I’m putting the finishing touches on a longer article to share later this week, but in the meantime, here are some stories that I’ve found interesting over the last week:
1. In a series of three articles (first one here) Dr. Supreeth Sharaschandra extensively analyzes Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s research, and shares his personal experiences working to vaccinate people in India. Highly recommended.
2. In high school I thought seriously about attending West Point. In graduate school, I visited West Point and seriously considered joining the faculty to teach women’s combatives. While I’m happy with the course I ultimately took, this article reminded me that I still occasionally wonder “what if..?”: The women of West Point.
3. I found this article by Kate Green particularly interesting: How should we program our computers to deceive?
” If you don’t know it already, you should: Many crosswalk and elevator door-close buttons don’t actually work as advertised. The only purpose of these so-called placebo buttons is to give the impatient person a false sense of agency. Similarly, the progress bars presented on computer screens during downloads, uploads, and software installations maintain virtually no connection to the actual amount of time or work left before the action is completed. They are the rough software equivalent of someone texting to say, “On my way!”…”Deceit, after all, is something a good designer doesn’t do. But is all dishonest design necessarily bad?”
4. One of the lost Franklin Expedition ships has been found…exactly where the Inuit have predicted it would be located.
“The Inuit have said for generations that one of their hunters saw a ship in that part of the passage, abandoned and ended up wrecking…. It’s exactly where this guy said it was.”
5. EDITED TO ADD: 10 Apps that are the next best thing to being in space. YES.
6. ANOTHER EDIT TO ADD: Ben Fowlkes is my favorite MMA writer. Here is his thoughtful take on why the new season (premiering today!) of The Ultimate Fighter is focusing first and foremost on the beauty of the participants, rather than their athleticism.
7. Finally, here is the reason I didn’t get a post written this weekend: I was in Kansas City to attend the Invicta Fighting Championships! This was the first time that I’ve gone to an Invicta event in person, and it was doubly exciting since it was the very first show streamed on UFC Fight Pass, and featuring my sister as the matchmaker and commentator! I’m biased, but I have to say that this was an exciting card. Here are a few iPhone photos from the event:
Violent metaphors 
Both beauty and intelligence are in your gene pool 🙂
That being rather brilliant/smart but can’t find the glasses on your head (or the cell phone in my hand) thing? I know that all too well haha.
Sounds like you had an awesome weekend; thank you for the links!
Aw, thanks. Julie was exaggerating about our disorganization, I swear! 😉
Actively promoting the women on TUF as sex symbols seems especially dumb, considering that they’re all young and in very good shape, most of them would look really good even without being dolled up. It seems odd seeing Ronda doing interviews in a dress too, since she really doesn’t seem comfortable doing it.
And Ryan boxer’s fracture is… wow.
I think the oddest part about finding one of Franklin’s ships where they did is that they hadn’t found it earlier, considering where it was and the information they had. It’s still a great find. I wonder how well the interior is preserved, the team that found it seemed optimistic.
Invicta is a nice contrast to the “sexification” of female fighters (which occurs everywhere, not just the UFC). Of course I’m biased, but I really do like how professionally they do things.
I was quite surprised to hear that you’d considered a military career. The one thing that worries me about boxing and MMA is the way some people seem to confuse combat in the sense of a sport, and combat in the sense of learning to kill people. I enjoyed boxing from age 11 to 37 (on and off) but what made it acceptable was the the hug at the end, and the fact that you were both there because it’s what you really wanted to do. Neither of these is true in war. War is the very antithesis of sport.
“War is the very antithesis of sport.” Well said! I ultimately didn’t pursue a military career because of similar reasons to those you mentioned.