Quickies
Quickies: Ebola’s history, pasteurizing breastmilk via smartphone app, and earthquake scientists’ convictions overturned
- How “The Hot Zone” got it wrong and tales of Ebola’s history – “Ebola is not like how it’s portrayed in the book. People do not dissolve. Their internal organs do not liquefy. People do not shed bloody tears.” From Mary.
- A smartphone gadget pumps up breast-milk banks – “Now there’s a simple device called FoneAstra that, when combined with a smartphone, can pasteurize milk so a bank can be set up almost anywhere. The cost is only about $1,000.” From Sarah.
- Nina Hartley explains consent – From Ray.
- Appeals court overturns manslaughter conviction of six earthquake scientists – “Only one of the seven experts originally found guilty was convicted today: Bernardo De Bernardinis, who in 2009 was deputy head of Italy’s Civil Protection Department and who will now serve 2 years in jail, pending any further appeals.” From Arturo.
Yeah, the characters in books rarely survive an adaptation fully intact.
In Italy, the new rule should be: never try to educate the public. Always promote the worst case scenario because you will never be sued or prosecuted for things being worse than you estimated.
They warned the mayor about the danger. The mayor and the public scoffed at it because they were used to little tremors. The prosecutors now want to go after the geologists because their warnings were not clear enough (after originally saying the scientists said there was little danger).
The breast milk article contains a glaring error.
“South Africa notches over 1 million premature births per year.”
This seemed very unlikely to me. Fortunately they link to their data source, and it shows 1059000 total live births and ‘only’ 88000 premature births.