Get Death Positive!
"Meet three young women who want to teach our repressed society how to explore its relationship with death."
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SARS Takes European Vacation
"France has reported the country's first case of a SARS-like virus that has so far killed 18 people, mostly in Saudi Arabia…. While it has been deadliest in Saudi Arabia, where 11 people have been killed by the virus, other cases have been reported in Jordan, Germany, Britain and now France."
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Play A Fun Game About Bird Flu!
While we wait for the bird flu to make its way here, why not spend some time playing this bird flu game from the people who bring you wacky Taiwanese animated news.
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Now That We've Got Taxes Squared Away, Let's Focus On Death
"The deadly new strain of bird flu has spread further on [China's] mainland, with two people in Henan province confirmed yesterday as infected with H7N9, the first cases in the region. Shanghai reported two new deaths, those of a 67-year-old woman who died on Saturday and a 77-year-old man who died yesterday morning, bringing the national death toll to 13. Three new cases were confirmed in Shanghai yesterday, four in Zhejiang province and two in neighbouring Jiangsu , giving a national total of 60." Meanwhile, closer to home, "Health experts worked hard Sunday to defuse fears of a national epidemic among gay men after a Sacramento native died [...]
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Slutty New Virus Will Kill Us All
"The mysterious new coronavirus that emerged in the Middle East and has killed 11 people is potentially more deadly than Sars and also more 'promiscuous' – able to infect many different species – University of Hong Kong research has found. Unlike Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome), the new coronavirus can affect many different organs in the body and kills cells rapidly, the researchers say."
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Terrifying Mummies Should Watch Their Diet To Avoid Heart Disease Risks
Scary mummies in museums are not so different than you, experts say, because even the most hideous dried-up corpse from thousands of years ago suffers the same mundane risks for heart disease as people still shuffling along today: hardened arteries.
Bored researchers did a "stress test" on 137 mummies from around the world and found a third of the monstrosities were suffering from atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.
The heart condition is commonly believed to be associated with modern lifestyle errors such as smoking cigarettes and eating so much bacon and thinking that's funny, but this new research suggests mummies have been suffering these heart problems since the [...]
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Coming Soon: Swine Flu 2
"Half of all pigs live in China – and well over half of them eat feed laced with antibiotic 'growth promoters'. Now Chinese and US researchers have found that this practice is spawning a tide of antibiotic-resistant bacteria."
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Are You Freaking Out Enough About SARS?
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE DEADLY NEW CORONAVIRUS? Here's WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE DEADLY NEW CORONAVIRUS. I mean, don't panic or anything, it's not a complete nightmare yet. Soon, probably, but not yet.
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Witness Gun History
"In the hands of its 25-year-old creator, Texas University law student Cody Wilson, the gun looks like an absurdly large Lego piece. Called the liberator, it is very real, very deadly, and very important: It is the first gun printed entirely with 3-D-printed parts (except for a single common nail that can be bought at any hardware store) and it is not hyperbole to call its firing a historical event." —MAN: Remember the historic moment when that guy fired the first 3-D-printed pistol? [Sound of gunfire.] WOMAN: [Dies.] MAN: Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting that I need to be more quiet now that everyone has their own little [...]
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Bird Flu Starts Its World Tour
"Taiwan confirmed an H7N9 bird flu infection in a Taiwanese traveler from China, demonstrating the risk of the killer virus entering cities outside the mainland."
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Watch A Navy Boat Blast An Airplane Out Of The Sky With A Laser Beam
8-year-old me would have been VERY DISAPPOINTED to learn that when finally we weaponized laser beams in real life they'd be invisible instead of glowing green or orange or purple like they're supposed to. Can't the Navy just add some food coloring or something? Also, I can't believe they put this video up without a soundtrack. Come on, man! If there has ever been an opportunity for the United States government to officially crank "Tom Sawyer" it is this! (Also acceptable: Lil Scrappy's "Problems." But that is all. Those are the best two laser beam sounds ever recorded.) [Via]
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Nuclear War Is All, "Hey, Remember Me?"
"We as a nation have to start talking about the prospects for nuclear war."
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If You're Too Lazy To Travel, Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Will Make Its Way To You Soon Enough
"The danger posed by growing resistance to antibiotics should be ranked along with terrorism on a list of threats to the nation, the government's chief medical officer for England has said." Also there is "a nagging concern among health officials who say the 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico could become a breeding ground for one of the hardest forms of TB to treat. Already, both California and Texas, as well as some states on the Mexico side of the border, have unusually high rates of drug-resistant TB." And just last week, health officials warned that [...]
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Will This Flu Epidemic Kill You? Maybe, But You Could Also Get A Flu Shot!
http://www.flu.gov/stay-connected/vaccinelocator_2011.htmlAfter many years of quiet flu seasons, the current winter epidemic is shaping up to be something pretty terrible. Boston is officially an emergency zone, with more than 700 reported cases and 18 deaths so far. The South is already racking up flu deaths, with 22 deaths in South Carolina alone. Thousands have been hospitalized nationwide, and the flu is jumping to other patients.
What can you do? Go get a flu shot! Even if you "don't care about getting the flu," because you're unemployed or insane or look forward to a real-life version of The Stand, please get a flu shot so that you're not infecting [...]
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Start Making Plans For Your Pandemic Panic Party
"Every pandemic begins small. Early indicators can be subtle and ambiguous. When the Next Big One arrives, spreading across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people, it will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places — reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention. Such reports have been coming in recent months from two countries, China and Saudi Arabia."
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You Were Busy Last Week, So You Probably Forgot To Panic About Bird Flu
"A man in the northeastern Chinese province of Shandong has been infected by a new strain of bird flu, the first case found in the province, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday, bringing the total number of cases in China to 105…. [I]n the two months since it was first detected, the H7N9 flu has already resulted in almost twice as many confirmed infections in China as H5N1 caused there in a decade." Also: "'If the virus does develop the capacity to spread from person to person then it could mean a much greater concern about this virus because it means it could slip across borders undetected.'"
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New Bird Flu Claims First Human Victims, Blogs Blame It On Dead River Pigs
"H7N9 bird flu is considered a low pathogenic strain that cannot easily be contracted by humans," the AP reports from Beijing. Well that would be very comforting for humans (if not for birds), except for the sad fact that the wire story is about the first two humans known to be killed by H7N9. Another infected human is in critical condition.
But it's supposedly a low-level virus and not the SARS kind of crazy—that virus jumped to humans from a weird kind of wildcat cruelly captured and then kept in cages to sell to bad people at markets. SARS eventually killed 775 of the 8,000 infected during that [...]
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What Will Kill Us All Next
"Saudi Arabia has rejected accusations that it is covering up details of a deadly new SARS-like virus, which has recently been shown to be capable of spreading from person to person."
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Scientists Still Talking About How Hot It Is As If We Might Actually Do Something About It
"Global temperatures are warmer than at any time in at least 4,000 years, scientists reported Thursday, and over the coming decades are likely to surpass levels not seen on the planet since before the last ice age."
