WITH TOOLS ON WEB, AMATEURS RESHAPE MAPMAKING
Do you remember being asked, “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” I’d bet not too many of you said you wanted to be a cartographer yet many of you have been already or will be in the future.
“With the help of simple tools introduced by Internet companies recently, millions of people are trying their hand at cartography, drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound and videos.”
“In the process, they are reshaping the world of mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other.”
“They are also turning the Web into a medium where maps will play a more central role in how information is organized and found.”
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OSCAR THE CAT PREDICTS PATIENTS’ DEATHS
Can anyone predict when another is going to die? Is it possible to be accurate to within a two hour window? Could it be done with 100% accuracy? A cat in Rhode Island is doing just that.
“He doesn’t make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die,” said Dr. David Dosa in an interview. He describes the phenomenon in a poignant essay in Thursday’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one,” said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.
The 2-year-old feline was adopted as a kitten and grew up in a third-floor dementia unit at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The facility treats people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses.
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FIND YOURSELF PACKING IT ON? BLAME FRIENDS
So, you’ve packed on a few pounds; your middle is larger than it used to be. Who can you blame but yourself, right? WRONG!!! Now you can blame your friends. Go ahead, start looking at them more closely. Probably they are overweight too.
Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers are reporting today. When one person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too.
Their study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, involved a detailed analysis of a large social network of 12,067 people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 to 2003.
The investigators knew who was friends with whom as well as who was a spouse or sibling or neighbor, and they knew how much each person weighed at various times over three decades. That let them reconstruct what happened over the years as individuals became obese. Did their friends also become obese? Did family members? Or neighbors?
The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent. There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less influence than friends.
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DANCING ELMO SMACKDOWN
If you are one of the many who are reading labels and avoiding “Made in China” tags like the plague, you may find some of the toys your children have around are toting that label! Mattel has been doing business in China for many, many years.
Inside Mattel’s sprawling test lab here, scores of technicians are doing their worst: setting Chicken Dance Elmo dolls on fire, wrecking Hot Wheels cars and yanking at the limbs of Dora the Explorer. The lab workers are paid to break toys, pick apart their innards, and analyze the raw materials that go into them.
The recent wave of recalls and warnings from China has ignited worldwide concern about the safety of Chinese products, potentially mucking up a global system built, in large part, on outsourced manufacturing. As a result, companies are trying urgently to figure out how to do business here, without risking their reputation, consumer trust, or customers’ lives.
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AGENCY ERRED IN CANCELING LOANS TO 8,000 ALONG GULF, AUDIT FINDS
After the Katrina disaster thousands of people applied for loans from the Small Business Administration, the agency which runs the federal government’s largest program to help disaster victims rebuild their houses. I know this is hard to believe, but it seems that they improperly canceled thousands of loans it had promised homeowners along the Gulf Coast after the 2005 hurricanes, a government audit has found.
The agency canceled nearly 8,000 loans without calling the borrowers or mailing them a notice, according to the audit by the agency’s inspector general. The homeowners did eventually receive a letter contending that they had voluntarily given up their loans, the report says, even though many told auditors that they actually needed the money.
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HARLEY WOOS FEMALE BIKERS
What would it take to entice a female to enter a Harley Davidson showroom and possibly purchase a “Hog”?
“Neatly groomed hair is a good start, (Delia Passi) said. Always maintain eye contact. Keep those handshakes firm, but not too firm. Clean the bathrooms. Set up a play area for children. And don’t forget the little things that can help draw in passers-by. “Put a plant out there to say you are female-friendly,” she said.”
“Many of the dealers took notes, and for good reason. American women are the fastest-growing part of the motorcycle business, buying more than 100,000 of them a year. Even though aging baby-boomer men, with money to spend and time on their hands, have played a big role in expanding the market in recent years, motorcycle companies are trying hard to woo women buyers.”
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LAW FIRMS FROM U.S. INVADE PARIS
We are all familiar with the term “the Ugly American” and now it can only get worse. Now American lawyers/law firms are invading Paris. There is a quiet revolution in the way French lawyers are responding to the ever increasing numbers of both American and British law firms invading their turf.
A decade ago, British firms like Freshfields and Linklaters changed some of the European landscape for lawyers. But the smaller, more nimble American firms have taken the lead in recent years.
The growth has been driven by the boom in corporate law accompanying waves of mergers and acquisitions. As of July, the value of European mergers and acquisitions totaled $1.38 trillion, according to Thomson Financial, compared with $1.58 trillion for all 2006. The 10 leading law firms consisted of five from the United States, headed by Sullivan & Cromwell and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and five British firms, led by Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance.
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DEMOCRATS PRESS HOUSE TO EXPAND HEALTH CARE BILL
In a rare bipartisan effort the Senate has agreed to expand insurance coverage for low-income children. Now House Democrats want an even broader plan that calls for major changes in Medicare. This promises to heat up the battle with the White House over health care.
“President Bush has threatened to veto what he sees as a huge expansion of the children’s health care program, which he describes as a step “down the path to government-run health care for every American.” The House measure calls for changes that the administration will probably find even more distasteful, including cuts in Medicare payments to private health plans.”
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STATES WEIGH SAFETY WITH DOG OWNERS’ RIGHTS
Do you live near a dangerous dog? How can you know? In some counties here in New York and in other states as well there is a dangerous dog registry. It lets residents find dogs in their area that have attacked a person or an animal, and that a judge has decided could cause injury again.
“Created after dogs killed a toddler and an 82-year-old woman in separate incidents in the last two years, Virginia’s registry is part of a growing effort by states to deal with dogs deemed dangerous. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia hold owners legally liable if their dogs maim or kill, and in 2006, Ohio became the first state to enact a breed ban, though it was later overturned.”
“In the last two years, nearly 100 municipalities have taken similar steps — banning pit bulls, Rottweilers, English bull terriers and American Staffordshire terriers, or passing regulations that require owners to use muzzles or short leashes in public, according to the American Kennel Club.”
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WHEN IT COMES TO POLITICS, FRIENDSHIP HAS ITS LIMITS
Oprah and her good friend writer, activist and longtime professor Maya Angelou have apparently agreed to disagree. Oprah has publicly thrown her support to Barack Obama while Maya supports Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Anyone who has ever watched “The Oprah Winfrey Show” or read O, the Oprah Magazine, knows that there are few people Oprah Winfrey reveres as much as Maya Angelou, the writer, activist and longtime professor. Ms. Winfrey often quotes bits of wisdom from Ms. Angelou on her show. Furthermore, the talk-show host has chosen one of Ms. Angelou’s memoirs (“The Heart of a Woman”) as a selection for her book club, named Ms. Angelou one of the 25 honorees at her Legends Ball earlier this year and has even given Ms. Angelou a weekly radio show on the “Oprah & Friends” channel on XM Satellite Radio.
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