Post 1,300 - LINKFEST Wednesday

I may be starting to carbo-load a bit prematurely for Marathon Sunday.  (It's still like 12 days away.)  In a related note, popcorn that's sat out for a day or two is the best food ever.  Just wanted you to know.

Now onto the Linkfest:

• Preventable Deaths in the U.S.  The smoking one is no shocker but "medical errors" is ridiculous.  I had a little diatribe in my head about using Medicare and Medicaid dollars to teach med students to kill people but not allowing Medicare and Medicaid payments for social work students learning to treat mental illness in a properly supervised setting.  Mental health parity my butt.
• Speaking of medical error, 10 mistakes when donating a kidney: a great example of a title that shows up on Digg and just begs for more attention.
• Light based alarm - a cheap hack.  I know I've mentioned my Uber expensive alarm clock before.  Just for the record, I did try the trick in the article a couple years ago.  It's just not the same.  Also, I'm up to an hour long sunrise now.  The earlier in the morning, the longer sunrise needs to be.
• Race matters in the criminal justice system.  No surprise.
• Goodbye Apple Orchard.  In a follow up - to my Minnesota friends, where's another good orchard where we can pick our own apples?  We are looking for a place that doesn't particularly cater to little kids.
• For my Pooky Bear, Sorry, merrit pay doesn't really work.  Maybe we just get them to judge by something other than scores on a standardized test.
• Want!  And how I found out about them in the first place.  Yes, I do unplug while I'm on vacation; especially my router, cable box and toaster oven.
• Vacation: Want
• College students who use Facebook study 1-5hrs/wk versus their non-FB using peers who study 11-15hrs/wk.  Just.  Wow.
• Speaking of Facebook, here's their latest sneaky trick enhanced feature.
• This is also for my Pooky Bear because depending on who you ask, she has or has not ever lived in an entirely gray house.  And why isn't that word spelled with an "e"?
• Plastic bags = we can stop you.  I'm sure we'll do that here eventually.  Ikea already charges people for their bags so we're getting trained slowly.
• Racial integration in American cities.  It's worth it to follow the link to the Flickr set; find your city and look at the largest image size available.  Here's the full size image of Minneapolis/St Paul and I'm proud to report I live in a fairly well integrated neighborhood (more than just red dots).  here's Boston for Sara; Seattle for Chris; Miami for Mark and Irmghard; and Cincinnati for many many people.
• In closing: Some perspective.