NYTimes: 36 Hours in Seattle

Seemingly overnight, whole swaths of downtown and nearby neighborhoods — notably South Lake Union and the Pike-Pine Corridor — have transformed themselves into enclaves of restaurants, bars and galleries. http://nyti.ms/hCVx81

Sitkaandspruce.com 1531 Melrose Ave E
Complexly-layered, never fussy creations
Claudiocorallochocolate.com
South Lake Union best macaroons ever

NYTimes: Gadgets You Should Get Rid Of (or Not)

"That camcorder you have now is probably the last one you will own."
Gadgets You Should Get Rid Of (or Not)
As technology changes, devices are doing more. Instead of accumulating gadgets, we can cut back. Here is a list of items you may not need anymore.
http://nyti.ms/fMAvbK

Hypothermic circulatory arrest and Intelligence Outcomes

Here's an interesting study.  In some cardiac surgery cases, the patient is cooled profoundly and their circulation stopped for a critical portion of their cardiac surgery.  To prove that this was a risk to brain development, they compared the minutes of arrest time to the difference in IQ between patients and their siblings.  So, not every sibling has the same IQ as their sibling, but as an average across many siblings, they showed a decrease in IQ with every minute of circulatory arrest.
In this article,

Duration of circulatory arrest does influence the psychological development of children after cardiac operation in early life.

"...A decrease of 0.53 point per minute of arrest time was estimated for the entire group of 31 patients; that is, in the 19 patients with siblings, for each minute increase in circulatory arrest time, the patients dropped 0.69 IQ point below their siblings. "

And also in this article

The relationship between intelligence and duration of circulatory arrest with deep hypothermia.

".. indicating a decrease of 3 to 4 intelligence quotient points for each extra 10 minutes of arrest time. ."

Protect Yourself During an Earthquake... Drop, Cover, and Hold On!

http://www.earthquakecountry.info/dropcoverholdon/

• DROP down onto your hands and knees (before the earthquakes knocks you down). This position protects you from falling but allows you to still move if necessary.
• COVER your head and neck (and your entire body if possible) under a sturdy table or desk.

NYTimes: Immune to Cuts: Lofty Salaries at Hospitals

Caps on salaries for hospital executives. It's about time.
ABOUT NEW YORK: Immune to Cuts: Lofty Salaries at Hospitals
In the search to cut health care costs, one area remains undisturbed: executive compensation.
http://nyti.ms/f08E4l

Let Kids Rule the School

From The New York Times:
How do you get kids who are failing out of high school to suddenly become hard-working, motivated learners? You ask them to make up their own curriculum.TE
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR: Let Kids Rule the School
Eight teens were given the chance to create their own curriculum, and the results have been transformative.
http://nyti.ms/fseR07

Incredible destructive power of a tsunami.

These two videos dramatically show the power of a tsunami.

'The Bells' by Edgar Allan Poe

http://www.online-literature.com/poe/575/

A beautifully metered poem with incredibly adept choice of words - here's an excerpt -


Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

Obesity - staggering statistics

I'm at a lecture today about obesity surgery.  The statistics are staggering - 40% of the adults are overweight, trending now to 50%.
http://www.biostat.mcg.edu/Seminars/Year2007/Handout2.pdf

Gastric bypass surgery - after 10 years, people only have lost 20% of their weight.
However, their risk of dying is lowered by 40% due in large part to reduction in prevalence of diabetes and heart disease.

Banding – 10% weight loss retained at 10 years,

Gastric bypass 20% at 10 years (Swedish Obesity Study) NEJM 2007

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa035622

look at figure 1 in the margin.

40% decrease in morbidity

http://criticalcareminutes.com/Resources/Articles/Gastric%20Bypass%20Surgery1.pdf

How to make the 'Imposssible Nail' block

Swedes, Danes Consider Dumping Postage Stamps for Codes Sent Via Text | Popular Science

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-03/swedes-danes-consider-swapping-postage-stamps-codes-sent-text

-Tom.

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Apparently this quotation is often misattributed to Dr. Seuss, as described in wikipedia.
Bernard Baruch in response to a question by Igor Cassini as to how he handled the seating arrangements at his dinner parties, as quoted in Shake Well Before Using: A New Collection of Impressions and Anecdotes Mostly Humorous (1948) by Bennett Cerf, p. 249; the full response was "I never bother about that. Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter." This anecdote is also quoted online at Chiasmus.com. It has also become part of a larger expression, which has been commonly attributed to Dr. Seuss, even in print, but without citation of a specific work: "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett_Cerf