John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

The hazards of sleeping while exhausted

When you're sleepy, very sleepy, you are going to collapse. Imagine the feeling when you're doing something like driving. It makes me shudder, and the thought goes through my mind when I'm off to work at odd hours of the moring. (And then there's the nightcap crowd, and that's a whole other story.) 

"Sleepiness is stronger than you" is the tag line of this Thai Health promotion. I saw it on the advertising blog We'll Be Right Back. 

Get moving, already

This is a bold bit of public-health advocacy: the creative is evidently Portuguese, and aims to motivate people to exercise. As seen here. 

The Steve Jobs moment of silence

A fundraiser (and an awareness raiser, too, I guess) on pancreatic cancer research, with a bit of a twist. 

 

The Steve Jobs Moment of Silence from Moment of Silence Inc.® on Vimeo.

Grow A Muzzy In Movember

Maddie Carroll of Winnipeg tweeted to me today to make sure I would see this tune, a rip on Billy Joel's Piano Man, and a toast to the fellows growing a moustache for Movember, the fundraising campaign for prostate cancer research. 

A tweet-out was easy, but I thought posting the song here would be nice too. It's sung by Sheena Grobb. 

What killed us, through the ages

I noticed these panels in the health section of the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego: lists of the most common causes of death in 1850, 1900 and 2000.

The photos are not the sharpest, but you'll get the point. (And that would be an inadvertent but acceptable pun about immunization, as many of the most lethal diseases - and some of the key reasons why life expectancy has about doubled in less than two centuries - are no longer pressing public health problems because of it.)

Dear 16-year-old me

How do you talk to a teenager about something like melanoma?

Here's one way. Pass it around, especially if you know someone who ought to see it.

Moving on up to Movember

Surf’s Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010. Click here to read more Surf's Up.]

According to legend from ancient times (that is, in 2003), Movember started as a bar chat in Australia among a bunch of friends. It’s November, one noted, so why not grow a moustache?

Not long after that, Movember became a movement, and a way of raising funds to fight prostate cancer, one of the deadliest cancers affecting men.

Now, in 2010, it’s everywhere, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much Mo-mentum and related activity online.

Movember Canada
Hockey playoff beards? Oh, they’ll be back in the spring, but for now, the facial hair of choice is the moustache. If you see a fellow trying to get that caterpillar to evolve into a handlebar, give him a pat on the back … and be prepared to donate. The official site for Movember in Canada has background information, online tools and everything you’ll need to get involved.

A Newfoundland Movember
Participant Jon Duke of St. John’s is one of the people pitching in, and using social media to get friends and others to donate. He shaved off his beloved beard and is posting pictures as his Movember grows in. Best wishes!

Elsewhere this week

Scale of the Universe
Here’s something that amazed my son when I showed it to him this week. It’s a feature that delves into the relative scale of things, allowing you to zoom in and out a wide variety of things. You move surprisingly quickly from, say, viruses to human beings to planets. It’s when you look at the micro and macro ends of the spectrum that your mind gets quite the workout. Now that I know what quantum foam is, I will think very differently about what it means to be very, very small. An eye-popper.

Music Time Machine
Would youngsters today even recognize a jukebox? Perhaps you need to be of a certain age to appreciate the Music Time Machine, not just for the jukebox setting, but also for the vintage tunes you can select from the year of your choice. I had a lot of fun with this one recent evening while I was working away, and kept tapping for tunes to keep me going. Even better, it was a whole lot cheaper than jukeboxes used to be!

Balloon popper
What is the appeal of mindlessly popping balloons? In a virtual setting, there are no broken bits, no needles flying about, and you can turn the volume off if you like, too. This simple page flows balloons continually, in diagonal lines. Your job (to use a word very loosely indeed) is to glide your mouse around, earning one weirdly satisfying pop after another.

Park seasons
With the seasons changing before our eyes, this site is a nice amusement for a spare moment: spin your mouse, and see an animated park transform as rapidly as you desire.

Google Blogoscoped
Google has an incredible amount of influence over the daily habits of tens of millions of people, and yet many of us don’t think that much about how Google itself operates. (That may be because Google usually offers us a clean white slate when we go to look something up.) Google Blogoscoped follows the company and its services as, say, a car blogger would cover Honda or Ford. For web enthusiasts, it’s always a revealing read.

Past Life Analysis
How’s this for some time-passing hooey? You type in the day you were born, and you’re presented with an “analysis” of what you were like in a prior life. I, evidently, was a shepherd or horseman in Labrador in the 13^th century with a “revolutionary” streak who inspired many changes! Too bad the journals I ought to have written have evidently been lost for the ages.  

John Gushue is an online editor with CBC News in St. John’s. Twitter: @johngushue. Empire Avenue: (e)gushue.

Cupids has a way of getting into your heart

Surf’s Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, July 8, 2010. Click here to read more Surf's Up.]

This past weekend, the missus packed a picnic lunch, the kid picked out some road tunes and I filled up the tank with gas. We didn’t’ actually use that much, mind you. Cupids, after all, is barely an hour outside St. John’s.

That said, it was a pretty transporting daytrip, in part because of the fete that Cupids is putting on to celebrate its 400th anniversary. We’re planning at least one more trip before the summer is out – there were things still on our list, and we saw plenty that we wanted to explore. 

Cupids 400 
With some solid government support and private sponsors, Cupids 400 has a website worthy of the significance of the event – the first planned English settlement in what is now Canada. This is your anchor, whether or not you can make the trip. 

At the very least, learn about John Guy, the Cupers Cove colony founded in 1610, and remarkable stories involving the archeology and scholarship that have flourished in recent years. 

If you can make the trip, this site is the best place to start. You’ll get a sense of what you can see, including the brand-new Legacy Centre, which is a terrific community museum. (The online component isn’t quite there yet, but I’m hoping that can be beefed up.) You can also read some of the background of the digs that have put Cupids on the archeological map lately. 

Cupids Cove Chatter
Chatter uses a blog format for quick updates on what’s happening around the community, which has been decked out for the summer. Cupids and its neighbours are hosting numerous activities – concerts, plays, get-togethers, you name it –  well beyond the standard tourism centre. I’ve been kept abreast of Chatter postings thanks to the diligent work of Twitter friend Margaret Ayad, who has helped keep Cupids top of mind for a whole online community. Meanwhile, look for lots of links, including a Flickr group to see what’s been going on so far. 

New World Theatre Project 
Rabbittown Theatre of St. John’s has branched out to Cupids for this season, with a program that’s kind of ambitious: it’s staging two Shakespearean plays, plus three originals (including a dinner theatre). We caught three of the productions in a single day, including the effervescent Chris Driedzic’s brief one-man show on the fire that destroyed the legendary Globe theatre. You can find out about productions and times here. 

Elsewhere this week 

Twitter of the Day 
Earlier this winter, the people who count such things announced that 50 million tweets were moving into the ether every single day. Woof. Even if you follow a moderate number of people or organizations, it’s impossible (and, to be blunt, just not a good idea) to keep up with everything they say. The appeal of Twitter of the Day is that particularly clever or insightful or colourful things get picked for you.  

15 Things You Should Know About Breasts
Sounds dirty, but boy, is it not. This infographic is packed with information that everyone should know, but given that it’s published by OnlineSchools.org, I suspect it’s meant mainly for older students, and particularly boys at that. Some inaccurate assumptions about smoking, cosmetic surgery and breastfeeding get the fact-checking they’ve had coming. This is a great public health tool, but it may not please all parents or grown-ups, nor is it appropriate for young kids. [UPDATE: This link is no longer active.] 

 

Lost map 
It didn’t have a name, but the Island on Lost sure saw a lot of action, from a plane crash to a temple to a freighter exploding into bits just offshore. Fans of the recently concluded TV show will be intrigued to see what a Virginian mapmaker named Jonah M. Adkins came up with after (apparently) following the show quite closely – a map with many of the key settings, from Jacob’s cave to Jughead to the various Dharma stations. Look for links to buy a copy, plus notes from the mapmaker himself. 

John Gushue is an online editor with CBC News in St. John’s. Twitter: @johngushue. 

Congratulations! You went and got a fad tattoo!

I suppose if you simply must get a tattoo, you're going to do it. Why, though, would someone get a tattoo based on a fad? That's the question this slideshow from the HuffPost raises (and the photos, for me, answer it).

Meanwhile, while we're on the subject of tattoos, here's one of my favourite tweets from the last week, from Chris Abraham. My wife (we're on the same page about this) drew my attention to it:

Frontline medicine and unhappy hipsters

[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, March 4, 2010. Click here to read more Surf's Up.]

Our lives are made of serious moments and foolish thoughts, of solemn reading and outright silliness. This point really came to home when I took note of some of my recent surfing habits.

A few recent stops are included in this week’s column, which runs the full spectrum, from the noble to the hilarious and definitely to the profane. (You’ve all been warned!)

Voices From the Field
The world hears much about Doctors Without Borders (aka, Medecins sans frontieres) when there are natural disasters, such as last month’s earthquake in Haiti, although the organization is active year-round, around the world. Voices From the Field is a collection of reports that add important perspectives to stories that have been reported, but not necessarily understood.

 
Unhappy Hipsters
I like Dwell magazine, which I learned about years ago from the architect in our family. I’ve bought many copies since then, even though we’re not planning to build one of those ultra-cool houses from scratch with reclaimed or industrial materials … the sort that magazine art directors plan photo shoots over. What I had not noticed, though, until I saw the Unhappy Hipsters site is how often the subjects have grim (or at least bored) expressions on their faces.

Lifelong Learning
It’s been years since Memorial University ran the renowned Extension Service, but it still reaches into the community with non-credit courses on a wide range of topics, from art to business skills to all sorts of recreational pursuits. 



Grape Radio
Talk shows cover the gamut of issues, from the day’s news to celebrity foibles. Here’s one with a twist: a talk show dedicated to wine, and nothing else. A new audio podcast goes out about every week, sometimes replaced by a video feature. It’s about far more than wine tastings: you’ll hear about urban wineries, how restaurants go about putting together great wine lists, and the science of winemaking. It’s fascinating, and terrific listening for, say, making a Saturday supper while sipping on a nice glass.
 
Less
Amid the countless sites pitching ways you can spend money and buy more, the site mnmlist (that’s a minimal way of saying “minimalist”) takes things in exactly the opposite direction. In other words, that means decluttering and simplifying your life, and especially doing away with many of your possessions. Sure, reducing your carbon footprint, etc. etc., is noble, and many people will find inspiration in the posts here, but I found that even a few minutes here was about as much piety, earnestness and self-admiration as I could digest.

Star Wars Weather Forecast
If it’s freezing cold out there – really freezing, so cold you’d need to find warmth in the carcass of a peculiar creature – you could say it’s just like Hoth. Hot and cloudy? Yavin 4 comes to mind. This is a fun site that will appeal to Star Wars fans, even though it’s a one-note joke. Theoretically, you can enter any city’s name and get a matching forecast, though I couldn’t get far with anything for St. John’s.

The Filthy Critic
Often foul-mouthed reviews, and presented in just a few words. Here’s an example of the kids’ animated movie, Barnyard:  “Hate your kids? Show them this.” Ouch. As you might guess, be prepared for swear words and strong language.
 
Let Me Google That For You
Here’s a chuckle, and a novelty to pass to your friends – especially those who like to get you to look stuff up on their behalf. Whether or not you satisfy yourself by sending a link to them (on the hopes that they well and truly get the message), you’ll get a kick out of watching what happens when you type in a question.

John Gushue is a writer in St. John's, and works with CBC News in St. John's. John is on Twitter right here.

Five-fact Friday

Late adopter, fast follows: Bill Gates joined Twitter on Tuesday, gaining a whopping 100,000 followers in his account's first hours. That means Gates was picking up more than 200 followers every minute. By this morning, Gates's follower count had tripled.

Dan Hill is as sick and tired of his 1970s monster single Sometimes When We Touch as any of his critics. In an illuminating piece in Maclean's, Hill revealed he wrote the words when he was 19, to impress a girlfriend who didn't care much for the song, nor for him. "I’ve long ago grown more than a little weary of my signature hit—its lyrics now about as relevant to me as a poem or diary entry a teenager might have scrawled out in high school—and its refusal to go gently into that good night," Hill wrote. 

Some disability rates among Canada's public servants have been mounting, with depression cited as an area of special concern, says an article this month in the Ottawa Citizen. "In the public service, mental health claims doubled between 1991 and 2007 and now account for 45 per cent of all claims," the article reported.

The Italian government is poised to start regulating what its residents can watch online. The government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose private escapades have made for international headlines, plans in early February to start regulating what is on YouTube. It's worth noting that Berlusconi happens to own a broadcasting empire, and has a vested interest in where Italian eyeballs are directed. 

American and British military officials learned this week that gunsights on some of the weapons their soldiers used in Iraq and Afghanistan are engraved with symbols such as JN8:12, which refers to the Biblical verse of John 8:12  ("When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.") Trijcon, the U.S. manufacturer, explained the engravings on its principle of operating by what it called "Biblical standards."

The unsinkable Heidi Bonnell

I and many other journalists in St. John's got to know Heidi Bonnell while she was communications director in the premier's office during the brief but hectic Brian Tobin era. Since then, Bonnell has become a lobbyist, and more recently has encountered not one but several serious health issues, including two cancer battles and a recent, unrelated cardiac issue. The Ottawa Citizen has a feature report today on how Bonnell, through it all, has been spearheading a charity to promote fertility preservation. It's a good read. 

Good luck, Heidi! 

What kills whom where

What kills Canadians most? Or residents of other nations? And what is the global picture? Check out WorldLifeExpectancy. It's revealing stuff, especially with the ability to compare, contrast and sort.

Swine flu and hogwash: How misinformation is breeding online

[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009. Click here to read more Surf's Up.]

Up until a few weeks ago, I was trying to persuade people that H1N1 was not the benign bug they had been inclined to believe; by last week, the public mood had shifted so much that I found myself trying to talk people down from the proverbial ledge, and not to panic about a situation that they cannot entirely control.

What’s astounded me about the swinging pendulum of opinion on swine flu is the effect – not always good, sometimes outright dangerous – that the web has had.

I shouldn’t be so surprised. I’ve been covering health and medical issues for much of my career, and wrote news reports for many years for the Medical Post, the Canadian Medical Association Journal and WebMD, among others.

Two long-recurring issues have been coming together in recent weeks: the reliance of consumers on web-based information, no matter the source, and a deep, scientifically unsound suspicion of immunization.

Since the mid-1990s, physicians everywhere have reported the same phenomenon: patients arriving for appointments armed with sheafs of information they’ve collected from websites. This is often a good thing, with patients doing their own homework to aid their treatment and recovery. But there are downsides, from wonky self-diagnosis to falling prey to sites with outrageous claims and specious arguments.

There’s the anti-vaccination lobby, which has picked up new steam in the swine-flu era. Never mind that a central tenet of the last wave – namely, that immunization supposedly causes autism – has not only been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked, but the prestigious medical journal that posed the question, the U.K.’s Lancet, has retracted what it published in the first place.

Public health officials are waging two wars this year: one, to protect the public from the sickness and, yes, death that comes with a pandemic, and the second against the inaccurate and sometimes bizarre material that has been reproducing online, in a totally different meaning of the word “viral.”

So, what’s out there? An awful lot. I was astonished at the links presented to me by anti-vaccine types or skeptics in my own circle, and noticed that most pointed to a “doctor” who was behind the respective sites they had picked. A closer look at the major sets revealed something else.

For instance, there’s a doctor who’s a dentist, not to mention a veteran conspiracy theorist who, among other things, says the H1N1 vaccine causes HIV. Then there’s the Canadian who says he went to medical school, but turns out not to have a licence to practise. There’s the American doctor who fails to mention her practice privileges were revoked. There’s also the well-known Joseph Mercola, an American who is not a medical doctor but rather an osteopath, a profession that under no circumstances endorses pharmaceuticals of any kind (although Mercola’s slick-looking site has a full store of his products that he would like you to buy). (Some of the crunchier of the granola-minded people I know have been promoting his site; my response has been a suggestion they take a look at Mercola’s far-right-wing beliefs and involvements.)

There’s much wackier stuff out there, and a lot of it dangerous, given that people are basing important decisions about their health on the most dubious of information. In the last month, on at least a dozen occasions, I’ve heard or read comments that go pretty much like this: “Well, I read on a website…”

But which website? There are plenty of lessons coming out of our recent experience with H1N1. One is that even though there is plenty of solid material out there (albeit often presented in a sterile way, or cluttered with hard-to-digest text), there are untold numbers of places with misleading or just plain wrong (and even bizarre) statements.

We live in an age when consumers demand certainty. Medical scientists know they cannot guarantee with absolute certainty the safety of any procedure. Everything – from a vaccine to going to the dentist to getting in a taxi – carries some sort of risk; what’s needed is to explain to people, who take to the web seeking comfort or validation of their suspicions, the big picture of population health. That’s a tall order.

Consequently, we have lessons to learn about risk, about public health (the field that excels when people can’t see what it has achieved), about vaccinations, and – yes, absolutely – about how to evaluate what you’re reading online.

Evaluating Health Information on the Internet
I’m adding this link, to a National Cancer Institute page, because it provides excellent advice on assessing the value of what you’re reading online, particularly in terms of transparency, sourcing and credentials. Feel free to share it.

 

John Gushue is a writer in St. John's, and is currently on leave from his job with CBC News in St. John's. John is on Facebook right here. John is on Twitter right here.

Life and death at the new age ER

From the comedians at the UK television series That Mitchell and Webb Look, a sketch on what would happen if the people who believed in the healing properties of ever-diluted tinctures and of quartz took care of trauma patients. Stick around for the beer at the end.

A thought on healthy jobs

"Employment is nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness."
- Galen

(Sw)eat to the beat

Keith Moon may have been bloated and horribly out of shape when he died after years of excessive drug and alcohol intake, but the fellow was as fit as a fiddle in his prime. No wonder, according to some new research, which found that an hour of drumming is as good a workout as you'll get anywhere. This is far from an exhaustive, double-blind study; the subject of study was Blondie's Clem Burke (above). Click here to see a BBC report on the findings. Click below to see Clem Burke in action, with the propulsive drumming behind Dreaming, Blondie's 1979 single.