Conscious During Cosmetic Surgery (Chronicle)
Latest cosmetic surgery trend: no general anesthesia. It’s cheaper. Patients are numbed, but pain is often excruciating and torturous. Surgeon on making choices during surgery: “It’s actually a lot of fun … like shopping for a new dress or a pair of shoes.”
Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything? (Chronicle)
More students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for all too many the benefits — critical thinking, complex reasoning, written communication — are exceedingly small or nonexistent.
Social Animal (New Yorker)
According to David Brooks, recent developments in brain science tell us that perceptiveness is more important than I.Q. Emotion, social connections, and moral intuition are more important than reason, individual choice, and abstract logic. So maybe college students are doing OK after all.
States’ Lawmakers Turn Attention to the Dangers of Distracted Pedestrians (NYT)
iPods and cellphones endanger the exerciser. New York bill would ban the use of electronic devices when crossing a street. Other states want to outlaw bicyclists listening to music.
Traffic noise implicated in stroke risk (NHS)
The more noise, the more strokes. But what study finds is a weak link, not a cause. People who live near busy roads tend to be low income, and socioeconomic status is a known predictor of stroke.
From Bullets to Megabytes (NYT)
Stuxnet and the next global arms race. Collateral civilian damage will be the norm. Legal status of waging international cyberwar unclear. “Congress should grant the White House broad authority to wage offensive information warfare.”
25 Years of Digital Vandalism (NYT)
Cyberpunk author William Gibson (“Neuromancer”) reminisces about the days when computer hackers were petty vandals just having fun. Stuxnet – a threat to essential national infrastructures — is built on “the unpaid labor of generations of hobbyist vandals.”
Image: TV Squad
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