This cool poster by my pal Lily Prillinger was chosen for this year’s Haight Ashbury Street Fair.
It’s the first time that the one I voted for has won and the first time I plan on buying the t-shirt of.
This TV documentary was broadcast on September 16, 1977. Just 4 months after Star Wars: A New Hope hit theatres. I remember being bummed that I missed it (because I didn’t own a TV in ’77). Hosted by R2D2 and C3PO, it gives a glimpse of the process that would spawn a whole new genre of film and create several new companies.
Some of it was shot while the movie was in production but much of it was recorded in that 4 month period after release, when it was clear that Star Wars was a phenomenal cultural-changing success.
It’s pretty obvious, despite his later claims, that George Lucas had no intention of filming the subsequent episodes until after the success of the original was well established.
A misguided attempt to improve healthcare has led some hospitals to focus on making people happy, rather than making them well.
Patient surveys won’t drastically and directly improve healthcare. But research has shown that hiring more nurses, and treating them well, can accomplish just that. It turns out that nurses are the key to patient satisfaction after all—but not in the way that hospitals have interpreted.
In Massachusetts, a medical/surgical nurse told The Boston Globe that the scripting made her feel like a “Stepford nurse,” and wondered whether patients would notice that their nurses used identical phrasing. She’s right to be concerned. Great nurses are warm, funny, personal, or genuine—and requiring memorized scripts places a needless obstacle in their path.
The concept of “patient experience” has mischaracterized patients as customers and nurses as automatons. Some hospital job postings advertise that they are looking for nurses with “good customer-service skills” as their first qualification. University of Toledo Medical Center evaluates staff members on “customer satisfaction.”
Doctors who are reimbursed according to patient satisfaction scores may be less inclined to talk patients out of treatments they request or to raise concerns about smoking, substance abuse, or mental-health issues.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/the-problem-with-satisfied-patients/390684/
Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Daito Manabe produced this music video by attaching electrodes to his volunteer victims that deliver a series of electric shocks that cause his “dancers” to spasm and twitch to the beat of the music.
Part of my job as building manager is to take out the recycling, compost, and garbage bins. I always go through them and make sure they’re correctly sorted and today I found these in my recycling.
Unopened, still hermetically sealed.
The following articles appeared in Archeology.org News while I was in Mexico:
Tsunami May Have Struck Yucatan Peninsula 1,500 Years Ago
Maya Water Temple Discovered in Belize
Drought Contributed to Decline of Mesoamerican City
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/ncsu-suc030915.php
Decapitated males from Teopancazco, a neighborhood within the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan. http://phys.org/news/2015-03-anthropologist-explanation-collapse-ancient-city.html
http://uanews.org/story/archaeologists-discover-maya-melting-pot
The jade artifact, which has cleft rectangles, incisions and a cone at its top, was discovered underwater in Veracruz, Mexico. http://www.livescience.com/50080-mysterious-jade-artifact-discovered-in-mexico.html
SITE OFFERS CLUES TO LIFE IN PRE-COLUMBIAN EL SALVADOR
Nuevo Lourdes, an archaeological site in central El Salvador, provides insights into daily life in pre-Columbian times in this country and Mesoamerica
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2371172&CategoryId=13936
Despite plentiful evidence of raptors and other dinos having feathers, the makers of the upcoming latest installment of the Jurassic Park saga have chosen to keep them nekkid.
I guess they lack the imagination to see tyrannosaurines with feathers as scary enough.
I believe this cool illustration by Luis Rey from a Science Daily article makes them every bit as terrifying as the scaly images of the past.
“New evidence for combat and cannibalism in tyrannosaurs”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409083201.ht
Is by Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)
and the original shows the recent lunar eclipse:
The Truthiness Shall Set You Freak
Stannous Flouride's Book of Truthiness 