Random links
- Why do pilots have the ability to turn off the transponder in-flight?
- Given the Malaysian jet disappearing and calls like this one in the New York Times to prevent pilots from shutting off transponders it seems worthwhile to consider why they can do this in the first place. Two reasons still seem valid: (1) The possibility of transponders sparking or otherwise causing electrical fires, and (2) malfunctioning transponders having in the past managed to mess up radar coverage, impacting not only the jet with the malfunctioning transponder but all others in the vicinity.
- Whole Foods: America’s Temple of Pseudoscience
- "if you want a sense of how weird, and how fraught, the relationship between science, politics, and commerce is in our modern world, then there’s really no better place to go. Because anti-science isn’t just a religious, conservative phenomenon—and the way in which it crosses cultural lines can tell us a lot about why places like the Creation Museum inspire so much rage, while places like Whole Foods don’t."
- CDC warns that gonorrhea on verge of being untreatable
- I wonder if there might perhaps be some way - lifestyle-related perhaps - to reduce the spread of STDs that didn't require oodles of antibiotics (which now seem to be losing the struggle against this particular type).
- Report: Government spent millions on penis pumps, paid double retail price
- This is the US Medicare system - interesting how they seem to have manage to get the opposite of a volume discount for what doesn't sound likely to be an medical necessity.