CDC’s “Germstoppers” campaign uses low-brow language to teach complex hand washing skills (satire)
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States has a new program called “Germstoppers.” This program consists — in part — of a full-page brochure that various institutions — such as health clinics and hospitals — can paste in their windows. The “Germstoppers” brochure attempts to educate…
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… resource, parenting advice, baby activities, toddler activities, baby games, baby … contains a similar mix of the nutrients your baby needs to thrive. … baby health, babycare, parenting babies, newborns and infants baby parenting, caring for newborns, baby articles, message boards, tools, checklists and more. … Nursing a hungry baby. First flavors form an impression […]
The top 10 uses for Christmas fruitcakes (satire)
For as long as I can remember, the Christmas fruitcake has been a terrific source of holiday humor. I’ve never actually eaten a fruitcake, but I’ve seen lots of them, including one that I’m pretty sure was made with gummy bears. It’s not just the name that’s hilarious (”Fruit” and “Cake” don’t belong…
Marijuana under attack for causing memory problems, say forgetful drug researchers (satire)
medical researchers are once again warning about the long-term memory effects of smoking marijuana. Toking on the herb for decades apparently makes your memory, well, dopey. That is, if you believe the study which was based on 40 people found in a drug rehabilitation program who said they only smoked…
CAPTCHAs Enlisted in Book-Digitizing Project
The grid-computing model has succeeded in creating many large, useful, virtual supercomputers. Now, a Carnegie-Mellon prof is attempting to create a “human grid” to eliminate a bottleneck in digitizing printed materials. Instead of capturing, say, video game processing cycles when the console owners are not playing games, assistant professor of computer science and MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient Luis von Ahn wants to capture keystrokes used for CAPTCHAs. “CAPTCHA” is a loose acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.” Almost anybody who has used the Internet has run into CAPTCHAs at one time or another. They are the distorted-letter tests that show up on such sites as Yahoo, Hotmail, PayPal, or Wikipedia. Until now, the sole purpose of a CAPTCHA was to block automated systems (most often spammers or those with a similar purpose) from signing up for free e-mail or discussion forum accounts. Now, if von Ahn’s CAPTCHA idea catches on, the characters might be able to serve a larger purpose. About 150,000 Human Hours Daily The Carnegie-Mellon researchers estimate that 60 million or more CAPTCHAs are solved daily, resulting in at least 150,000 human hours of typing in random letters. Working with a team from Carnegie-Mellon and with the nonprofit Internet Archive, von Ahn created reCAPTCHAs. The Internet Archive runs the Open Content Alliance, which is a massive undertaking to digitize books and other printed materials, thus enabling them to be searched by computers or distributed electronically. The Archive uses optical character recognition (OCR) systems, which scan books and convert the resulting pictures of the words into text-based, searchable words. But OCR can vary in its accuracy, and, in particular, often creates errors when it comes to hand-written text, underlined words, smeared old text, or other less-than-clean passages. These troublesome sections, in von Ahn’s project, become the new CAPTCHAs. So,…
Millions of Americans affected by Television Deficiency Disorder (TDD) - (satire)
More than thirty-five million Americans may currently be suffering from a newly-discovered disorder that affects brain chemistry, behavior and health: Television Deficiency Disorder, or TDD for short. Based on work by Dr. Anne Tennah, a psychiatrist who specializes in brain chemistry disorders, this…
NetFlix DVD broken? Don’t go to pieces… (satire)
NetFlix is the best service in the world for renting an unlimited number of cracked, scratched and otherwise unplayable DVDs. Through my NetFlix membership, I have been able to rent a shattered version of Oceans Eleven, a scratched-beyond-belief edition of The Bridges of Madison County, and a rare, limited…
health Roundup: Gambling with drugs, Squaretrade failures and counterfeit drugs (satire)
The following true story is almost too hilarious to hear sitting down. Prepare to leave your seat. A retired doctor from Austin, Texas named Max Wells is suing multiple drug companies and casinos for $14 million to recoup losses he suffered as a result of — get this — prescription drug side effects…
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May 28th, 2007 at 10:30 am
[…] CDC s Germstoppers campaign uses low-brow language to teach complex hand washing skills (satire) The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States has a new program called “Germstoppers.” This program consists — in part — of a full-page brochure that various institutions — such as health clinics and hospitals — can paste in their windows. The “Germstoppers” brochure attempts to educate… resource, parenting advice, […] […]
May 30th, 2007 at 4:59 am
[…] CDC s Germstoppers campaign uses low-brow language to teach complex hand washing skills (satire) The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States has a new program called “Germstoppers.” This program consists — in part — of a full-page brochure that various institutions — such as health clinics and hospitals — can paste in their windows. The “Germstoppers” brochure attempts to educate… resource, parenting advice, […] […]