to ruin my church-going ladies”: you’re in for a rude awakening. Because (some of) those ladies are like, fuck yes, give me the free pills. Via The Atlantic: But what about religiously-affiliated women? Where were their voices…
Depression hurts. So does sexism. Photograph: Adam G Gregor/Alamy Sexism is certainly nauseating – the disgusting leers on the street, the discrimination, the violence. But those everyday expressions of misogyny could be seriously impacting our mental health as well. A study published this month in the journal Sex Roles reveals that some of the sexism…
A lipid panel is one of the most basic blood tests in modern medicine. Doctors use it to measure cholesterol levels in their patients, probably millions of times each year. This is not a procedure where some hospitals are really great at lipid panels and some are terrible. There’s just not space for quality variation:…
TV’s “Science Guy” Bill Nye speaks during a debate on evolution with Creation Museum head Ken Ham. (AP/Dylan Lovan) He’s not making his popular children’s science show anymore, but Bill Nye the Science Guy is still making a public impact by going after pseudoscience and science denial. He’s railed against the idea of teaching creationism…
Even the most well-defended castle wall can be surmounted if you manage to fool the guards into lowering the gate. Such is the case with HIV and the T-cell. But now we might have a way to hoist the AIDS virus on its own petard. How HIV and the New Would-Be Vaccine Work HIV first…