The spurious “war on Christmas” bemoaned on Fox News notwithstanding, a war really has been going on in recent years at the holidays: a war between traditional television Christmas specials and that aggressive musical interloper, the singing-competition finale. It’s a mismatch. With December now dominated by singing competitions — “The X Factor” and “The Voice” wrapped up last week; “The Sing-Off” ends Monday night — the old-fashioned variety-show-style Christmas special feels as if it […]
MIAMI — Like a macabre marine mystery, the carcasses — many badly deteriorated and tossing about in the surf — first turned up along the coast of New Jersey in June. Soon, droves of them washed up in Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and most recently Florida, their winter home. So far this year, nearly 1,000 bottlenose dolphins — eight times the historical average — have washed up dead along the Eastern Seaboard from New […]
Earlier this month we talked about 19th century doctors who treated women for hysteria with vibrators. Well, Vice has the latest on this today…
In the late 19th century, doctors used vibrators to treat women suffering from hysteria, a fake medical condition that was actually a sexist way of saying, “This lady is very nervous, and she can only be healed by a giant phallic-shaped device.” Thankfully, by the the early 20th century, women were choosing to use vibrators, and in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association stopped seeing hysteria as a medical condition—which is why it initially seems odd that Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, a leading Yale University obstetrician and gynecologist, is prescribing vibrators to Yale Cancer Clinic’s cancer patients to help increase their blood flow, give them a great sex life, and combat menopause’s side effects.
Nicole Flatow from Think Progress has been a guest on our show. She writes about the latest Stand Your Ground travesty in the travesty that we call Florida…
A Florida judge dismissed murder charges under the state’s Stand Your Ground law for a man who shot dead a mentally ill acquaintance after he told him he was going to beat him up.
Florida lawmakers have continued to reject moves to repeal or limit the law, and have instead advanced a bill this year to expand Stand Your Ground immunity to warning shots.
A week later, Wagner was doing work outside another unit when Elkins pulled up in his car and allegedly mumbled something about running Elkins over with his car, began to drive away, and then drove forward again to say he was going to beat him up. There is a dispute about whether Elkins had begun to get out of his car, with a witness testifying that Elkins was sitting in the car with the door closed when he was shot, but a blood splatter analysis suggesting the door was partially open. Wagner pulled a gun out of his car and shot him dead.
Here’s that story our Lady Doctor talked about on last week’s show…
The Number of Diagnoses Soared Amid a 20-Year Drug Marketing Campaign After more than 50 years leading the fight to legitimize attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Keith Conners could be celebrating. Severely hyperactive and impulsive children, once shunned as bad seeds, are now recognized as having a real neurological problem. Doctors and parents have largely accepted drugs like Adderall and Concerta to temper the traits of classic A.D.H.D., helping youngsters succeed in school and beyond. […]
Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones has a great piece about the Target data breach. As I’m reading this I kept thinking about the Obamacare website and how everyone kept saying government can’t do anything right. Read this article, and you’ll never complain about Obamacare again. Some highlights…
Over the last decade, most countries have moved toward using credit cards that carry information on embeddable microchips rather than magnetic strips. The additional encryption on so-called smart cards has made the kind of brazen data thefts suffered by Target almost impossible to pull off in most other countries.
Because the U.S. is one of the few places yet to widely deploy such technology, the nation has increasingly become the focus of hackers seeking to steal such information. The stolen data can easily be turned into phony credit cards that are sold on black markets around the world.