From a story in the NYT about the swine flu outbreak.  It notes:

Pandemic flus - like the 1918 flu and outbreaks in 1957 and 1968 - often strike young, healthy people the hardest. When a new virus emerges, deaths may occur in healthy adults who mount the strongest immune reactions. Their own defenses - inflammation and leaking fluid in lung cells - ( Read more... )

If I were a TV writer, here's something that I'd write into a show because I think it would be pretty funny, especially if one of the characters were Norm Macdonald ( Read more... )

I'd be willing to bet that if you were to ask an average person on the street which of the following two scenarios would produce the biggest decrease in fuel consumption: replacing a vehicle that gets 35 mpg with one that gets 50 mpg or replacing one that gets 10 mpg with one that gets 11 mpg, most people's intuitions, mine at least, would push ( Read more... )

A study (yahoo article) runs a model that suggests smokers and obese people do not consume more health care resources than non-smokers or non-obese people, because of their lower life expectancy.  This counters the argument that the government has a right to regulate smoking or eating habits because smoking and unhealthy eating cost the taxpayer ( Read more... )

It may be because I spent a short portion of my life as a math teacher but despite all the George Will and Charles Krauthammer columns I've read in the Washington Post, no column has ever irked me as much as Richard Cohen's recent "What is the Value of Algebra?".  While the rest of the country is worrying that American schools are failing the ( Read more... )

The Onion is also discussing the evolution sticker debate that I was babbling about.  I guess I was just trying to take Jareed Garza's position but Melanie Burton also makes an interesting point.

I've been hearing and reading a lot of discussions recently about the ( Read more... )