Tag: kottke

The Harriet Tubman $20 Stamp

Frustrated that the US Treasury Department is walking back plans to replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, Dano Wall created a 3D-printed stamp that can be used to transform Jacksons into Tubmans on the twenties in your pocketbook. via The Harriet Tubman $20 Stamp

What happens when you don’t get vaccinated

What happens when you don’t get vaccinated

My two vaccinated children, on the other hand, have rarely been ill, have had antibiotics maybe twice in their lives, if that. Not like their mum. I got so many illnesses requiring treatment with antibiotics that I developed a resistance to them, which led me to be hospitalized with penicillin-resistant quinsy at age 21 – you know, that old-fashioned disease that supposedly killed Queen Elizabeth I and that was almost wiped out through use of antibiotics.

I realize that this is just one person, and should not be treated as a anything more than anecdote, but this is not what the anti-vac people say happens to an immune system with and without vaccines. They insist that people who are not vaccinated will develop a healthy immune system via some natural process. Modern medicine disagrees, and so does her experience. 

Plant intelligence

Plant intelligence

In a recent experiment, Heidi Appel, a chemical ecologist at the University of Missouri, found that, when she played a recording of a caterpillar chomping a leaf for a plant that hadn’t been touched, the sound primed the the plant’s genetic machinery to produce defense chemicals. Another experiment, dome in Mancuso’s lab and not yet published, found that plant roots would seek out a buried pipe through which water was flowing even if the exterior of the pipe was dry, which suggested that plants somehow “hear” the sound of flowing water.

I’d like a vegan’s opinion on this. If plants try not to be eaten, when is it moral to eat them? When is it moral to raise them with the purpose of eating them?

CDC official: we’ve reached “the end of antibiotics”

CDC official: we’ve reached “the end of antibiotics”

You know how when you first hear a joke it’s the funniest thing ever and then you hear it a second time and it’s less funny and then a third, fourth, and fifth times and it just keeps getting less and less funny until you’re not laughing at all and it actually becomes annoying? That’s how antibiotics work across the entire human population.

Brilliant description. 

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in the 18 years before tougher laws were passed, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia…and none in the 10.5 years afterwards. The results of tougher gun laws in Australia Yet the claim that people who want guns will find a way? Why?

Millions saved in Japan by good engineering and government building codes

Had any other populous country suffered the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that shook Japan on Friday, tens of thousands of people might already be counted among the dead. So far, Japan’s death toll is in the hundreds, although it is certain to rise somewhat. Over the years, Japan has spent billions of dollars developing the most… Continue reading Millions saved in Japan by good engineering and government building codes