1. The CDC is Prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse
If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated. Not only would scientists be working to identify the cause and cure of the zombie outbreak, but CDC and other federal agencies would send medical teams and first responders to help those in affected areas (I will be volunteering the young nameless disease detectives for the field work)
2. Mapping the Measure of America
3. All-female sect worships Vladimir Putin as Paul the Apostle
Members of the sect that has sprung up in a Russian village some 250 miles southeast of Moscow believe that the 58-year-old macho Russian politician is on a special mission from God.“According to the Bible, Paul the Apostle was a military commander at first and an evil persecutor of Christians before he started spreading the Christian gospel,” the sect’s founder, who styles herself Mother Fotina, said.
“In his days in the KGB, Putin also did some rather unrighteous things. But once he became president, he was imbued with the Holy Spirit, and just like the apostle, he started wisely leading his flock. It is hard for him now but he is fulfilling his heroic deed as an apostle.”
(Via: Gene Veith )
4. 25 Manners Every Kid Should Know By Age 9
5. Men Think About Sleep and Food as Much as Sex
Men think about sex every seven seconds, right? Not according to a new study that finds men ponder sleep and food as much as they do sex.The median number of thoughts about sex by college-age men was 18 times a day to women’s 10 times a day, the study found. But the men also thought about food and sleep proportionately more.
“In other words, there was nothing special about sexual thoughts,” study researcher Terri Fisher, a psychologist at The Ohio State University, Mansfield, told LiveScience. “Males thought more about any of the health-related thoughts compared to females, not just thoughts about sex.”
6. Rolling Stone’s 100 best albums of the ’80s
7. Weird News of the Week: Beer saves horse’s life
Diamond Mojo, a six-year-old Australian waler, had been given up for dead by his owner Steve Clibborn after being struck down with a bout of potentially deadly colic.So, as desperate men do in desperate times, Steve turned to the bottle not for himself, but for his horse.
“I had pretty much kissed him goodbye,” he said.
“I had spent 23 hours straight with him but nothing worked and then I remembered an old bush tale that said you could feed them beer.
“I don’t know whether I really believed it or not but it was worth a shot and as soon as he had that beer, he burped and perked right up. So I gave him another couple.”
Over the following days, Steve repeated the dose using Queensland’s own XXXX lager until his prized endurance horse rediscovered his mojo.
8. 10 Mental Illnesses and Their Myths
9. How to exit a tumbling Jeep
10. 10 Things That You’re Doing Wrong at Restaurants
11. Do astronauts have internet in space?
GREG JOHNSON: Good question, DJ. As shuttle guys, we really don’t partake in the Internet. We’ve got synchronizations with our emails. It kind of gives us a pseudo-email or pseudo-Internet to communicate with our families and friends and our associates. However, I’m going to pass this to Ronnie because on the station, I believe that they have a better Internet than we do on the shuttle.RON GARAN: So this is something that is somewhat new is our capability to use the Internet. And how it works is we can be on a laptop here on the International Space Station and basically control remotely a PC or a computer down on the ground that is connected to the Internet. So it’s - we’re limited to when we have the correct communications coverage to be able to be on the Internet and there is some lag in it. So it does work slower than you’re probably used to on the ground. But it’s a very useful tool. And it really helps us to stay connected with what’s going on, on the Earth.
12. Image of the Week: Flood-proofing a House
These homes in Vicksburg are all situated along the Yazoo River, a tributary of the overflowing Mississippi River, and their owners have surrounded themselves with tons of earth and sand.With questions over whether the main levees that protect the area from floods would hold, these farmers took no chances and have so far saved their homes and crops from destruction.
13. Postal Service Announces Top Dog Attack Cities
14. In Praise of Shortened Attention Spans
The latest alleged trend to set the world in a tizzy is the Crisis of Shorter Attention Spans, a dire development that has been brought about by the rise of the Internet. Or texting. Or iTunes. Or Twitter. Or whatever. I find it hard to get upset about this existential threat to Western civilization, though, perhaps because I’m part of the problem. My attention span is much shorter now than it was a decade ago—and that’s just fine with me.Part of the “problem,” after all, turns out to be that Americans have gotten smarter, or at least quicker on the uptake. Take a look at any TV sitcom of the 1950s and ’60s and compare it to modern-day televised fare. It’s startling to see how slow-moving those old shows were. The same thing is true of live theater. The leisurely expositions of yesteryear, it turns out, aren’t necessary: You can count on contemporary audiences to get the point and see where you’re headed, and they don’t want to wait around for you to catch up with them.
15. Infographic of the Week: Sitting is Killing You
16. Dead Human Skin Helps Clean the Air
The dead cells that slough off your skin every day pile up in the dust that collects around your home. But this grimy-sounding stuff actually helps clean the air indoors, according to new research.Oil associated with dead skin cells removes the pollutant ozone, a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms. In fact the oil, squalene, reduces indoor ozone levels by about 2 to 15 percent. Its molecules contain six double bonds between carbon atoms, and these bonds interact with — and break apart —ozone.
17. Kings (And Queens) Of The World: Where Monarchies Still Exist
18. Full Disclosure Doesn’t Make Us More Ethical
Within many fields, one solution has emerged: require people to disclose any ties that might sway their judgment. Such transparency, the rationale goes, encourages those in authority to behave more ethically, and lets those relying on their guidance take the bias into consideration.But recent research by experimental psychologists is uncovering some uncomfortable truths: Disclosure doesn’t solve problems the way we think it does, and in fact it can actually backfire. Coming clean about conflicts of interest, they find, can promote less ethical behavior by advisers. And though most of us assume we’d cast a skeptical eye on advice from a doctor, stockbroker, or politician with a personal stake in our decision, disclosure about conflicts may actually lead us to make worse choices.
20. Top 10 Least Stressful Jobs
The Postal Service released statistics today highlighting the cities where the most dog attacks occur nationwide. Houston tops the list with 62 letter carriers attacked in 2010. Nationwide last year, 5,669 postal employees were attacked in more than 1,400 cities, yet that pales in comparison to the 4.7 million Americans bitten annually — the majority of whom are children.
21. The World’s Biggest Treehouse
22. HistoricalLOL of the Week
23. Top 10 Interesting Facts About Chess
24. 10 Accidental Discoveries That Generated Great Wealth
25. Pink Hair Is All the Rage—Just Like it Was in 1914
A writer named Margaret Mason was an early advocate of the pink hair trend. In florid, punny prose, she wrote about the joys of pink hair in a January 2, 1914 piece for the United Press titled “Mad Rush of Color Extends to the Hair.” “If you are simply dyeing to be fashionable,” wrote Mason, “then choose a bright shade of cerise, for pink hair is the pink of fashionable perfection.” A year later, in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Mason extolled the virtues of henna dye. “Haste then and hie you to the henna if you are a wise woman,” she declared. “Begin to red up immediately. If you would be the pink of perfection, you certainly must have pink hair.”
27. Better Book Titles of the Week - The Scarlett Letter
28. How-To of the Week: How to make hardtack
The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.
30. 10 Tips to Turn Your Hobby Into a Business
31. The myth of ripped muscles and calorie burns
Though its origins are uncertain, any number of fitness magazines have made the “50 calories per pound of muscle” statement. Popular weight-loss gurus have jumped on the muscle-building-as-panacea-for-fat-loss bandwagon as well.Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a 2007 presentation to the National Cosmetology Assn., “Muscle burns about 50 times more calories than fat does.” Bill Phillips wrote in his bestselling “Body for Life” that, “through resistance training, you can also significantly increase your metabolic rate . . . weight training is even superior to aerobic exercise for people who want to lose weight.” And Jorge Cruise wrote in “8 Minutes in the Morning” that his exercise regimen “will help you firm up five pounds of lean muscle within the first few weeks, allowing your body to burn an extra 250 calories per day.”
Gain 5 pounds of muscle in the first few weeks? If only.
32. Seven Tech Trade-Offs Worth Making
33. Close-Up Footage of Mosquito Sucking Blood
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
