Today NPR did one of the best investigative reports I've heard about why healthcare costs so much in the US. (That link is to a transcript, but the sound will be posted at 7PM ET today).

It turns out that if you pay doctors per procedure, they do more procedures. Duh! The piece is very detailed and uses vast amounts of research on medical ( Read more... )

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Sharon Astyk has a blog about homesteading and she recently wrote a lovely piece about the virtues of handwork. In particular I love the following which she learned from her grandmother:

My grandmother told me that when I was a grown woman, I would live my life in a sea of labor that was done each morning, and undone before I went to bed. I ( Read more... )

Tomas Nilsson was asked to re-interpret the story of Little Red Riding Hood. So he took the style of this Röyksopp video:

You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com

Remind Me from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

and turned it into this:

You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

In 1963 this memo was sent to the Director of the Australian Trade commission. It is an argument as to why women should not be Trade Commissioners.

I think my favo(u)rite part is this:

"A spinster lady can and very often does, turn into something of a battle axe with the passing years. A man usually mellows."

I got this via BoingBoing and I ( Read more... )

Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman together on Broadway. I hope the play is decent, but if not, well, maybe I don't care so much....

Tim Horton's is coming to NYC! It seems that the Riese restaurant group has had a falling out with Dunkin' Donuts and is turning 16 outlets into Tim Horton's. The first to open is in Penn Station and on Monday between 6am and 9am they will be giving out free coffee on a first come first served basis. The store is at at the north end of the LIRR ( Read more... )

I ran across Old Jews Telling Jokeson BoingBoing. It's one of those deceptively simple and wonderful ideas. Twice a week they put up a new video of a joke. Some are famous people (e.g. Ed Koch) others are just regular folks. Here's on example to get you started (unfortunately it's in Flash *Grrr*). It is slightly NSFW (it's about a sperm bank ( Read more... )

I don't usually go in for the stuff on College Humor, but I gotta hand it to them, this is pretty funny (it's flash, yuck, so here's the original link if you need it):


See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

via The Amateur Gourmet

The Korean electronics firm LG has added a special feature to its televisions to help you cheer up if you're having a bad day or watching a particularly sad program:

Click to view