Octopodial Chrome

From Esquire comes this list of sixty oh-so-fun-to-do but oh-so-bad-for-you things.

Atul Gawande writes about a revolutionary development in medicine, one which reduces ICU stays by half and which increases patient survival rate. The development? A simple checklist. Yes, it turns out that having physicians follow a checklist and giving nurses the power to keep them to script is a sure-fire way to improve treatment.

An incredibly good article.

In New South Wales, police assaulted a woman, searched her bra and underwear in public and, finding nothing, charged her with resisting arrest. Because, of course, a little 64-year-old is capable of resisting anything.

Daniel Weinreb—one of the early luminaries of the Common Lisp community—has conducted a survey of Common Lisp implementations. Pretty good stuff; worth reading if you’re a Lispnik.

I wish I’d a dog so that I could get him a set of dog armour for him to wear. Then I’d take him boar-hunting. It’d be a blast.

Also, just walking down the street with an armoured dog would be cool. I’d have to name him Panzerkrieghund, of course…

Unsurprisingly, Star Drek is guilty of almost every single one. Roddenberry set sci-fi entertainment back a century.

Wil Wheaton reviews Start Trek: The Next Generation episodes. What makes this notable is that Wheaton was a regular actor on Star Trek. He’s not afraid to point out how absurd the writing could be, but is also willing to give the show what (little, IMHO) credit it deserves in places. Really cool stuff.