Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Are we really going to do this? Yes, apparently. We are going to have a “debate” about Is It Good To Vaccinate Your Kids, Yes Or Not Yes? (The answer is “yes,” by the way.) Let’s start with the good news, and then we’ll move on to the “Christ, is it cocktail o’clock yet?” bad…
Measles: A Dangerous Illness Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on…
Miracles 01.31.15 The Super Bowl of Toilets Want definitive proof we live in the future? The information researchers can glean from flushed toilets at halftime of the Super Bowl is exactly, disgustingly that. As with every mega event in America, our Super Bowl excesses will be on display this Feb. 1—eating, drinking, yelling and frequent…
Via NYC Department of Health A student at Bard College in Dutchess County has been diagnosed with measles, just days after taking an Amtrak train out of Penn Station. The unidentified student reportedly took the aforementioned train on January 25th, and though it appears he or she ended up back at Bard, the train traveled…
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Their children have been sent home from school. Their families are barred from birthday parties and neighborhood play dates. Online, people call them negligent and criminal. And as officials in 14 states grapple to contain a spreading measles outbreak that began near here at Disneyland, the parents at the heart of…
Fukuoka, Japan When the Kimura family moved here from Tokyo, their middle school-aged daughter missed her old friends. Midway into her first year in high school, she stopped going. Between 14 and 19, she barely left the house, and for one year hardly left her room, interacting only with her parents. Now 33 and recovered,…
Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer Much ink has been spilled railing against vaccine skeptics—you know, those people who don’t get their kids immunized against catastrophic childhood diseases because they believe the shots can cause autism and other serious problems. In a recent Parade magazine piece, reporter Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus: A True…
Since sitting all day is slowly killing us, office workers are now turning to standing desks. But why just stand when you can walk, ask proponents of the even more ridiculous treadmill desks? Walking while at work is even healthier than standing still. But can you actually work while walking? Or will the office turn…
A passerby walks his dog near an accumulation of snow on Jan. 27, 2015, in Central Park in New York. Snow levels in New York have ranged from 7.8 inches in Central Park to more than 28 inches in Eastern Long Island. Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images In the run-up to this week’s blizzard, some…
Winter is coming to the East Coast. Cities across the Northeast are preparing for a potentially historic blizzard that could bury the streets in up to three feet of snow over the next couple of days. Expect the usual: upheaval in commuting and travel plans, people swarming grocery stores as if a zombie apocalypse were…