Linkee-poo is careful with the things you say, children will listen

The Joseph Eichler homes. While the look and esthetics are starting to fade from popularity, the concepts he injected into residential building have really informed what we considered "the modern lifestyle." While our houses look different, the concepts were still the same. This is what good design does.

The art of packaging. Form follows function. Although they make some mistakes when it comes to learned behavior and the power of brands and branding.

And speaking of branding, "The world's biggest beverage maker, which struggles with declining soda consumption in the U.S., is working with fitness and nutrition experts who suggest its cola as a healthy treat. In February, for instance, several wrote online pieces for American Heart Month, with each including a mini-can of Coke or small soda as a snack idea." Just in case you thought in the healthcare world that it was only doctors who took gratuities to push certain brands (of drugs). (Grokked from Matt Staggs)

Oo, what a cute little robot. OMG, are they fighting? The Antweight class of robot warriors. (Grokked from Dan)

While there are some errors in the article, here is a good primer on the dangers of CT and X-ray procedures. They're a little sensationalist by presenting the statistics in a ZOMG kind of way, and they get some of the details wrong (such as hardly any CT scanners use a "pencil" beam anymore). They also don't explain just what is changing with the new Medicare standards (one thing is every scan must also record your actual radiation dose) or that with the advances over the past two decades your medical exposure to x-rays is much reduced than before. They also don't make the distinction of why kids are more susceptible to radiation cell damage or that not all x-ray scans are the same.

In case you ever wondered, this is how we know what the brain does and how it works. We find people with "defective" or injured brains and study them. In this case, a man born without a cerebellum (that's the structure at the back of the cerebrum, under the occipital lobe). The cerebellum, or vermiform process (you have two, this is the second one, the other isn't brain related), is an older structure of the brain, and handles much of the fine tuning of our actions. But it now appears to do much more than motor skills (although I'll note, speech is a fine motor skill as well as language control, which seems to be missing in the discussion in this article).

And speaking of brains, ever had an MRI of your brain? Ever wanted a 3D model of your individual brain? Well, there's a company that will 3D print one for you. Livin' in the future. (Grokked from Maureen Johnson)

The Milky Way may have ripples and ridges. The better for dipping, or something. (Grokked from Mrs. Tadd)

I usually do agree with the sentiment that the children of candidates are to be left alone for campaign issues (with a rare exception for egregious behavior that points to character flaws of the candidate). However, when you intentionally involve them in your campaign they become legitimate targets. "'When we started doing this, the longest a genetically-modified pig could survive in a bath of human blood was two hours and now that we are up to over eight days, it’s mind-blowing,' (Martine Rothblatt) said, in a wide-spanning conversation that drew an audience of hundreds at the South by Southwest conference." Ummm… (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)

There comes that time when people are so fired up to go against a person that they jump the shark and stop making sense. Dear Fox's Outnumbered crew, seriously? A "war on men" because Hillary points out how the conservative lead US Senate is proving the liberal talking points about a "war on women"? That's not even up to the "I know you are but what am I?" level of discourse. Jesus Hopalong Cassidy, we need a better "opposition" group.

You know, during Jim Crow bigots were more than happy to advertise their bigotry. But then, if you have to put a sign in your window displaying your bigotry, that's the antithesis of a dog-whistle and we can't have that. Yep, while the Oklahoma legislature wanted to pass a law that allowed businesses the right to refuse custom because of religious beliefs (read this as "no gayz allowed"), they don't want to make people display their bigotry outright. So when a lawmaker adds an amendment that says, "if you're going to refuse custom, you must post a notice in your window of which custom you'll refuse". And then the bill dies. If that's really the case, then it's not a heart-felt religious belief. You should be proud of your religion and wear it on your sleeve. After all, I'm sure the same people would be all for putting Bibles back in classrooms (like Ricky Santorum stated this weekend). (Grokked from John Scalzi)

"Blaming the poor for abandoning social norms around reproduction and child-rearing makes our glass houses a bit comfier. It makes it easier to ignore our low tax rates and weak safety net. It makes it easier for us to ignore dramatic inequities in our education system. It lets us blame, and scorn the poor. And nothing gladdens the proud human heart quite like judging the weak… That’s how privilege works." Some people (especially on the right, and especially the well off) would do well to remember Maslow's Hierarchy. When you're struggling for just the physiological and safety tiers, it's hard to be worried about the rest of the pyramid.