If you’ve ever wondered what its like to get poked, prodded, and slapped around by medical professionals prior to space flight, this gallery catalogues it in detail.

In a Slashdot discussioni about airport screening, an anonymous Israeli who seems to know what he is talking about explains Israel’s airport screening methods and why they wouldn’t work in the US. Even if you know a bit about how they do it in Israel (or have been there), this is still pretty interesting.

Andy Carvin offers an 8 minute video from WSIS about the $100 laptop project, which aims to equip every child on earth with a cheap, durable, virtually indestructable, crank-powered, Linux-running laptop. Check it out (via GV).

In case you for some reason don’t think its a stupid idea to host a UN conference on the future of dgital communication and the information age in Tunisia, you might find it interesting to read about strange occurences surrounding a seminar by some Berkman fellows titled “Expression Under Repression”. Not to mention the fact that most people’s net connections are being filtered by the friendly Tunisian government, as documented here. Future of the information society indeed. Rebecca has more: The goons finally backed off after the Dutch ambassador intervened and warned of a diplomatic incident.

I keep hoping that one day I’ll get to install some of these Flor modular tiles. Maybe my next apartment

Math and the Computer Science Major – Very true. To do CS you need to understand the math, a lot of math. I’ve always loved math — in theory — but was never especially good at the higher-level stuff. And don’t ask me to remember any of my high school calculus… Anyway, knowing I wasn’t going to be able to handle the math without a terribly and death-defying struggle was one of the top reasons I didn’t do CS at Brandeis. Another was that the department just wasn’t the least bit practical — I worked with people who were senior CS majors and didn’t know the first thing about SQL and couldn’t pick up how to write the most basic Tcl. I’m sure they could calculate algorithms up the wazoo and dreamt in big-O, but that wasn’t the least bit helpful when it came to writing a web application. Or, for that matter, a shell script.

Election 2005: Big Victory for Fans of Taxes, Terrorism, Turpitude – Adam is spot-on, as always. 😉

U.S. Dollar Slips Against Canadian Acorn

“The more issues a person attempts to shoehorn down into an artificial liberal/conservative dichotomy, the more certain you can be that the person is an American.”

Bush’s latest offensive claims that Democrats are hypocrites for supporting the war when it was politically expedient and opposing it now. I’m not sure about his wording, but his sentiment is sound — they were cowards then, and seeing the light now does not excuse helping to push a nation to a bloody and costly war.

Fox puts their own spin on podcasting — suckiness. Their “Foxcasts” are just two minute episode summaries of their various shows. What is the point of that? You want all the people who *don’t* watch your shows to subscribe? The only good one is Family Guy, cause it has commentary.

The intense atmosphere, cramped quarters, ever-changing circumstances, and lack of oversight/cross-checking leads to an unknown (but probably high) number of errors by EMTs and paramedics each year. The first steps towards improving treatment include establishing a better reporting and response infrastructure and standardizing medical supplies and doses across hospitals and ambulances so that the same thing in the same dose is the same color and in the same place every single time. Makes sense to me.

Lessig explains the debate over who “owns” the Internet – The entire framing of the debate is insanely stupid (as Lessig explains far more gently) but is more about the EU not trusting the US (who can blame them) than any fundamental problem with the current ICANN governing structure or what is going on with the root (.com, .org, .net, etc.) domains.

A Fark thread about heart surgery for patients in their 80s is actually causing a reasoned debate and not the typical Fark comment threads. Not sure how long the discussion will stay serious, but many of the commenters have personal stories of elderly relatives who did or did not undergo complicated, risky, and expensive procedures. There are no easy answers to problems with the American health care system, but the worst answer of all is the one that politicians are (predictibly) generally choosing to adopt — blanket generalizations, band-aid fixes, not addressing the root issues, and punting the problem to the next set of legislators. These debates need to be had, and we need to think as a society about how we want our health care system to work, because right now, it isn’t. (In particular I’m referring to hospitals, and note that the actual linked article that started the discussion thread is about the Canadian health care system, which has a different — well, in some ways, similar — set of problems.)

Images of Maunsell Army Sea Forts used to defend against aerial bombing during World War II. They look like something out of Myst.

You may have heard about the cruise ship that was attacked by Somali pirates, but did you hear about the non-lethal sonic weapon they used to defend themselves?

Lesser-Known Movie Prequels.

To change Wal-Mart, first change America – The company is thriving within the rules set by the US economy and with the direct support of the US consumer base. If Americans really think WalMart is evil, they must act to make change. The article says that there is an easy way to make WalMart change, or to run them out of business — don’t shop there. Easier than complaining, and far more effective. Of course, the same is true of the RIAA, and yet people still continue to buy, buy, buy music. Don’t expect to see a change any time soon, not in America. If any change comes, it will be an ill-conceived legislative “solution.” As a country so wed to the markets and the promise of consumerism, and so happy to take advantage of the low prices around us, even when we know the costs, we sure have a strange way of reacting when faced with the problems we’ve caused. But then, blaming everyone else for your problems isn’t really new. I can at least be contented that I’m doing some very small part to not be a hypocrite by simply choosing to never shop at WalMart. Is that really so hard?

Heather on Grey’s Anatomy – I pretty much agree with her setiments. Warning — reading this two weeks ago spoiled me for the episode two weeks ago and the one before that, which I hadn’t yet downloaded, but have just watched. Eh, I’m a little behind. TiVo’s going on five years or so and still carrying its weight.

Company develops almost 100% effective HPV vaccine that guards against cervical cancer. Conservative groups oppose it because stopping cancer is best left to education about abstinance. I mean, that’s worked so well with other STDs. And banning sex-ed classes from showing students how to use condoms has lowered the abortion rate, right? Or maybe if we outlaw abortions that will stop unplanned pregnancies? Yeah, all these wonderful theories, only problem is that none of them is true according to every valid scientific study. Ooh, but we can’t be going around using the dirty “S” word, can we. “Science,” humph.