Land O Links
(courtesy photo/used under Creative Commons license)*On the subject of death, surveys show most people will agree to practically any “life-saving” treatment available. Doctors, by contrast, would reject almost all of the current treatments in such situations, except for pain meds. Why?:
“First, few non-physicians actually understand how terrible undergoing these interventions can be. He discusses ventilation. When a patient is put on a breathing machine, he explains, their own breathing rhythm will clash with the forced rhythm of the machine, creating the feeling that they can’t breathe. So they will uncontrollably fight the machine. The only way to keep someone on a ventilator is to paralyze them. Literally. They are fully conscious, but cannot move or communicate. This is the kind of torture, Murray suggests, that we wouldn’t impose on a terrorist. But that’s what it means to be put on a ventilator.”
*These five maps are supposed to show how America is divided, but, if you look closely, you can see a division in Michigan as well.
You can’t zoom in, but if you note the color shifts, you will see that Northern Michigan scores quite differently than the urbanized belt on median income, percentage of people in poverty, educational attainment and reliance on food stamps.
*With affirmative action policies for selective universities back in the news, it might interest you to know that merit and merit alone is not a great predictor of who actually gets admitted to campus:
“Meanwhile, high performing, low-income students, both white and minority, are still neither applying to selective colleges nor attending in the numbers they should. This has been clear for years, thanks to the work of people like former Princeton University President William G. Bowen, but this spring new research by economist Caroline Hoxby and public-policy professor Christopher Avery spotlighted the problem. Hoxby and Avery found that “only 34 percent of high-achieving high school seniors in the bottom fourth of income distribution attended any one of the country’s 238 most selective colleges,” as Leonhardt has written.”
*OK, this map of the states with their signature corporations might not be scientific, but I love the fact that the home state (Oklahoma) is labeled with Sonic Drive-Ins.
For the uninitiated, Sonics still offer the old service at your car window method of dining. I recommend the cheesy tater tots. And they used to make a slammin’ chicken-fried steak sandwich -- but it seems to have fallen off the menu in recent times.
Sonic is moving into Michigan at a brisk pace (10 locations listed), though there seems to be a conspiracy to keep it out of LOL’s home base in Lansing.
*An invasive aquatic species is doing so well, you won’t believe what’s happening to it.
*Two Michigan communities are on this list of the 50 “smartest cities in America.”
Can you guess which ones they are, AND in what order they appear in the list? Thrash it out, Spartans and Wolverines.
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