olog

the best of wikipedia is simply the best!

2009-07-11T06:49:00.001-04:00

the best of wikipedia.

my love is bigger than a honda

2009-07-05T17:43:00.005-04:00

nina blogs her love of our new jetta and the boss. i am a fan because of

blue dashboard lights
tiptronic
vents that don't blow in your face
gorilla gear
heated leather seats
esp
sat radio and ipod dock

the trouble with being (one particular) teenager

2009-07-03T06:18:00.004-04:00

wedding food

2009-06-18T19:22:00.005-04:00

when nini and i got married at the brooklyn botanical gardens, we had some nice food, of which i remember eating some pate and a tiger shrimp.

here, nytimes readers sent in their wedding foods, some standard (deviled eggs), some banal (sparkling wine in cans), some exciting (whole roast pig), and some simply overthought: corn husk consumme with jalapeno spheres?

murder stats + database + internet = nytimes nyc homicide map

2009-06-18T19:17:00.002-04:00

murder: new york city, accompanying nytimes story.

why i (don't) twitter

2009-06-14T12:05:00.005-04:00

when twitter came to be, i had already been living away from nyc, where its dynamic updates would have been useful to keep up with friends moving about the city (much like the original dodgeball intended).

nonetheless, i liked twitter's simple interface, and most importantly, ability to access it using sms, at a time when my phone was just that, a phone.

so, i used it primarily as a notebook, keeping reminders and notes. my life and interests moved at a slower pace, and i recorded them elsewhere, in more detailed form.

now, my phone is more than a phone, and powers more sophisticated ways of keeping notes and reminders, which raises the question: why twitter?

doctors and the cost of health care

2009-06-14T08:54:00.012-04:00

a nytimes editorial on the contribution of over testing and over treatment to the high costs of health care, similar to recent atul gawande's essay in the newyorker, which has become an unofficial ethnography on the subject, even referenced by obama.

what's omitted is that while costs scale with the number of tests and treatments performed without affecting outcomes on average, for some patients, the extra care translates into substantial benefits.

these patients comprise a small fraction of the overall population, but the benefits they reap should not be understated. likewise, in some cases, the extra tests and treatments are essential, playing important diagnostic and learning roles, particularly in academic medical centers, where patients may be referred to receive specialized care, and doctors are working in training.

one hopes that remedying the high costs associated with superfluous tests and treatments, doctors will remain free to make decisions in the best interests of individual patients, and not aggregate statistics.

the largest physician organization makes the biggest mistake of its history

2009-06-11T06:27:00.002-04:00

the american medical association, whose self defined mission is to "to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health," has instead engaged in a long effort to do just the opposite, including its opposition of medicare in the 1960s. now it has started a lobbying campaign against a government proposal to expand health care coverage using a single payer system. story in nytimes.

health care is fundamentally about public risk sharing for the betterment of the care of the ill and those who may become ill. it is not about competition, choice, or market forces. the physicians for national health care program has been a long standing advocate of this view, and has developed a detailed proposal on how to achieve an efficient and effective (single payer) system.

top 3 reasons to cook with lardo

2009-05-30T19:18:00.002-04:00

pork fat is delicious
it's perfectly seasoned
you can snack while you cook!

bach bach revolution

2009-05-27T19:59:00.001-04:00

lunation

2009-05-26T17:51:00.004-04:00

paradoxes of human experience

2009-05-24T08:41:00.007-04:00

there are many reasons why this photograph is telling, not the least of which is that the koran rests on a machine gun. the other is the iconography of the machine gun strap.

Toxic - A Pediatrician's Parody

2009-05-23T02:22:00.000-04:00

remarkable astrophotography

2009-05-19T04:42:00.001-04:00

oral histories of israel

2009-05-18T06:29:00.003-04:00

just time for a potentially momentous meeting between obama and netanyahu, fascinating oral video history projects about the founding of the state of israel, as told by the israelis and palestinians.

bilingual anthology of russian poetry

2009-05-16T10:03:00.004-04:00

a remarkable anthology of russian poetry! here are some treats:

giraffe by gumilev, read by yevtushenko
but i am warning you by akhmatova, read by herself
a little bird by pushkin, read by kutepov

it's a shame poetry is so untranslatable.

patenting genes

2009-05-14T22:32:00.007-04:00

finally, the patentability of genes is about to be tested in court. this question has been controversial for several decades. yet, patents of genes continue to be granted and upheld without explicit descriptions of their use. paradoxically, these lax utility criteria do not apply to patents of proteins.

now, the aclu has filed suit arguing that patents of brca1 and brca2 genes, mutations of which are associated with breast and ovarian cancer, are unconstitutional. plaintiff statements, story in nytimes and the lede.

Picture Show: You Are What You Eat

2009-05-14T22:28:00.003-04:00

what makes us happy?

2009-05-12T13:07:00.002-04:00

what makes us happy? in the atlantic is a story about the harvard grant study. as always, commentary on david brooks' op-ed is worth reading too.

quimby the mouse

2009-05-08T08:02:00.001-04:00

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

end the university as we know it

2009-04-27T21:28:00.002-04:00

an op-ed in nytimes to revamp the academia. the need certainly exists, and the motivation of the author is probably sincere, but the exact recommendations are largely polemic, and in part appear to be misguided. the commentary, on the other hand, is right on.

wolfram|alpha

2009-04-21T18:28:00.007-04:00

it's been several years since stephen wolfram published his new kind of science. my reaction to the work had been mixed. on one hand, it offered a clear dissemination of the computational implications of cellular automata.

on the other hand, it argued for a black box physical science, where rational understanding of the mechanisms and principles of the natural world is subsumed by heuristics. the fundamental problem is that these heuristics may or may not explain nature; they simply compute it. of course, such computability has its uses.

now, wolfram is about to release wolframalpha, a new kind of science based processing of the www (and all that it contains), accessed via a familiar one line query. this is of course very exciting and important.

the fundamental problem of new kind of science remains, and it will be fascinating to see the answers that wolframalpha will compute in terms of their relevance, accuracy, and rationality.

fluid sculpture

2009-04-20T16:26:00.002-04:00

Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.

wine to be remembered: wolftrap syrah mourvedre viognier

2009-04-17T19:22:00.002-04:00

when will someone make an electronic version of the chronotebook?

2009-04-17T05:42:00.002-04:00