Slow Law

The Supreme Court ruled today on the case about the strip-searched 13 year old girl. The real story is the girl's now 19 years old. Hooray for....... (wait for it) ........................... (keep waiting) .................................... (only a few more years) ............................................................Justice!

Medicare vs. Medicaid

Things to do... I guess at some point I'm supposed to learn the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. Extracurriculars used to mean baseball or the literary magazine. Now it's, can I make me-time to learn about health care policy? (slate article)

Accident in my future home

Another difficult article to get through. A train collision on the DC Metro line.

I thought it was interesting that Obama commented on the incident-- I wonder due to his new residence in DC, or if he would have commented no matter where this tragedy occurred.

Crime

Never heard of this site, but digg brought up this crime. I never understood how a guy could be raped-- now I wish I didn't. The guy at the end makes it seem like 1 out of 10 guys would be okay with it.

on the modern marriage (and divorce)

I came upon this interesting article in The Atlantic. A woman discusses marriage and what it means to the American today, and how it has changed from before. She delves into the idea that marriage need not be forever any longer, as the reasons for being in a lifelong marriage no longer exist.

Also, this is noteworthy:

Why Him? Why Her? explains the hormonal forces that trigger humans to be romantically attracted to some people and not to others (a phenomenon also documented in the animal world). Fisher posits that each of us gets dosed in the womb with different levels of hormones that impel us toward one of four basic personality types:

The Explorer—the libidinous, creative adventurer who acts “on the spur of the moment.” Operative neurochemical: dopamine.

The Builder—the much calmer person who has “traditional values.” The Builder also “would rather have loyal friends than interesting friends,” enjoys routines, and places a high priority on taking care of his or her possessions. Operative neurotransmitter: serotonin.

The Director—the “analytical and logical” thinker who enjoys a good argument. The Director wants to discover all the features of his or her new camera or computer. Operative hormone: testosterone.

The Negotiator—the touchy-feely communicator who imagines “both wonderful and horrible things happening” to him- or herself. Operative hormone: estrogen, then oxytocin.

Fisher reviewed personality data from 39,913 members of Chemistry.com. Explorers made up 26 percent of the sample, Builders 28.6 percent, Directors 16.3 percent, Negotiators 29.1 percent. While Explorers tend to be attracted to Explorers, and Builders tend to be attracted to Builders, Directors are attracted to Negotiators, and vice versa.

(but, I also am guilty of believing marriage is forever, love can last forever, and all that Disney stuff. so congrats to Jess & Eric!~ teehee)

Drivers

Reuters. Pittsburgh is top-five for most courteous drivers. I had no idea. Seriously.

On second thought, it's the roads that are frightening-- the drivers ARE actually pretty nice.

Obama recommends Gawande

Over the last year, and especially since we've launched this ArticleRec site, I've found The New Yorker's Annals of Medicine to be one of the most consistent repositories of amazingly interesting writing. This New York Times article quoted below shows Obama agreeing, and using Atul Gawande's words to actually guide policy.

“He came into the meeting with that article having affected his thinking dramatically,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “He, in effect, took that article and put it in front of a big group of senators and said, ‘This is what we’ve got to fix.’ ”

It's fascinating that politicians are reading the same stuff we are. It's both great to know we have a reader as a president, but also a little disappointing that my childish expectation that our government has all this secret information is total bologne.

It was really cool reading the NYTimes article having just read Gawande's piece a couple days ago myself. I love when that happens.

Sliding Doors

What my life could have been: the confessions of a reluctant vivisector. It really almost happened. Coming to Pittsburgh I was offered two jobs: 1) study memory with alzheimer's patients 2) study vision in rhesus monkeys. Had I chosen the latter, at the very least my last 3 years would have been wildly, tortuously different, and at most would have lead to a career of what's described in the article. One major push towards alzheimer's-- besides the better clinical experience, the more human interaction, more obvious impact and higher pay-- was the image of having to tell my 7th grade students at Poly I was leaving them to prepare live monkeys for single-cell electrode recordings in their brains. Yikes.

Sriracha everything

Sriracha is officially a fad. Don't let this stop you from slathering it on everything you eat!