The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- The Hard Questions of Climate Change
- Junky Styling: a manual for thrift-shop clothes-remixers
- Yahoo accused of having provided Iran with names of 200,000 users during protests
- Moon bombing is bad, for it will make the aliens very angry indeed.
- Sinclair Sovereign
- Japanese court overturns Winny ruling, says file-sharing software is legal even if used for infringement
- Barefoot Burglar, 18, suspected of stealing planes, etc.
- Gama-Go's Tape Measure
- Owl tape measure
- Big sale on vinyl Obama Hope Rebel flag
- Tumors Can Grow Faster Than You Think
- State Dept offers $2.5 million for hackers to wire the Mid-East and Africa
- Babytattooville 2009 - a terrific, intimate art experience
- Arts, Crafts and Hoo-has
- Table and chair set spells out TABLE
- Searching for the skinny on Ralph Lauren ad (UPDATE: "We are responsible," says Ralph Lauren)
- Firefly carcass LED light
- Jim Flora 2010 hand-printed calendars
- A Doctor's Advice On How To Read Health News (And Know Whether It's Full of Crap)
- Stop Making Sense turns 25
- Glow-in-the-dark mushrooms
- Robert E Howard collection, HEROES IN THE WIND: revisit your heroic past
- Armed to the Teeth: The Fight Over Rural Dental Care
- Everything but the Game: the Art and Motion of The Beatles: Rock Band
| The Hard Questions of Climate Change Posted: 09 Oct 2009 04:18 AM PDT  Pictured: Two vectors at work. Suwon City Mosquito Monument, Suwon South Korea. Image courtesy Flickr user wmjas via creative commons. A wise person once said, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future."* When you start talking about the future of complex systems, it only gets more difficult. Case in point: The effects of climate change on vector-borne diseases. Climate change: More pestilence-carrying pests in more places. At least, that's the fear. In 2008 alone, there were some 4000-odd peer-reviewed papers published on the topic, according to the journal Ecology. That should give you an idea of how twitchy this possibility makes actual scientists. Top it off with a glass full of TV news Kool-aid, and you've got yourself a regular panic. But there's currently a scientific debate raging over what, exactly, this means for people. Some researchers are now saying that the issue is more complicated than it appears on the surface. We can't simply assume that rising temperatures automatically equal higher rates of human disease, they say. At least, not all the time. Why such a twisty answer? Because predicting the spread of disease involves more than just sticking out a thermometer. You have to account for a lot of other things, including where and how people live, the other ways they're changing the environment and how heat affects the disease, itself. Case in point: Lyme disease. Rates in North America have skyrocketed since the 1970s, and the habitat of the Lyme-carrying deer tick has spread to cover large swaths of the U.S. At the same time, those same regions have also been getting warmer...yada, yada, yada, we're all gonna die. Not necessarily. Deer Ticks and Lyme disease are moving North, says Durland Fish, professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. But they're also moving East and South. In fact, he says, what looks like a climate-triggered expansion actually has more to do with reforestation, re-population of wild deer herds and suburban lifestyles that put more people in contact with both. So, then, hooray! Climate change isn't a problem and the hippies can suck it. Well, again, not necessarily. By 2080, the global mean temperature is expected to increase by more than 5.4° F. Based on this, Fish and his colleagues mapped deer ticks' future habitat and found it'll likely grow by more than 20% in the U.S.--mostly in areas of Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska that aren't particularly Lyme-ridden today. Thankfully, those regions aren't terribly popular with humans, either, but Fish also says trends toward earlier Springs and warmer, longer-lasting Falls seem to favor a type of bacteria that causes more severe cases of Lyme. The result could be a future where Lyme doesn't infect significantly more Americans, but causes worse illness when it does. The story for other vector-borne illnesses is equally complicated. For instance, the mosquitoes that spread malaria do favor tropical temperatures. So you'd think climate change would put more people at risk as regions bordering the tropics heat up. But Kevin Lafferty, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, pointed out in the April issue of Ecology that rising temperatures also mean some currently malaria-prone areas will become too hot for mosquitoes. Equally important, according to Lafferty, is the fact that many of those border regions are far wealthier than current malaria hotbeds, so it's really unlikely malaria will make a comeback in places like the United States. Sure, the South is getting warmer, but Americans still live air-conditioned, indoor lifestyles, and still have relatively high levels of access to mosquito repellants and malaria treatments. In his Ecology paper, Lafferty reported data from computer models suggesting that, while the worst strain of malaria could expand beyond its current habitat to gain 23 million new human hosts by 2050, it's also going to lose access to some 25 million people. *Also tough: Attributing pithy quotes. According to the Internets, this saying comes from Yogi Berra, Mark Twain, Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, Confucius, Will Rogers, and Niels Bohr. Presumably first uttered during a great conversation aboard the TARDIS. |
| Junky Styling: a manual for thrift-shop clothes-remixers Posted: 09 Oct 2009 01:25 AM PDT  I've blogged before about London's Junky Styling, a clothing boutique that features original one-of-a-kind clothes made from hacking together thrift-store finds, salvaged textiles, and whatever happens to be lying around. They made my favorite winter coat, my best suit jacket, and my wife's wedding dress (stitched together from Alice-blue men's work-shirts!). The second section is a detailed HOWTO for recreating several of their basic garments: a suit-sleeve scarf, a "shirt wrap halter top," a "fly top" and others, with copious notes about shopping for clothes to rescue and repurpose, instructions for unpicking seams, a glossary of textile types and strategies for working with each and so on. Junky's tailors are makers, who dive in headfirst, make lots of mistakes quickly, learn and iterate and improve and surprise, and the book and clothes are infused with that heartening spirit. Makes me want to buy a sewing machine! |
| Yahoo accused of having provided Iran with names of 200,000 users during protests Posted: 09 Oct 2009 12:16 AM PDT ZDnet's Richard Koman accuses Yahoo of having collaborated with the Iranian regime during the recent post-election protests. Koman says the online giant provided names and emails for some 200,000 Iranian Yahoo users to authorities so that those same authorities would "unban" Yahoo on the state-controlled internet. The blog post does not include a response by Yahoo to the allegations, but promises "to provide further proof as the story unfolds." Snip: This is according to a post on the Iranian Students Solidarity (Farsi) blog. My sources indicate the information comes from a group of resisters who have infiltrated the administration and are leaking out important information. These sources say that Yahoo representatives met with Iranian Internet authorities after Google and Yahoo were shut down during the protests and agreed to provide the names of Yahoo subscribers who also have blogs in exchange for the government lifting the blocks on Yahoo.Exclusive! Yahoo provided Iran with names of 200,000 users (ZDnet via @rmack) Previously:
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| Moon bombing is bad, for it will make the aliens very angry indeed. Posted: 08 Oct 2009 11:40 PM PDT The idea of blowing bits of the moon up bothers me, because I believe that the moon is not ours to blow up. Blasting synthetic craters on the lunar surface for the purpose of finding water or habitable land -- which we'd have enough of if we weren't screwing things up so furtively, back home -- just disturbs me. But nevermind what I think. What matters is what esteemed "Exopolitics" expert Alfred Lambremont Webre thinks. And that will make them very angry, very angry indeed. NASA moon bombing violates space law & may cause conflict with lunar ET/UFO civilizations (Seattle Exopolitics Examiner via Jesse Dylan) Bonus Video: "America Blows up the Moon," from Mr. Show, (via @georgeruiz). |
| Posted: 08 Oct 2009 09:31 PM PDT These may look like Bang & Olufsen TV remote controls from the 1980s but they're actually Sinclair Sovereign LED calculators from 1977. Sadly, the Sovereign was a market failure due in part to the nearly simultaneous domination of the category by its technology successor, the LCD calculator. From Planet Sinclair: Sinclair Sovereign (1977) (Thanks, Rob Beschizza!) |
| Posted: 08 Oct 2009 09:14 PM PDT Rob sez, 'Winny is a file sharing program in Japan. It's developer was found guilty in district court of copyright violations, but now it's been overturned. Some nice common sense quotes from the decision - "...The crime of assisting violations by a large indefinite number of people whom he has never met does not stand... Anonymity is not something to be looked on as illegal, and it is not something that applies specifically to copyright violations. The technical value of the software is neutral."' High court overturns guilty ruling against developer of file-sharing software Winny (Thanks, Rob!) |
| Barefoot Burglar, 18, suspected of stealing planes, etc. Posted: 08 Oct 2009 08:14 PM PDT This young fellow is Colton "Colt" Harris-Moore, aka "The Barefoot Burglar." Police in Washington State say the 18-year-old is suspected of stealing, joy-flying, and then crashing three small planes in the past year. His nickname came from previous burglaries he committed, sans shoes. He's also jacked luxury cars and boats. This photo was retrieved from a digital camera Harris-Moore nabbed from a Mercedes he had also stolen. The Mercedes shirt he's sporting apparently belonged to the owner of the stolen vehicle. Arrested nine times before he was 15, Harris-Moore squats in empty vacation homes on the state's coast, police say, or sleeps in the great outdoors. He has a fan club page on Facebook. From CNN: "Police suspect 'Barefoot Burglar' is stealing, crashing planes" |
| Posted: 08 Oct 2009 04:35 PM PDT  Following up on Mark's earlier post about the fancy owl tape measure, here's Gama-Go's brand spankin' new Tape Measure. It's $8. |
| Posted: 08 Oct 2009 04:42 PM PDT |
| Big sale on vinyl Obama Hope Rebel flag Posted: 08 Oct 2009 04:30 PM PDT  Attention white supremacist Obama supporters: this attractive vinyl Obama Hope Rebel Flag has been marked down from $24.95 to $12.95. As a bonus, they'll throw in a few dozen unsightly fold creases for free! (Via Reddit) |
| Tumors Can Grow Faster Than You Think Posted: 08 Oct 2009 09:51 AM PDT Reuters reported last week that Natalie Morton, the teenage girl who died shortly after receiving an HPV vaccination, was definitely not killed by the vaccine. Instead, Morton was the victim of a large, fast-growing and previously undetected tumor in her chest cavity. These kinds of tumors are very rare, and we don't know much about Morton's case. However, the Daily Mail has a heart-wrenching (and medically fascinating) interview with the parents of another teen who suffered a similar fate... Inside George's chest cavity was an aggressive and rapidly growing tumour the size of a small football. In the few hours after George had gone to bed, the tumour had grown around his windpipe, cutting off his oxygen and causing irreparable damage to his brain. The tumour, which had started in an organ called the thymus gland in the chest cavity, was also crushing his heart and lungs and constricting the vital arteries supplying his body with blood. |
| State Dept offers $2.5 million for hackers to wire the Mid-East and Africa Posted: 08 Oct 2009 01:04 PM PDT Henry Farrell sez: The US Department of State wants hackers to help build civil society in the Middle East and Africa. They're offering up to $2.5 million in grants for pilot projects that use wikis, blogs and social networking platforms to connect and educate young people and improve civic participation.You can read the details of this funding opp here. |
| Babytattooville 2009 - a terrific, intimate art experience Posted: 08 Oct 2009 01:07 PM PDT  Over the weekend, I attended Babytattooville, an amazing and intimate art event produced by art book publisher Baby Tattoo. The idea is brilliant -- 45 people sign up to spend the weekend with 11 lowbrow/pop surrealist artists at the stunningly beautiful Mission Inn resort in Riverside, California. Everyone painted, drew in sketchbooks, ate meals together, sat around talking late into the night, watched a documentary about Robert Williams, and even played an cool alternate reality game that began in the catacombs of the hotel. The invited artists were all extremely gregarious, and it was impossible to distinguish between the artists and the fans; the artists are all fans themselves and everyone mingled. Bob Self, publisher of Baby Tattoo Press and producer of the event is really on to something here. This kind of authentic, unmediated experience can't be reproduced online or traded on P2P sites. Many of the attendees were there for the 3rd time -- they told me the $1800 price was well worth it (the price included two nights at the hotel, meals, and a huge goodie bag loaded with books, prints, and original art, including one of these Audrey Kawasaki original drawings on wood). It would be fun to see this kind of model used in other spheres of interest -- a Makerville, or Cookerville, for instance. I've never been to ComicCon, and I never want to -- it's way too crowded and noisy. Babytattooville was the exact opposite. It's more like joining a club. (If you want to go in 2010, hurry up -- only 5 new memberships are available.) I took a lot of photos and shot some video, which I'll post in the coming days. To get started, here are some photos of one of the events from the first day of Babytattooville: a figure drawing session produced by Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, and held at the Riverside Art Museum. Founder Molly Crabapple was their to direct the event, and the model, Mosh, was a big hit with everyone there. Babytattooville 2009 Dr Sketchy figure drawing (Ken Harman took 110 photos of Dr. Sketchys, every one of them much better than any of mine.) |
| Posted: 08 Oct 2009 11:47 AM PDT Regretsy is a blog that chronicles the more special craft projects for sale on everybody's favorite handmade products Web site. The bit I find most interesting about this blog (and, by extension, Etsy, itself), is that there's a whole, separate category for vagina arts/crafts.
At present, it includes the felted placenta shown above, plus knit tampon cozies, celebrity-inspired uterus dolls, and a few other things. (Elsewhere on the site, you'll find a catnip toy in the shape of a fetus.) I'll admit, I have a hard time getting these projects from any angle other than humor. But once I stop sniggering, I find myself fascinated by the decision to take a cutesy, "comfort food" medium--knitting, home-made dolls--and use it to illustrate parts of the body that (like most organs) aren't exactly the most visually attractive. In fact, I kind of wish the artists would branch out into spleens, kidneys, or maybe various glands. Or does the meme only work with ostensibly "dirty" organs? What do you think? BTW: If you want to purchase your own felted placenta, you can find them on the real Etsy. They're made in Australia by user lumiknits. |
| Table and chair set spells out TABLE Posted: 08 Oct 2009 10:48 AM PDT  I love this creative colorful table and chair set by Kamiya Design. When all its pieces are laid out side by side, it literally spells out "Table." Deconstructed, the a, b, and le form chairs that surround the T, which is the actual table.  Link |
| Searching for the skinny on Ralph Lauren ad (UPDATE: "We are responsible," says Ralph Lauren) Posted: 08 Oct 2009 12:48 PM PDT  When Ralph Lauren tried to remove a creepily retouched advertisement from the net, was it embarrassed by graphic design woes, or by a cutting hatchet job by an unknown prankster? It's obvious by now that Ralph Lauren *hates* being mocked. They hate being mocked so much that they ordered their attack lawyers to send letters trying to fool ISPs into pulling an "infringing" advertisement featuring a ridiculously skinny model (in fact, our posting of the image was fair use, not infringement; Ralph Lauren's takedown notices are bogus and they should know better). It's also obvious that the photo of Filippa Hamilton used in the Ralph Lauren advertisement was digitally manipulated. But we still have three questions: 1) who, exactly, gave Ms. Hamilton the Olive Oyl physique? 2) If the photo was manipulated after it appeared in the advertisement, why didn't Ralph Lauren's law firm make mention of that in their silly DMCA takedown notice? and 3) Where's the original advertisement? We're so curious about getting to the bottom of this that we're offering a bounty -- the first person to send us a photo of the real advertisement, along with information about where it ran, gets their choice of any Gama Go Boing Boing T-Shirt. Our hunch is that a combination of bad angle and bad camera contrived to put a bad ad in an even worse light. In any case, we can at least take heart in one thing: the world has a problem where the best solution is cake. Even if a prankster warped the ad, it's already embarked on a suppression campaign that becomes even sillier if it turns out to be an anonymous 'shopper's transformative "art." From the outset, Ralph Lauren put its head up its own arse: a bad idea when your ears are further apart than your hips. Update: Flickr user Tokyo Boy offers an intriguing theory in this thread: that shopkeepers in the far east often make their own ads. Wouldn't it be bizarre if it was not only a fake, but a fake made by Ralph Lauren's own affiliates wandering off the reservation? Jezebel, however, unearths another awful 'shop of the same model, spotted at Ralph Lauren's website. Update: Ralph Lauren confides to Extra: On Thursday, Polo Ralph Lauren released the following statement about the retouched ad: "For over 42 years we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman's body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately." Alas, no apology for the legal nastygrams. |
| Posted: 08 Oct 2009 09:25 AM PDT  Designer Harry Allen made this LED light by 3D-printing the shape of a firefly caught in his backyard. Previously, Allen made a piggy bank cast out of a real dead pig, which you can actually buy here. Harry Allen Design via No Smarties |
| Jim Flora 2010 hand-printed calendars Posted: 08 Oct 2009 09:00 AM PDT  Here's the 2010 calendar featuring art from the great jazz record art director and illustrator of the 1940s and 1950s, Jim Flora. JimFlora.com is offering three hand-printed 2010 calendars sporting comic Flora illustrations. The spunky figures date from the mid-1950s.Jim Flora 2010 hand-printed calendars Previously:
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| A Doctor's Advice On How To Read Health News (And Know Whether It's Full of Crap) Posted: 08 Oct 2009 08:30 AM PDT Building a bit off the "conflusion" (Bravo, btw, insert) post from yesterday, I'm going to launch right into something near and dear to my heart: The way biased and badly done health journalism can really mess up the people who read it. Biased and badly done are two very different things. I don't have data on this, but I think it's fair to say that, when the main-stream media (which, BoingBoing aside, includes me) gets a health story wrong, it usually isn't trying to be intentionally wack. Trouble is, whatever the intent, it leaves you--the reader--in the same place. Conflused. Luckily, there are people working to help you. Like, for instance, the good folks at Behind the Headlines, a project of the British National Health System that does Q&A, myth busting and in-depth explanations on the science behind top health news. I first found out about this from Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog, which is, in itself, a great site everybody ought to be reading. Dr. Alicia White, one of the aforementioned "folks" behind Behind the Headlines, has a wonderful primer on the questions you should be asking yourself every time you read health news. Until we police ourselves into doing a consistently better job, sorting the wheat from the chaff is (unfortunately) up to you. This will help. Plus, it's a fun read: If you've just read a health-related headline that's caused you to spit out your morning coffee ("Coffee causes cancer" usually does the trick) it's always best to follow the Blitz slogan: "Keep Calm and Carry On". On reading further you'll often find the headline has left out something important, like "Injecting five rats with really highly concentrated coffee solution caused some changes in cells that might lead to tumours eventually. (Study funded by The Association of Tea Marketing)". Evocative image courtesy Flickr user bdjsb7, under CC. |
| Posted: 08 Oct 2009 07:36 AM PDT Next week, Palm Pictures launches a 25th-anniversary Blu-ray release of Stop Making Sense, considered by many to be one of the greatest concert films eve made. Back in 1983, Director Jonathan Demme teamed up with cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth and the Talking Heads to document three nights of shows at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. And what performances they were. The new set includes lots of bonus material, I'm told. I don't have a device that plays Blu-ray discs at home, but this is the sort of thing that makes me wish I did. As you may already be able to guess from the sheer volume of fannish posts we do on BB about David Byrne, and about solo work from other former members -- 'round here we do love the band whose name is Talking Heads. Here's an item at the LA Times, and here's a post at bluraywire about the disc set. Stop Making Sense (Amazon) Trailer video (YouTube). |
| Posted: 08 Oct 2009 07:13 AM PDT  Biologists have newly identified seven mushroom species that glow-in-the-dark. (The mushrooms may look psychedelic, but they are not in the psilocybe genus.) San Francisco State University biologist Dennis Desjardin found the glowing fungi in Belize, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia and Puerto Rico. From National Geographic: Desjardin and colleagues scouted for mushrooms during new moons, in rain forests so dark they often couldn't see their hands in front of their faces, he said.From SF State News: "GLOWING MUSHROOM PICTURES: Psychedelic New Species Seen" (National Geographic) "New glowing mushroom species" (SF State News) |
| Robert E Howard collection, HEROES IN THE WIND: revisit your heroic past Posted: 08 Oct 2009 04:42 AM PDT  I was literally raised on Conan stories. My dad was a Conan fan, and when I was a kid, he would spin out half-remembered Conan tales for me on long car trips, changing Conan into a gender-diverse trio called Harry, Larry and Mary, who would vanquish evil rulers and then create a dictatorship of the proletariat in their wake (Dad was, and is, a Trotskyist, after all). When I was old enough to start reading on my own, I fell in love with heroic fantasy and with RPGs, and I went out and devoured the whole Conan canon on my own, buying stacks of used paperbacks from Bakka in Toronto, reading and re-reading them indiscriminately -- the Robert E Howard originals, the L Sprague De Camp books, all of it. The first book I ever attempted to write, at the age of 12, was a blood-soaked homage to Conan, in which the phrase "mighty thews" appeared in practically every paragraph. (As I recall, I also talked my mom into reading some of the Conan stories aloud for bedtime and when I was sick, which speaks volumes about her patience!). But I haven't read any Conan in, oh, decades. Nevertheless, when legendary science fiction and fantasy scholar John Clute told me that he'd just finished editing Heroes in the Wind: From Kull to Conan a new collection of hand-picked Robert E Howard stories, spanning Howard's astonishingly prolific career as a pulp adventure writer of everything from westerns and boxing stories to the legendary Conan tales, I found that I was overcome with an urge to revisit the heroic tales of my boyhood. I did, and I am every bit as delighted by them as I was when I was 10 years old. Somehow, I never knew much about Howard. I had a dim recollection that he had killed himself, but that was about it. So it was with incredulity and a little bit of awe that I read Clute's superb introduction to the collection, and acquainted myself with the biographical facts of Howard's life. He was a driven, small-town Texas boy, a boy who loved his wasting, tubercular mother and applied himself to literary hackdom like no other in order to support her. Howard wrote and sold more than 160 pulp adventure stories between 1928 (when he was 22) and 1935 (when he was 29). He typed these stories in a fury all night long, screaming the words aloud as he pounded them into the keyboard (to the horror and bemusement of his neighbors). He had few friends and only one short romance. When his mother died, he stopped writing. Not long after, he blew his brains out. Clute's analysis of Howard's work and life (drawing on Howard's extensive correspondence with HP Lovecraft) is a fascinating read, and it sets up the stories wonderfully. The stories themselves sample some of Howard's most iconic creations -- Kull the Conqueror and Solomon Kane -- and span many genres, including a wonderfully brutal short western novel, Vultures of Wahpeton. The final third is given over to Conan stories: "The Tower of the Elephant," a tense dungeon-crawl; "Queen of the Black Coast," a smouldering, sexy pirate epic; "A Witch Shall Be Born," a blood-soaked revenge-play; and the novel-length "Red Nails," a story of decadent fallen tribes waging war on one another in a dead walled city. Howard's writing is muscular, unapologetically dramatic, and, for all that, innocent and genuine, without a hint of self-reflexive hesitation or doubt. Just look at this: Imagine a haunted Texas lad in his crappy apartment in the middle of the night, screaming those words at the wall as his fingers tortured the keys! What romance! What adventure! |
| Armed to the Teeth: The Fight Over Rural Dental Care Posted: 08 Oct 2009 07:26 AM PDT  Photo: Jason Fraser/Muspilli.com. Let's talk about teeth, baby. Slate is doing a series on the American Way of Dentistry. It's mostly good, but it gets one thing wrong. In a piece on the problems poor people face getting dental care, author June Thomas writes, The main problem is a lack of decent low-cost options. Chester Douglass, emeritus professor in the department of Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology at Harvard's School of Dental Medicine, puts it this way: "If you want to buy a good, inexpensive car, Volkswagen proved you could do it, then other people started being able to do it." The Volkswagen of dentistry has yet to be built. In reality, there is a Volkswagen of dentistry. Or, at least, something close to that. (A Toyota Corolla of dentistry?) Like the Bug, it's an overseas import. But, amazingly, when this program first got going in the United States, the American Dental Association sued to stop it. Actually, scratch that. What's really amazing about this story is that the little guys won... A decade ago, Alaskan Aurora Johnson was a stay-at-home mom with a high school education. Today, she's one of this country's first Dental Health Aide Therapists, bringing inexpensive, quality care to a very rural community. Johnson lives in Unalakleet, a coastal town 90 miles south of Nome. It is not exactly a booming real-estate market. Temperatures can dip to -50 F in the winter, freezing rivers into seasonal highways. About 750 people live there, mostly Native Americans, and, until 2005, their only access to dental care was one dentist who came in by plane once a year. Get a cavity a week later, and you were basically up a creek. Alaska's an extreme case, but in general, it's not easy for rural Americans to see a dentist. Particularly if they're on Medicaid, which often pays far less than the going rate for dental services--as little as half in some states. And a lot of rural Americans rely on Medicaid--more than city dwellers do, in fact. With education loans to pay off and expensive businesses to run, most dentists just can't afford these low-payoff clientele. In the country, it's not uncommon to drive 30, 70, even 100 miles to get to the nearest dentist. And that's where The Dental Health Aide Therapist program comes in. In a lot of ways, it's similar to using a Nurse Practitioner as your primary care physician. People like Aurora Johnson are recruited to serve the communities they already live in. Their training is much shorter, and less expensive, than a dentist's. But at the end, DHAT's can take care of their neighbors' basic and preventative dental health, and they can afford to charge less for their work. Johnson works with a dentist who still visits once a year and refers bigger problems and complicated procedures to him. It's a system that's worked in 42 countries. In fact, Aurora Johnson and her family had to move to New Zealand for two years while she went through her training. (Today, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium---the organization behind the DHAT program---is training new therapists in Alaska.) Unfortunately, not everybody thinks this is a good thing. In 2006, the American Dental Association sued the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the DHATs. They framed it as concern over unlicensed dentistry that could put patients at risk. But Ron Nagel, a dentist who serves as a consultant for the ANTHC, sees another motivation. "There's a fear in the lower 48, from dentists, that this could somehow tip the rice bowl of their income," he told me. "But there's no evidence of that. If you're in private practice and you can delegate things that don't make as much money to someone who costs less, the economics suggest you could make even more money, yourself." It's the sort of underdog case where you expect the underdog to lose. But, in Alaska, the narrative got flipped. A court ruled against the ADA in 2007 and the organization chose not to appeal. But as dental therapist programs spread into the rest of the country, they're facing the same fight all over again. And things are more complicated this time. The Alaska program is by Native peoples, for Native peoples. Other states are looking at broader programs that would need the support of legislatures. And that means an opportunity to scare voters, and politicians, away from the idea. In Minnesota, for instance, the state dental association launched a PR campaign designed to make dental therapists out to be about as skilled and well-trained as the average snake-oil salesman. The slogan: "The last thing you want to hear when you're getting dental care is uh-oh."
The legislation only passed this summer, so it's hard to know how, or whether, the changes will affect access to dental care. If dental therapists have to work with a dentist, what does that mean for Minnesota's isolated communities and tribal reservations where there are no dentists? If dental therapists have to have five or six years of education, what does that mean for their ability to take on Medicaid patients and bring dental care to low-income families? I don't know. But I'm hoping for the best. Image courtesy Flickr user p_x_g, via CC. |
| Everything but the Game: the Art and Motion of The Beatles: Rock Band Posted: 08 Oct 2009 10:47 AM PDT  Apart from a loving tribute to a landmark act, Harmonix's singularly-focused rhythm game The Beatles: Rock Band is just as significant a work for being what is essentially gaming's first, best interactive documentary. Tracing the band's rise and rise from their inauspicious Cavern Club beginnings to the Apple Corps rooftop finale, TB:RB offers a look inside the life of the band both overt (see: the traces and ephemeral snippets in the form of unlockable photos and fan club merch) and covert (see, here: the difficulty-arc-dip from their early, more technical work -- a band with something to prove -- to the remarkably simple bliss-outs as they move into their, er, higher, altered states). But possibly its most remarkable achievement is the art and motion graphics that went in to the game, from Passion Pictures' eye-searingly gorgeous intro and outro videos, aided by Alberto Mielgo's concepts (at top), and the 'Kid Stays in the Picture'-esque interstitials by Kansas City, MO's MK12. Below the fold, then: the best of all the above in a high-res gallery, giving you everything but the game. The intro and outro videos directed by Pete Candeland (the Passion Pictures producer best known for his work animating The Gorillaz) remain the highlight of the entire TB:RB experience, as becomes instantly clear with a quick view of the following.
Illustrator Alberto Mielgo was instrumental at concepting the animated-look at the life of The Beatles, as seen with his setpieces below. And MK12, the studio who you might otherwise recall for their Agenda Suicide video for dark-wave band The Faint, put together these chapter-bridging interstitials that lead you from venue to venue, and era to era.
See Harmonix's official The Beatles: Rock Band website for more information on the game. |
I just received a review copy of 
(Island County Sheriff's Office spokesman Ed) Wallace said Harris-Moore has charged thousands of dollars worth of video games, GPS devices and police scanners online, using stolen credit cards. 
These latest findings shed light on the evolution of luminescence, adding to the number of known lineages in the fungi family tree where luminescence has been reported. "What interests us is that within Mycena, the luminescent species come from 16 different lineages, which suggests that luminescence evolved at a single point and some species later lost the ability to glow," Desjardin said. He believes some fungi glow to attract nocturnal animals that aid in the dispersal of the mushroom's spores, which are similar to seeds and are capable of growing into new organisms.
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