Category: HEALTH

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Outraged legislators / Hunting a serial killer / Flight attendants’ secrets / A general’s PTSD / Loving libraries of the lost

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Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. The hunt for the perfect serial killer
By Maureen Callahan | The New York Post | Dec. 30
“His biggest unsolved mystery: How many people did he murder?”

2. 17 Things Your Flight Attendant Won’t Tell You
By George Hobica | The Huffington Post | Dec. 28
“What you read here may shock you, or make you laugh, I’m not sure which.”

3. Top 10 Ways the Middle East Changed, 2012
By Juan Cole | Informed Comment | Dec. 29
Egypt. Afghanistan. Yemen. More change and more of the same.

4. Patti Smith: Family Life, Recent Loss, and New Album ‘Gone Again’
By David Fricke | Rolling Stone | July 1996
” ‘When I perform, I can’t say I feel like a male or a female. What I feel is not in the human vocabulary’ ”

5. Syria Civil War: Gravediggers Have No Time To Wait For The Dead
Reuters | Dec. 30
“Marble gravestones are now squeezed barely a few centimeters apart as workers try to fit as many bodies as possible into the cemetary, near a block of single storey homes. When space runs out, they may be forced to find a new location, says Abu Sulaiman, the gravedigger.”

6. General’s battle with PTSD leads him to the brink
By Kristen Gelineau | Associated Press | Dec. 29
“Maj. Gen. Cantwell would become two people: a competent warrior on the outside. A cowering wreck on the inside.”

7. Sex secrets of NYC’s men
By Susannah Cahalan | The New York Post | Dec. 30
“It’s a cliche … that dating for women in New York City is rough. That men cheat and are immature. That finding the right guy is nearly impossible. But according to sex therapist Dr. Brandy Engler, it’s much, much worse.”

8. Handled With Care
By Andrew D. Scrimheour | The New York Times Book Review | Dec. 28
“Each was the domain of a scholar. Each was the accumulation of a lifetime of intellectual achievement. Each reflected a well-defined precinct of specialization. But what they also had in common was that each of their owners had died.”

9. 2012: The Year in Graphics
The New York Times | Dec. 30
“Graphics and interactives from a year that included an election, the Olympics and a devastating hurricane. A selection of the graphics presented here include information about how they were created.”

10. Senate Outraged at Having to Work Weekend to Save Nation
By Andy Borowitz | The Borowitz Report :: The New Yorker | Dec. 30
“Senator McConnell said that when President Obama called the Senate back to work on a budget deal this weekend, ‘At first I thought he was kidding. Not only have I never worked on a weekend, I’ve never met anyone who’s done such a damn fool thing.’ “

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Manhattan’s literary scene / Kerry as secretary of state / The truth about the end of the world / Dissecting the new ‘Stark Trek’ trailer / Dive into fiscal cliff infographs

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Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. A Critic’s Tour of Literary Manhattan
By Dwight Garner | The New York Times Book Review | Dec. 14
“Is Manhattan’s literary night life, along with its literary infrastructure (certain bars, hotels, restaurants and bookstores) fading away?”

2. On foreign policy, Kerry is Obama’s good soldier
By Donna Cassata | Associated Press | Dec. 17
“Obama seems likely to [nominate] the 69-year-old Kerry, perhaps in the coming days, to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as the nation’s top diplomat.”

3. Mayan Apocalypse: Everything You Wanted To Know But Were REALLY Afraid To Ask
By Asawin Suebsaeng | Mother Jones | Dec. 17
“So, first things first: Will the world in fact end on December 21?”

4. Daniel Inouye ‘lived and breathed the Senate’
By David Rogers | Politico | Dec. 17
“Inouye’s quiet, restrained style led some to underestimate him. But he had a wit and shrewdness, too, combined with a record of genuine heroism and compassion for the underdog, having come of age amid discrimination against Japanese-Americans even as he served bravely in World War II.”

5. ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ trailer: A deep dive
By Darren Franich | Inside Movies :: Entertainment Weekly | Dec. 17
“Is Into Darkness going to continue the recent franchise trend of killing off characters? And if it does, will it be Spock again?”

6. The fiscal cliff, in graphs and GIFs
By Dylan Matthews | Wonkblog :: The Washington Post | Dec. 17
“Once upon a time, there was a budget surplus.”

7. Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?
TED | April 2012
“Throughout human evolution, multiple versions of humans co-existed. Could we be mid-upgrade now?”

8. ‘A Bombshell on the American Public’
By James M. McPherson | The New York Review of Books | Nov. 22
“As the war took a turn for the worse in the summer of 1862, Lincoln now fully embraced the idea that as commander in chief he could proclaim emancipation as a means of weakening the enemy.”

9. Why Are 2012’s Holiday Movies So Damn Long?
By Ramin Setoodeh | The Daily Beast | Dec. 17
“In the time it takes to sit through this year’s new holiday movies, you could do a lot of other things. For example, finish all your Christmas shopping, roast a turkey, drive to the airport, and fly to Hong Kong. If you don’t believe me, just look at the numbers.”

10. The Unpersuaded
By Ezra Klein | The New Yorker | March 19
“The President’s effort at persuasion failed. The question is, could it have succeeded?”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Afghan and U.S. soldiers / Penis sizes / ‘Downton’ prequel planned / Designer John Hockenberry / Moneymaking brains

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Afghan troops get a lesson in American cultural ignorance
By Kevin Sieff and Richard Lieby | The Washington Post | Sept. 28
“Eleven years into the war in Afghanistan, NATO troops and Afghan soldiers are still beset by a dangerous lack of cultural understanding, officials say. …”

2. No, really: Penises are not shrinking
By Debby Herbenick | Salon | Sept. 27
“Rush Limbaugh is wrong about that. But here’s the long (and short) of what science really does tell us about size.”

3. Report Examines How Budget Cuts Affected Texas Schools
By Morgan Smith | The Texas Tribune | Sept. 27
“There are two immediate take-aways. First, districts absorbed the cuts in diverse ways. Second, many of them were unable to do that without laying off teachers.”

4. Julian Fellowes Plans ‘Downton Abbey’ Prequel
By Stuart Kemp | The Hollywood Reporter | Sept. 28
“The Oscar winning scribe says he wants to look at the early relationship between the characters currently played by Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern in the new show.”

5. The Election Isn’t Over
By Pete Du Pont | The Wall Street Journal | Sept. 27
“Only fools and partisans think Obama has it locked up.”

6. If America had compulsory voting, would Democrats win every election?
Lexington’s Notebook :: The Economist | Sept. 28
“Democrats are pretty convinced that voter suppression is precisely what their Republican foes are up to, via a new law … that requires voters to show an up-to-date identity card with a photograph and expiry date, issued by one of a list of official authorities.”

7. John Hockenberry: We are all designers
TED | March 2012
“Journalist John Hockenberry tells a personal story inspired by a pair of flashy wheels in a wheelchair-parts catalogue — and how they showed him the value of designing a life of intent.”

8. The Right Drink for Every Situation
By Nicole McDermott | Healthland :: Time | Sept. 28
“From pickle juice to whiskey to cherry juice, these drinks can boost endurance, ease colds and even help beat upset stomachs.”

9. How Species Save Our Lives
By Richard Conniff | Specimens :: The New York Times | February 27
“We still scoff at naturalists today. We also tend to forget how much we benefit from their work.”

10. How Brains Make Money
Innovations :: Smithsonian.com | Sept. 28
“Meet the neuroeconomists, pioneers of sorts in an emerging field based on the notion that financial decisions have their roots in neuron connections.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Bomb threat at UT Austin / What men and women really want / The presidency through Obama’s eyes / Codex of Archimedes

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. UT Bomb Threat Declared A Hoax, Response Questioned
By Audry White | The Texas Tribune | Sept. 14
“At about 8:35 a.m., a caller told university staff that bombs around campus would detonate 90 minutes from the call. UT officials, though, did not issue an emergency text alert to the campus until about 9:50, just 15 minutes before the supposed time of detonation.”

3. First Planets Found Around Sun-Like Stars in a Cluster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory :: NASA | Sept. 14
“NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. … Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be starrier than what we see from Earth.”

2. Women from Venus? Men from Mars? The Real Sexual Gender Divide
By Michael Castleman | All About Sex :: Psychology Today | Sept. 13
“Men and women feel more similar about sex than most people imagine.”

4. Our Diplomats Deserve Better
By Prudence Bushnell | The New York Times | Sept. 13
“Diplomats don’t often make headlines until something horrible happens.”

5. Obama’s Way
By Michael Lewis | Vanity Fair | October 2012
“To understand how air-force navigator Tyler Stark ended up in a thornbush in the Libyan desert in March 2011, one must understand what it’s like to be president of the United States — and this president in particular.”

6. The Salton Sea: Death and Politics in the Great American Water Wars
By Matt Simon | Wired Science | Sept. 14
“Considered to be among the world’s most vital avian habitats and — until recently — one of its most productive fisheries, the Salton Sea is in a state of wild flux, the scene of fish and bird die-offs of unfathomable proportions.”

7. William Noel: Revealing the lost codex of Archimedes
TED | April 2012
“How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over?”

8. Hollywood’s Spacesuits
By Diane Tedeschi | Air & Space Magazine | Sept. 13
“A sci-fi historian’s guide to movie spacesuits, from wacky to realistic.”

9. Working on the Railroad
By Rick Beard | Disunion :: The New York Times | July 11
“[O]ne of the most important public projects of the 19th century took 20 years to approve.”

10. Obama by the Numbers
By Mark Warren and Richard Dorment | Esquire | Sept. 14
“Here, as a service to clarity and sanity, is the story of the Obama administration in raw, irreducible numbers.”

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TUNES

Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.

1. Zed Head — Till I Lost You & Electraglide Shuffle
2. Dean Haitani — All Roads Lead To Rome
3. Freedom and Whiskey — Kettlebottom Blues
4. Josh Gracin — Please Come Home for Christmas
5. Marc Broussard –Home
6. Paul Rodgers — Muddy Water Blues
7. Victor Wainwright and the Wild Roots — What You Want
8. Hill Country Review — Highway Blues
9. Too Slim and the Taildraggers — Testament
10. Kevin Ball — Mexi-Tele’ Blues
11. Duffy — Hanging On Too Long
12. Storyville — There’s a Light

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Kids of deported parents / Celebrating Neil Armstrong / English born in Turkey? / The dangerous sex study

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Parents deported, what happens to US-born kids?
By Helen O’Neill | Associated Press | Aug. 25
“It’s a question thousands of other families are wrestling with as a record number of deportations means record numbers of American children being left without a parent.”

2. Made ‘Giant Leap’ as First Man to Step on Moon
By John Noble Wilford | The New York Times | Aug. 25
“Charles F. Bolden Jr., the current NASA administrator, said, ‘As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own.'”

3. NASA’s pioneering astronauts: Where are they now?
Associated Press | Aug. 26
“As space exploration has become more common and the number of astronauts has risen past 300, many names have faded into the background. But some will forever be associated with the golden age of space exploration.”
Also see: 12 men who walked on the moon, from 1969 to 1972 | Key dates in history of space exploration

4. Calls to grant astronaut Neil Armstrong a state funeral
By Adam Lusher and Matthew Holehouse | The Daily Telegraph | Aug. 26
“A state funeral would typically involve pallbearers from five branches of the US Armed Forces, a series of artillery salutes, a flypast and a number of bands and choirs.”

5. Neil Armstrong: ‘Diffident’ emissary of mankind
By Paul Rincon | BBC News | Aug. 25
“After smiling and waving through the ticker tape parades, public audiences and television interviews, Armstrong stepped out of the spotlight and tried to rediscover the obscurity from which he had emerged.”

6. Before landing on the moon, Armstrong trained as a pilot in Corpus Christi
By Katherine Rosenberg | Corpus Christi Caller-Times | Aug. 25
“He racked up flight hours at Cabaniss Field in Corpus Christi in 1950. …”

7. Tania Luna: My story of gratitude
TED New York | July 2012
“Tania Luna co-founded Surprise Industries, the world’s only company devoted to designing surprise experiences.”

8. English language ‘originated in Turkey’
By Jonathan Ball | BBC News | Aug. 25
“The New Zealand researchers used methods developed to study virus epidemics to create family trees of ancient and modern Indo-European tongues to pinpoint where and when the language family first arose.”

9. The End of the Gutbuster
By Pat Leonard | Disunion :: The New York Times | July 5
“The soldiers could not have known then, and would not know until years later, the immense impact on their lives that would be wielded by the single unassuming officer who entered their camps that day.”

10. Every man’s favorite sex study
By Tracy Clark-Flory | Salon | Aug. 25
“The headlines were provocative: Semen cures depression! But the study is 10 years old, and far from conclusive”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Mammogram questions / Romney and crisis / Fearing Obama / Witnesses to Empire State Building shooting / Social media at conventions

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Mammograms and dense breasts — questions abound
By Lauran Neergaard | Associated Press | Aug. 20
“New York this summer became the fourth state to require that women be told if they have dense breasts when they get the results of a mammogram. That’s because women whose breast tissue is very dense have a greater risk of developing breast cancer than women whose breasts contain more fatty tissue.”

2. Romney in Crisis: Two Dark Spots in Fortunate Life
By Sherly Gay Stolberg | The New York Times | Aug. 14
“The French car crash and Ann Romney’s illness provide such a narrative; they are dark moments — bookends of sorts — in what otherwise has seemed a charmed existence.”

3. Fear of a Black President
By Ta-Nehisi Coates | The Atlantic | September 2012
“As a candidate, Barack Obama said we needed to reckon with race and with America’s original sin, slavery. But as our first black president, he has avoided mention of race almost entirely. In having to be ‘twice as good’ and ‘half as black,’ Obama reveals the false promise and double standard of integration.”

4. Witnesses tell dramatic story of shooting outside Empire State Building
By Aaron Feis, Bill Sanderson and Todd Venezia | The New York Post | Aug. 25
“Electrician Kevin O’Connell, 27, had been on a break when he heard the shots and looked out of a ninth-floor window of the Empire State Building to see a horrifying scene.”

5. New York’s World Class Subway Art, Identified
By Mallika Rao | The Huffington Post | Aug. 18
“Nearly 200 permanent works line the walls and floors of the city’s subways, commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit program.”

6. 2012 conventions embrace social media openness
By Jeffrey Collins and Tamara Lush | Associated Press | Aug. 17
“The Republicans call theirs a ‘convention without walls,’ while the Democrats say their gathering will be ‘the most open and accessible in history.’ ”

7. Raghava KK: What’s your 200-year plan?
TED | July 2012
“You might have a 5-year plan, but what about a 200-year plan?”

8. Cristina Kirchner: she’s not just another Evita
By Uki Goni | The Observer :: The Guardian | Feb. 4
“The Peronist leader combines glamour with political acumen, enormous popularity and a tough determination to beat down her rivals. And now she has put the Falklands back on the political agenda”

9. Schools for Soldiers
By Michael David Cohen | Disunion :: The New York Times | July 3
“To win the war, the Army had to create citizen-soldiers from scratch.”

10. The Massacre of Baghdad’s Jews
Witness :: BBC News | June 1
“Eye witness accounts of the killing of hundreds of Jews in the streets of the Iraqi capital, Bagdhad.”

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TUNES

This weekend, I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.

1. Edgar Winter — Texas Tornado
2. Marc Leon & Friends — Subway To Nowhere
3. Victor Wainwright & The Wildroots — What’d I Say
4. Rick Huckaby — City Life
5. 2 Slim & The Tail Dragers — Cowboy Boots
6. Albert Cummings — Party Right Here
7. Zed Head — Electri-Glide Shuffle
8. Old Southern Moonshine Revival — Two Shells
9. Mike Holt & The Trophy 500’s — Dimples
10. Robert Campbell — History Repeats Itself
11. George Thorogood — Hard Stuff
12. Capt. WAM — Skinny Woman
13. The Dennis McClung Blues Band — The Red Rooster
14. The Mark Knoll Band — Lay It On The Line

‘Arch of rosy clouds’

Part 10 of this special series focuses on John Ruskin, an English writer, academic and critic who, like so many others presented in the Morgan Library exhibit, turned to a diary to assuage the pain of depression and anxiety.

This special Stillness of Heart series explores the Morgan Library & Museum’s fascinating exhibit, “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives.”

Part 10 focuses on John Ruskin, an English writer, academic, and critic who, like so many others presented in the Morgan Library exhibit, turned to a diary to assuage the pain of depression and anxiety. Ruskin, however, went a step further and used his diary as a primary resource in the study and analysis of his own disorder. As the introductory essay points out, Ruskin “was determined to study his own patterns and learn enough about himself to remain sane. … He re-read his earlier entries, searching for signs leading up to his breakdown, underlining key words and phrases, compiling an index of his experience, and putting down on paper all he could remember of his psychotic visions.”

“No getting things done in this house. Lost all yesterday calling on Marshalls in morning. Fine afternoon, throwing down stones in the wood with Diddie and Maggie. Exquisitest purple I ever saw on hills, in afternoon, and arch of rosy clouds all over old man [a nearby mountain] and opalescent green-blue and rose over blue Helvellyn, divine, but my evening spoiled by finding the poor chaffinch’s nest in ruins, and nestlings dying. A hawk, I fancy, pouncing on the mother;– not able to return for the brood. “

Examine images of his diary and listen to the museum’s audio guide here.

Entries in this series:
Part 1: Introduction to the exhibit and Charlotte Brontë
Part 2: Frances Eliza Grenfell
Part 3: Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne
Part 4: Paul Horgan
Part 5: John Newton
Part 6: Mary Ann and Septimus Palairet
Part 7: Walter Scott
Part 8: Bartholomew Sharpe
Part 9: Tennessee Williams
Part 10: John Ruskin

‘A child of love’

Part 9 of this special series focuses on Tennessee Williams, the famed playwright, who embraced his diary as shelter from the depressive snowstorms that ravaged his life

This special Stillness of Heart series explores the Morgan Library & Museum’s fascinating exhibit, “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives.”

Part 9 focuses on Tennessee Williams, the famed playwright, who embraced his diary as shelter from the depressive snowstorms that ravaged his life. Success, drugs, sensual companionship, even public accolades like a Pulitzer Prize (for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”) all failed to calm his suffocating anxiety, loneliness, and despair.

“A child of love — dined on the terrace with the cathedral spires lit up and a mass choir singing Catalonian folks songs on the Square below. Then love — came twice, both ways, and divinely responsive as if a benign Providence, or shall we be frank and say God, had suddenly taken cognizance and pity of my long misery this summer and given me this night as a token of forgiveness.”

Examine images of his amazing diary and listen to the museum’s audio guide here.

Entries in this series:
Part 1: Introduction to the exhibit and Charlotte Brontë
Part 2: Frances Eliza Grenfell
Part 3: Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne
Part 4: Paul Horgan
Part 5: John Newton
Part 6: Mary Ann and Septimus Palairet
Part 7: Walter Scott
Part 8: Bartholomew Sharpe
Part 9: Tennessee Williams
Part 10: John Ruskin

‘A bold shore and no danger’

Part 8 of this series focuses on Bartholomew Sharpe, an incredibly daring English pirate and excellent navigator who preyed on Spanish sailors along the western coast of South America.

This special Stillness of Heart series explores the Morgan Library & Museum’s fascinating exhibit, “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives.”

Part 8 focuses on Bartholomew Sharpe, an incredibly daring English pirate and excellent navigator who preyed on Spanish sailors along the western coast of South America. Sharpe was sent back to England to be tried for murder in 1682, but he carried a secret gift for the king that he knew guaranteed his acquittal.

Examine images of his amazing diary and listen to the museum’s audio guide here.

Entries in this series:
Part 1: Introduction to the exhibit and Charlotte Brontë
Part 2: Frances Eliza Grenfell
Part 3: Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne
Part 4: Paul Horgan
Part 5: John Newton
Part 6: Mary Ann and Septimus Palairet
Part 7: Walter Scott
Part 8: Bartholomew Sharpe
Part 9: Tennessee Williams
Part 10: John Ruskin

‘I have deprived my family’

Part 7 of this series focuses on Walter Scott, a 19th century British author who fought depression and debt late in life with the inspiration and energy gained from keeping a journal.

This special Stillness of Heart series explores the Morgan Library & Museum’s fascinating exhibit, “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives.”

Part 7 focuses on Walter Scott, a 19th century British author who fought depression and debt late in life with the inspiration and energy gained from keeping a journal. Four six years, the book became the place for him to ponder the depths and causes of his lifelong sadness, celebrate and record the famous people that moved in and out of his life, and preserve a private life he hoped his family would appreciate long after he was gone.

“November 20th. I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular [diary]. I have myself lost recollection of much that was interesting and I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information by not carrying this resolution into effect.”

Examine images of his powerful diary and listen to the museum’s audio guide here.

Entries in this series:
Part 1: Introduction to the exhibit and Charlotte Brontë
Part 2: Frances Eliza Grenfell
Part 3: Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne
Part 4: Paul Horgan
Part 5: John Newton
Part 6: Mary Ann and Septimus Palairet
Part 7: Walter Scott
Part 8: Bartholomew Sharpe
Part 9: Tennessee Williams
Part 10: John Ruskin

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North River Notes

Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.