The truth about 'Truth'

I was always equal parts impressed and skeptical about the ballsy in-your-face anti-smoking ads - like this shredder one or this super-memorable one about rat poison.
My skepticism, however, came from the fact that there seemed to be no information at the time about the ad sponsor - someone called "Truth." There was no info about their funding or other stuff, and so rumors circulated that they were, in fact, funding by cigarette companies who were forced to create anti-smoking ad campaigns against their own products (which is ridiculous, but that's another story).
I was at a PR conference a few weeks ago, and they said that the Truth ads were, in fact, sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation, which was created by tobacco $$$ given to the government as part of a settlement.
So AHA!!! I guess tobacco companies are kind of behind it... but not really.... Damn, I thought this article was going to end differently but Wikipedia done steered me wrong...

Diagramming a Disease

Thanks to my pal Melissa for sharing this one. It's a fantastic chart about how smallpox has traveled the world.
Good for book learnin'.

Airtoons

What a fantastic idea - rewrite those ultra-lame airplane safety cartoons into funtastic creations (a.k.a. airtoons)!

Are hand dryers in public bathrooms unsanitary as hell?

My aunt forwarded me this email:

"Everyone in the cleaning industry has always been told that hand dryers in restrooms are not sanitary, they spread germs and bacteria around. I always thought that this just came from the paper companies because they are losing sales to the hand dryers.
A couple of years ago, I was working with a rep... He told me to take a look under the hand dryer next time I was in a restroom. There is a filter underneath the hand dryer that is supposed to be cleaned on a weekly basis. I looked at one and it looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years. It had layers and layers of caked on gunk (disgusting)...
Now this is where the story gets really interesting. The schools and universities that have had the H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak this year are being told by the health department that they have to take out all of their hand dryers and replace them with towel dispensers because the hand dryers are spreading disease.

And some cursory Wikipedia research agrees with this:

"In 2008, a study was conducted by the University of Westminster, London, to compare the levels of hygiene offered by paper towels, warm air hand dryers and the more modern jet-air hand dryers.
The key findings were:
* after washing and drying hands with the warm air dryer, the total number of bacteria was found to increase on average on the finger pads by 194% and on the palms by 254%
* drying with the jet air dryer resulted in an increase on average of the total number of bacteria on the finger pads by 42% and on the palms by 15%
* after washing and drying hands with a paper towel, the total number of bacteria was reduced on average on the finger pads by up to 76% and on the palms by up to 77%."

What I know about landmines

Landmines come in all shapes and sizes - heavy flat discs, little squat things that look like gray beets. They used to be made of metal, but to get around metal detectors people began building them out of plastic, which makes them basically unfindable.
Except by feet, that is.
The worst thing about mines is that they are built to last, as in for decades. So you fight a war, lay mines around your borders or other valuables sites, and when the conflict is over... well, you were so busy fighting you can't remember where you put them.
But people, especially kids, have this penchant for walking around and exploring. And the vast majority of landmine attacks hurt civilians. Often they don't kill - they just blow off a leg or two.
For this reason, they have been considered a scourge against humanity and are are campaigned against by the Nobel Peace Prize Winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).
I've also seen them in person during our "Reporting in Dangerous Areas" journalism excursion, where we learned about weapons and CPR from former British mercenaries (yes, it kicked ass).
All this info is lead-up to this story: It is possible to actually safely locate a landmine with nothing more than a pointy stick and a lot of guts.
If you think you are in the middle of a minefield, you can get safely out (with some luck) by inserting the stick into the ground slowly at a 45 degree angle. If there is a mine in front of you, you will hit the base and not the trigger. You can therefore advance, inch by inch, through dangerous territory.
Now I'd never want to do this, ever. If I found a mine and got around it even once, I would think I was divinely blessed or something. But this guy did it (and does it) thousands and thousands of times, and has cleared entire miles of land by himself.
His name is Aki Ra.
Respect.

Her Majesty, or, "What's Wrong With This Ad?"

I'm sure Sandra Robinson is an excellent lawyer. She may even be a "Super Lawyer," as she confidently claims.
However, she may want to rethink her marketing slogan:

"Queen of Malpractice"

Is this a good idea, even a little bit? The "Queen of Malpractice" sounds like a scary, scalpel-wielding M.D. who happens to be the sister of the Black Widow.
Man, if I saw someone called the "Queen of Malpractice"coming my way I would be hightailing it out of there.
Yikes!

Stoney

I've probably spent a lot more time in cemeteries than most people my age, and I've enjoyed most of it, too.
A great wooden area in Pawtucket, Rhode Island led into Swan Point Cemetery, a large and very old place where, among others, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is buried. The area was beautiful and serene - joggers were encouraged to use the area, and it was near a river and full squirrels, birds and other fun critters. I spent whole summers in those woods, looking for the oldest, oddest or most regal grave.
We also have a family burial plot where my great-great-great-great grandfather is buried in Massachusetts, and once a year we would pay respects in what my dad called "Visit the dead Rubins" day.
Finally, my dad worked for a few years as the owner of a monument company (a.k.a. gravestones), and his office was filled with stones, plaques, urns and other cool stuff for a young boy to check out.
Recently, Slate did an article about people who spend a lot of time at graveyards called "gravers." It seemed like a bullshit non-existant trend story, until my coworker told me he is totally a graver and visits graveyards all over the world. My Dad also claimed to be a proud graver - he used to do rubbings of graves so he could collect imprints of their text and artwork.
I never really found graves or cemeteries creepy for some reason. Maybe because I went there so often, or because I read lots of comics, or maybe there is just something soothing about stone, grass and the outdoors.