thduggie’s blog

lazy video version

— 1 —

Here’s to pollination, in all its forms, and to beautiful nature camerawork:

Judging by the end, it’s from yet another TED talk.

— 2 —

And here’s to the power of sight restored:

The Christoffel Blindenmission ran this call for donations, which I enjoy because of the emphasis on the outcome, not the pitiable current state.

— 3 —

Finally, here’s to the power of words well-deployed (not entirely safe for grandkids):

There are four episodes of this yeoman warder guiding entertaining visitors to the Tower of London.

— 4 —

And because we’re lazy, here’s to the power of cool tools. The Wacom Inkling lets you sketch on paper and transfer the drawing to your computer as a vector graphic!

If I did serious any sketching, this would be high on my wish list.

— 5 —

Speaking of power, the largest Swiss railroad company, the SBB, uses mostly electric power to move its trains. They used a total energy of 2.4 GWh in 2009. Google uses electric power to run its servers. They used a total energy of 2.3 GWh in 2010. They both say they make the planet greener by using loads of energy.

— 6 —

And if you want to gain extra power, here’s the new sports drink fad: pickle juice.

— 7 —

Finally, I knew of the (limited) power of positive thinking as evidenced by the placebo effect, but had no idea of the power of negative thinking as evidenced by the nocebo effect. An extreme example of how strong this effect can be is the story of a 26-year-old participant in a clinical trial of antidepressants who tried to overdose on his pills, eating a month’s worth. He “experienced hypotension requiring intravenous fluids to maintain an adequate blood pressure” until someone found out and told him that he’d overdosed on placebos.

What do we learn from that? First, attempting suicide with stuff from a clinical trial is stupid. Second, let your spouse read about the possible side effects of the medicine you’re taking, or you may fall sick from the knowledge of the possibilities alone. Third, this is why Advent should be a time of quiet fasting, not stressful shopping, so that we’re actually healthy come Christmas!

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2011 at 23:06 and is filed under Allgemein. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.