Atul Gawande: How Do Good Ideas Spread? Why do some innovations spread so swiftly and others so slowly? Consider the very different trajectories of surgical anesthesia and antiseptics, both of which were discovered in the nineteenth century. The first public demonstration of anesthesia was in 1846. The Boston surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow was approached by a local dentist named William Morton, who insisted that he had found a gas that could render patients insensible to the pain of surgery.
That was a dramatic claim. On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Morton administered his gas through an inhaler in the mouth of a young man undergoing the excision of a tumor in his jaw. Four weeks later, on November 18th, Bigelow published his report on the discovery of “insensibility produced by inhalation” in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. There were forces of resistance, to be sure. Sepsis—infection—was the other great scourge of surgery.
Far from it. But anesthesia was no easier. Espiner's Berlin: Christiane F and the children of U-Bahnhof Weinmeisterstraße - In English - Welt. 12.05.2011 11:56 Uhr Heroin and Berlin, that seemed to be co-dependents to our Columnist Mark Espiner. Now he wants to find out more about the current drug-scene. At U8's station Weinmeisterstraße he meets a girl who is addicted for years.
Recently, I haven’t been able to get heroin off my mind. I’m not an addict, you understand, but it has been occupying my thoughts. A few weeks back I went to see the Schaubühne’s stage production of Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo. Christiane F was the film that first introduced me to Berlin. It was pre-wallfall heroin chic with Bowie thrown in – which naturally won it a fashionable following in the UK.
But the thing that really put heroin on my radar wasn’t Zoo station, but the U8’s Weinmeister Strasse stop. I had noticed that down the road from my regular cafe was another one for addicts run by Caritas. It had a homely, welcoming atmosphere. But what about Weinmeister Strasse, I ask. Sarah (name changed) is 20. Heroin: art and culture's last taboo | Television & radio | The Observer. One of the easiest places to find heroin in Paris is in the streets in and around the Gare du Nord, a stone's throw away from the Eurostar terminal. I know about this place partly because I live in Paris and I am a frequent Eurostar traveller, and partly because this is where Google sent me when I typed in the request "Where to find heroin in Paris".
Apparently the most popular spot for dealing is the rue Ambroise-Paré which contains a series of entrances to underground car parks where users can shoot up in relative privacy. The place permanently stinks of piss and is under constant police surveillance, as dealers and clients scurry back and forth between their hiding places. You can watch all of this action, nibbling on a snack and sipping champagne, from the front end of the Eurostar VIP Lounge which backs on to the street.
In fact although there are plenty of drugs around the Gare du Nord there is not much real heroin. This is true. "No, not at all," she says. Under Seattle, a Big Object Blocks Bertha. What Is It? Toxic 'e-waste' dumped in poor nations, says United Nations | Global development | The Observer. Millions of mobile phones, laptops, tablets, toys, digital cameras and other electronic devices bought this Christmas are destined to create a flood of dangerous "e-waste" that is being dumped illegally in developing countries, the UN has warned.
The global volume of electronic waste is expected to grow by 33% in the next four years, when it will weigh the equivalent of eight of the great Egyptian pyramids, according to the UN's Step initiative, which was set up to tackle the world's growing e-waste crisis. Last year nearly 50m tonnes of e-waste was generated worldwide – or about 7kg for every person on the planet. These are electronic goods made up of hundreds of different materials and containing toxic substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and flame retardants. An old-style CRT computer screen can contain up to 3kg of lead, for example. Once in landfill, these toxic materials seep out into the environment, contaminating land, water and the air. Cult Watch: Startup Kids Living Together in Un-Sexy Luxury Communes. Homegrown in Hackney: Sophie Heawood lives off the land in E8 - ES Magazine - Life & Style. I said yes, since it would only be a week, and I wasn’t emptying my house, just seeing how much I could find in my hood.
Not a great deal, I presumed. My daughter and I would just forage a bit of sourdough bread from the E5 Bakehouse, show willing at a farmers’ market or allotment on the weekend, and be home in time for our respective Peppa Pig and Facebook addictions, since nothing with a plug on it could possibly be made round here. Indeed, the only signs of Hackney’s industrial past in Victoria Park Village are estate agents advertising £1.2 million luxury flats in nostalgia complexes called things like The Old Oakum Workhouse for Foundlings and Rats.
But beyond that I suspected this project was doomed. You can see the lovely glow of Westfield Stratford City from our roof. Until I find out that, on the way to Westfield, Hackney Wick has many more factories than I realised. Sophie outside the borough's theatre Then there is food. And there is so much booze available. SuchThatCast - Philosophers' Podcast | Get to know some of the most interesting and influential philosophers of today. Starbucks tea house: can the coffee giant make a decent cuppa? This week Starbucks opened its first tea house, the Teavana Fine Teas + Tea Bar, in the Upper East Side, New York. While Teavana has been in existence as a chain of tea shops since 1997, this is the first opening since the ubiquitous coffee company acquired the brand just under a year ago.
"Tea has been a part of Starbucks heritage since 1971," says CEO Howard Schultz, claiming the new offering "elevates the tea experience in the same way we've done for coffee. " So will the Starbucks touch indeed do for tea what they did for coffee? And will it march into high streets the world over? This latest venture is, they say, in response to a 16% increase in American interest in tea over the past five years. The company claims to be harnessing a "$90bn global hot and iced tea category by offering a variety of customer touch points with tea. " "When Starbucks first came to the UK it opened our eyes to coffee," says Henrietta Lovell, founder of the Rare Tea Company. Comins Tea House, Dorset. Что такое перевод? COLTA.RU возрождает проект «Ликбез», в котором известные эксперты будут представлять свой взгляд на основополагающие понятия и явления культуры.
На этой неделе речь пойдет о литературном переводе (впрочем, не только). Рассказывает Виктор Голышев, по переводам которого мы знаем Джорджа Оруэлла, Трумена Капоте, Уильяма Фолкнера, Фрэнсиса Скотта Фицджеральда, Чарльза Буковски и пятую книгу о Гарри Поттере. Первый рассказ, который я перевел, был Сэлинджер — про банановую рыбку.
Потом были большие разговоры, что за рыба такая: были разные предположения. На самом деле такая рыба есть, я потом нашел ее в каком-то словаре. Но тогда мы про это даже и не думали. У меня с Сэлинджером странно получилось. Вот из Фицджеральда — убейте меня, ничего не помню. Книжки тоже стареют. Сейчас, правда, у меня к нему претензии есть. Иностранную литературу в мои молодые годы я познавал совершенно случайным образом. Я не знаю, какие книжки были модными тогда. Под конец Сэлинджер стал писать довольно фигово. Trebuchet Magazine. Why millions love Elise Andrew's science page | Science | The Observer.
Elise Andrew is "overwhelmed" and "blown away" when she looks at the Facebook page she created as a jape and which has nearly 7 million likes and more than 3 million "talking abouts" and fans including evolutionary biologist and writer Richard Dawkins and TV host Bill Nye, "the science guy". I Fucking Love Science was born, in March 2012, out of mischief and frustration. The page is a mixture: of meme-style science illustrations (an image of floating, sleeping otters overlaid with the words: "Sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don't drift away from each other… they also rape baby seals to death"); of plain-speaking summaries of the latest research ("Researchers have discovered how and where imagination originates in the brain"); and of links to oddities such as a video of a student singing an explanation of string theory to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody.
These have helped her accrue 10,000-15,000 new followers a day. She is ebullient, engaging and about to co-host IFLS Live! Grayson Perry’s Reith Lectures: Who decides what makes art good? ©BBC/Richard Ansett Grayson Perry at Tate Modern before recording his first Reith Lecture last month I want to talk about the issue of quality because I think this is one of the most burning issues around art – how do we tell if something is good?
And who tells us that it’s good? That’s perhaps even more important. And of course now, in the art world as it is, does it really matter? There’s no easy answer for this one because many of the methods of judging are very problematic and many of the criteria used to assess art are conflicting. So I did a little three-act performance and in the third part I ran an election in college. But I learnt two things from doing that performance. The fifth most popular art exhibition in the world last year was the David Hockney show at the Royal Academy, A Bigger Picture, with those big joyful landscape paintings, and it was a paying exhibition. ©Grayson Perry One of Perry’s illustrations to accompany his talks Perry’s vase ‘Lovely Consensus’ (2003)
Some Thoughts on Education and Political Priorities | Politics. David Byrne: 'The internet will suck all creative content out of the world' Awhile ago Thom Yorke and the rest of Radiohead got some attention when they pulled their recent record from Spotify. A number of other artists have also been in the news, publicly complaining about streaming music services (Black Keys, Aimee Mann and David Lowery of Camper van Beethoven and Cracker). Bob Dylan, Metallica and Pink Floyd were longtime Spotify holdouts – until recently.
I've pulled as much of my catalogue from Spotify as I can. AC/DC, Garth Brooks and Led Zeppelin have never agreed to be on these services in the first place. So, what's the deal? What are these services, what do they do and why are these musicians complaining? There are a number of ways to stream music online: Pandora is like a radio station that plays stuff you like but doesn't take requests; YouTube plays individual songs that folks and corporations have uploaded and Spotify is a music library that plays whatever you want (if they have it), whenever you want it. Are these services evil? For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov. Top 25 Language Learning Blogs 2013. These are the Top 25 Language Lovers 2013 in the category ‘Language Learning’.
This category focuses on blogs about the language learning process, language teaching, difficulties with or discussions about learning a language. Congratulations to the winners (2012 winners here)! Make sure to check out the Top 25 for each category as well: Homeland nothing like real intelligence work, say CIA employees. Why the French are Fighting Over Work Hours. It’s telling that in France, where several stores are fighting an order requiring them to close on Sundays, retail employees showed up at work last month wearing T-shirts that read, “YES WEEK END.” It was a play on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan, and a symbol of the fact that some in France—where shops have been barred from opening on Sundays, with some exceptions, since 1906—have lately been eyeing a more American approach to work.
In September, a French tribunal de commerce said that two big home-improvement stores, Castorama and Leroy Merlin, would face daily fines of a hundred and twenty thousand euros per store (about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars) if they continue to operate on Sunday. The retailers have said they will open despite the fines, the result of a lawsuit. People in France like to work on home improvement on Sundays, which makes it one of the busiest days for do-it-yourself stores, accounting for between fifteen and twenty per cent of their sales. Nighthawks by Christopher Benfey. This bird’s name is somewhat inappropriate, since it is not strictly nocturnal, often flying in sunlight, and it is not a hawk… —National Audubon Society On a gray September morning, I awoke from uneasy dreams to find a strange sentence fully formed in my still drowsy mind: “No one in the history of the world has ever universalized both the game given and the god given.”
I didn’t remember anything else from the dream that had produced these portentous words, nor did I have a clue what they might mean. I couldn’t even make out the syntax, since the last two words could mean either an inherited capacity, like a god-given talent for tennis, or, instead, a god who is “a given” (“Given an all-powerful god, what place does free will have in the divine scheme?”). And what in the world might it mean to “universalize” such things? There are countless poems about dreams, of course, and even some, like Poe’s, about dreams within dreams. Part of a continuing NYRblog series on dreams. Loftus’s TED Talk a Standout Hit. A talk by APS Past President Elizabeth Loftus, University of California, Irvine, has become an overnight sensation among TED viewers, garnering over 300,000 views in the first week it was available online.
In this talk, given at TEDGlobal 2013, Loftus explores the “fiction of memory,” illustrating the malleability of what we often consider to be a veridical record of our experiences. She shows how memory can be influenced, often in very subtle ways, and she highlights the real-life repercussions that false memories can have. Loftus is a leading expert on memory — in particular, false memory. Over 40 years of research, Loftus has helped to overturn the concept of memory as a simple reconstruction of past events, revealing the extent to which people use new and existing information to fill in gaps in their recall of an event or experience.
Her research has had far-ranging implications for the legal system, demonstrating the unreliable nature of eyewitness testimony. What to Remember Before a Job Interview. The indispensable research blog on the science of the modern workplace, covering everything from leadership and management to the behavioral, social, and cognitive dynamics behind performance and achievement. It’s easy to feel nervous and awkward when applying for a new job. Unless you’re already working and a potential employer is trying to poach you, you’re essentially at the mercy of a recruiter looking at your résumé and talking with you about your qualifications. That can instill a profound sense of vulnerability. But new research has identified a possible strategy that can help job candidates improve their confidence and communication skills during the interview process.
An international team of scientists recently found that you can more effectively impress recruiters by merely recalling a time when you felt powerful. It should come as no surprise that confidence, optimism, and self-possession are assets in a job interview. The Science of Choice in Addiction - Sally Satel. The 10 Stealth Economic Trends That Rule the World Today - Noah Smith. The dA-Zed guide to new drugs.