Mai

"Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee. The middle child of 13, Jones, who is African American, is part of a family that has lived in Bastrop County for five generations. The family has remained a fixture in Cedar Creek and other parts of the county, even when its members had to eat at segregated barbecue dives and walk through the back door while white customers walked through the front, said Amanda Jones' 68-year-old daughter, Joyce Jones." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

Jason - true; in some ways, it feels like slavery still affects us more than stuff that happened leading up to World War 2 - Chris Lamprecht

worth reading and contemplating. - Jason Kaneshiro

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has not accepted Joe the Plumber's friend request on Facebook. We know he's logged on, because we saw he changed his status on Monday. On Tuesday, he joined the group Art Historians Are Saucy. But he still won't accept Joe the Plumber's friend request. He knows it's Joe. Joe uses the screen shot of the two of them together as his profile picture. That's not a uniter. That's the same old liberal-elite politics as usual." - Kevin Fox via Bookmarklet

"Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama doesn't use his turn signal when he merges onto a freeway. I mean, seriously, who the hell does this guy think he is? He just goes. It's not even like he attempts to fit in. And I'm not talking lone-wolf maverick style, either. I mean, this is the kind of driving that gets people killed. Much like the bombs of Bill Ayers that could have killed countless Americans. That's not change, my friends. That's the same old Washington politics as usual." - Ana

"lie to everyone about everything." - Mai

"Nike Hindsight is, put simply, like giving bicyclists a pair of bifocals for their peripheral vision. By using Fresnel lenses on the sides of eye wear, riders can detect motion in a field of view beyond the normal human limit of 180º. To get technical, high power, diverging Fresnel zones aligned vertically distort into view an extra 25º of view on either side. In doing this, vision is radically distorted in the periphery, but as the eye detects only motion in that area, little clarity is lost in the process." - Dan Hsiao via Bookmarklet

pretty slick looking as well - Kyle Weller

Are these images just renderings, or has such an item actually been created? - Gabe

"I was looking at this picture of Obama's grandparents and thinking how much he looks like his grandfather." - Jim Norris via Bookmarklet

Why wouldn't this be in good taste? Who asked that? No time to read it through and see what they're talking about here. Could you help me out if you read it? - Kamilah Gill

good taste: maybe because she's on her deathbed, or because race is mentioned? Also, I didn't even have time to read the middle part of Kamilah's comment. What did it say? Can someone summarize in 5-10 characters? - j1m

god what a douche. I'm busy studying for an exam. I was asking the poster to help me out. didn't need to hear RTFA from anyone. I'm sure you carefully read each and every item in your RSS feed, j-one-m. - Kamilah Gill

"I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked." - Kevin Fox via Bookmarklet

Though he admits that he voted for Nixon and shouldn't have. :-) - Kevin Fox

Jonathan, you find the article to be an example of someone who's sure he's right? About what? I can't detect that Sedaris is making any assertion at all, from belief. - j1m

I especially liked "Rosemary's Baby." The sickly green claw-like fingernails on a bestial newborn's paw that's reaching out for a loving mother's touch are the stuff of nightmares. - Chris Wetherell

And where do I get these drugs? - Paul Buchheit

There's a long interview with Evans here, from last Sep: http://twit.tv/fib22 . The last 20-30 minutes are about Marathon Mouse. That's old enough that he only discusses the new pill in general terms, but he tells the genetic detective story that lead to it. - j1m

It'll be a long time before they make it for humans. Myostatin inhibitors will come first. See this human trial for muscular dystrophy, where it didn't cure muscular dystrophy but it didn't harm the patients (http://www.institut-myologie.o...). For people without muscular dystrophy, it could cause dramatic muscle gain. If I had unlimited resources I would be trying to clone the drug overseas. - Kevin Fischer

"Tests showed that after six weeks, the T-cells of the 15 worm recipients began to produce lower levels of chemicals associated with inflammatory response, indicating that their immune systems were more suppressed than those of the 15 placebo recipients. Despite playing host to small numbers of parasites, worm recipients reported little discomfort. Trial participants raved about their allergy symptoms disappearing. Word about the study soon appeared online among chronic allergy sufferers, and a Yahoo group on “helminthic therapy” sprung up. “Many of the people who were given a placebo have requested worms, and many of the people with worms have elected to keep them,” Dr. Pritchard said." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

I saw this yesterday. As a sufferer from allergies, my current reaction is: no no no! Un-like! Especially when he says “The itch when they cross through your skin is indescribable.” My allergies aren't bad enough to sign up for an experiment :) - Jennie Lin

it seems to be a good news day for beneficial medical discoveries and innovations. - edythe

"Macgyver Gets Lazy" - bob via Bookmarklet

Would have been very MacGyverish... back in the 13th Century or so... - Karim

"It is virtually impossible to heel-strike with these shoes on. I thought I'd been incorporating Chi Running in my runs? Oh, so sorry. No. You don't have any appreciation for a soft landing, or picking your feet up, or having a quick cadence until you run with either the Five Fingers or barefoot. If you accidentally heel-strike, you instantly know it, and so do your molars. If anything, wearing these for short runs is a great calf workout." - Paul Buchheit via Bookmarklet

they look like socks - Pete Delucchi

I'm sure I'm just an "old guy", but they look like Plantar Fasciitis in the making. Please don't run in those any more. - BISQ via twhirl

"One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain. ..... In the operating room, a neurosurgeon washed out and debrided M.’s wound, which had become infected. Later, a plastic surgeon covered it with a graft of skin from her thigh. Though her head was wrapped in layers of gauze and she did all she could to resist the still furious itchiness, she awoke one morning to find that she had rubbed the graft - bob via Bookmarklet

away. The doctors returned her to the operating room for a second skin graft, and this time they wrapped her hands as well. She rubbed it away again anyway. - bob

But the only thing that kept M. from tearing her skin and skull open again, the doctors found, was to put a foam football helmet on her head and bind her wrists to the bedrails at night. She spent the next two years committed to a locked medical ward in a rehabilitation hospital—because, although she was not mentally ill, she was considered a danger to herself. Eventually, the staff worked out a solution that did not require binding her to the bedrails. Along with the football helmet, she had to wear white mitts that were secured around her wrists by surgical tape. “Every bedtime, it looked like they were dressing me up for Halloween—me and the guy next to me,” she told me. “The guy next to you?” I asked. He had had shingles on his neck, she explained, and also developed a persistent itch. “Every night, they would wrap up his hands and wrap up mine.” She spoke more softly now. “But I heard he ended up dying from it, because he scratched into his carotid artery.” - bob

Was anyone else itching while reading this? - Michael Ryan

An "owl" is someone who wakes up at 8 or 9am? I guess Paul is a bat :). - Sanjeev Singh

I have tried to take naps in the past and have always ended up feeling awful for the rest of the day. I've tried both short naps (~20 minutes) and longer naps but either way I end up suffering from "sleep inertia" for hours (ie: until I get a night's sleep). - Laurence Gonsalves

I often have the craziest dreams when I nap. Awsome. - MLx

seriously messed up - ben rogers via twhirl

http://www.facebook.com/group.... - Braden Kowitz

Isn't that a clip from the cinematic masterpiece "Stayin' Alive?" No? - Karen Kelley Mares

Good work at Google, Chris. Looking forward to the next round of news. - Louis Gray

Good luck with your future plans Chris. Your talents will be missed. - Dylan Parker

Chris, congrats on all the excellent work and good luck in your next adventure. - Jeremy Zawodny