Category: Random

Both Cambridge, Massachusetts and Berkeley, California have made efforts to balance the public elementary schools by family income. They do this by dropping the idea of the neighborhood school and instead sending some children to schools across the city, in order to get the average family income roughly equal at every elementary school. They do…

By far the leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 9 in the U.S. is automobile accidents, accounting for some 21% of all deaths (I’m looking at figures from 2002). After that comes cancer (18%) and congenital abnormality (7%). What surprises me is the fourth item on the list: drowning (5%). I’ve heard…

My aunt died 12 days ago. I don’t want to write about my personal feelings about this, but I do want to write something about the events that led to her death. I don’t know all the details, but this is the basic story I heard as it evolved. Two or three years ago, at…

I’m in Stockholm for a few weeks, which is why I haven’t been updating this blog. I’ve been in Sweden many times before, but one thing I’ve noticed particularly this time is the way that old existing buildings have been adapted for modern times. It’s quite common to see stone steps which look positively ancient…

I’ve come across a few articles recently about how modern medicine is on the road to conquer death in the next thirty years or so. I find this to be very unlikely, and I feel that people aren’t thinking about the real issues. I’ve seen two general themes. One is that the singularity will come…