A Best Friend Will Always Wait for You

Julian Burrett: "Watson the dog stands by while the boy does a quick assessment of the puddle situation. Could this be the cutest video ever? FAQs: Watson is a 12 year old Shar Pei." http://buff.ly/X2Jpr9

Exercise is good for you, Mr Bean, even judo class

Participation in sport is associated with a with a 20—40% reduction in all-cause mortality compared with non-participation. Exercise might also be considered as a fifth vital sign, according to the Lancet: http://goo.gl/gyxYf



Mr Bean attends a judo class but doesn't want to be thrown by the teacher. From Back to School Mr Bean.

Mr. Bean now has an Official YouTube Channel.

Related reading:

Minimum amount of physical activity for reduced mortality and extended life expectancy: 15 min a day or 90 min a week. Lancet, 2011.

Video: "You Can Never Trust Doctors"

Video: "You can never Trust Doctors", linked by one of my Facebook friends.

I'm sure some patients and doctors will not find this Eurosport commercial funny, and they probably have a point. Humor may be difficult to explain and interpret. Some social media "experts" even advise doctors not to use humor on Twitter, Facebook and blogs for fear of misinterpretation and legal repercussions.

However, humor is what makes us human. It can also help with the healing process and provide some relief at a time when you need it the most. Don't be afraid to use it appropriately and as needed, PRN. The commercial above may not provide the best example for that particular purpose but I think you get the point.

Comments from Twitter:

@scanman: Ha!! I do this ALL THE TIME!!!

Baby carrots: 'Eat 'em like junk food'

The satirical $25 million ad campaign is launched by a new alliance of carrot growers - “a bunch of carrot farmers” - and is designed to reposition baby carrots as snacks with sass.

Timeline of the evolution of the baby carrot

Around 2,000 years ago: Carrots are first grown in what is now Afghanistan.

1700: The Dutch cultivate orange carrots. Before then, carrots were often purple or yellow.

1986: A California carrot grower invents the baby carrot to avoid throwing out some of the broken and misshaped carrots taken from the packing line.

A baby carrot is an immature carrot. A baby "cut" carrot is different - known popularly thanks to effective marketing also as a "baby carrot"- this is a mature carrot that has been cut and peeled in the "baby-cut" style.

See the rest of the ad campaign videos on YouTube.

References:
Baby carrots: 'Eat 'em like junk food'. Chicago Tribune.

Extreme Baby Carrots: An Experiment In Marketing : NPR http://goo.gl/94WX

How to promote your service: "We have created gazillions of helpful videos"

Loic LeMeur making a promotional video for his startups Seesmic.com and Twhirl.com: "We have created gazillions of helpful videos."

Update: Twhirl is now Seesmic Desktop client for Twitter.

Science Cartoons

These science cartoons from Vadlo.com are worth a minute of your time:

When do you need statistics?

Mouse with politician's genes

Journal of Negative Data

Statistician

Robot Seminars

Video: Jon Stewart On Twitter: "I Have No Idea How It Works, Or Why It Is"

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Video: Jon Stewart On Twitter: "I Have No Idea How It Works, Or Why It Is"

Neither do I... :)

Related:
‘Don’t Take Twitter Too Seriously’ I Agree. The Search Principle blog.

Cool

Saturday Night Live: Obama Plays It Cool

Whether you voted for Barack Obama or not, this SNL video is, well... cool (and funny).

Piano lesson: "Rachmaninov had big hands"

See how one gets 4 million views on YouTube:



Piano lesson: Rachmaninov had big hands

According to Wikipedia, "unlike most pianists, Rachmaninoff possessed extremely large hands, with which he could easily maneuver through the most complex chordal configurations. His left hand technique was unusually powerful. In addition, Rachmaninoff also composed works for two pianos and four hands.


Rachmaninoff as a young man. Note the hands. Image source: Wikipedia, public domain.

Rachmaninoff and Marfan syndrome

Along with his musical gifts, Rachmaninoff possessed physical gifts that may have placed him in good stead as a pianist. These gifts included exceptional height and extremely large hands with a gigantic finger stretch. They and Rachmaninoff's slender frame, long limbs, narrow head, prominent ears, and thin nose suggest that he may have had Marfan syndrome, a hereditary disorder of the connective tissue."

In today's visual world, the video of the comedy routine above is the 3rd Google result for the name of the famous composer.

See more videos from HirnW on his YouTube channel.

Twitter comments:

@kevinmd (Kevin Pho, M.D.): I'm going to their show when they're in Boston in March.

@ggheorghiu (Gabriel Gheorghiu): Really funny - thanks 4 sharing :)

@eswei (Beth Wei): Rachmaninoff is a work-out for your hands.

References:

Joint hypermobility syndrome: Easily Missed? BMJ, 2011.
Sergei Rachmaninoff, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Rachmaninov had big hands - the routine they ripped off. YouTube.

Cartoon: New Words and Probability the Book is Good

Please don't blame me, but the newly-made word "apomediation" comes to my mind when looking at the cartoon above. I greatly respect Gunther Eysenbach for his work on the Medicine 2.0 congress but I still find it somewhat difficult to endorse the creation of a new word to describe the use of Web 2.0 services in medicine.

According to Gunther, "traditional media intermediaries are replaced by apomediaries -- tools and peers standing by to guide consumers to trustworthy information, or adding credibility to information."

References:
Announcement: Conference on Web 2.0 in Medicine in Toronto, September 2008. What is "Apomediation"?
Image source: Fiction Rule of Thumb, xkcd.com, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

A very special dog: Skidboot

A heart-warming segment from Texas Country Reporter (8 min). There may never be another Skidboot -- the smartest dog in the world, according to Jay Leno, at least.

Related:
See more videos at Skidboot.com.
Link via FatDoctor.

How a Doctor Almost Killed Her Dog - ibuprofen, the key ingredient in Motrin, poisons dogs. NYTimes.

Tiger Roams Siberian Village, Chased by Little Dog

A surveillance camera video shows an Amur tiger in Zavodskoy village, Primorsky Krai, Russian Far East, 2005-2006 winter.

Link via English Russia, "just because something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the Earth surface."

UK Medical School Interview Technique on YouTube

YouTube video: Victoria Wood - University Interview -- A nervous schoolgirl is interviewed as a potential student at a UK medical school. Link via NewMediaMedicine.



Admission committee:
Do you think the National Health Service (NHS) is crumbling or doing very well?

Applicant (with a politically correct answer):
I think part of it is crumbling and part of it is doing very well. You have to look at both sides really...

Blog Cartoon: Too Many RSS Feeds to Read

Image is licensed under Creative Commons.

Related:
Dealing with Information Overload. LifeHack.org
Troubleshooting RSS addiction: a blogger finds freedom in a world without feeds. Download Squad, 04/2008.

Updated: 04/23/2008

We Blog Cartoons: Free Cartoons for Your Blog

Dave Walker is the author of We Blog Cartoons: "You can freely re-use them in your blog. Simply copy and paste the code.

Why are you letting us use your cartoons for free?
The more people that enjoy my work the better and life is generally too short not to give things away."



For better results, subscribe to the RSS feed of We Blog Cartoons.

Web 2.0 Company Logos

Google stock quadrupled in value in one year and then lost $ 100 in one week. "From its peak, Google's market value has plunged by roughly $28 billion. That's about equal to the market value of General Motors, $13 billion, and Ford, $15 billion", writes The Denver Post.

Web 2.0 is here to stay but I wonder how many of these companies will be around in a year from now...

Steve Rubel comments on Web 2.0 bubble starting to burst.

Russell Beattie's blog is a typical example of why Web 2.0 is free: Free means that somebody else pays for it. In the case of Web 2.0 economy, using the software is free because text ads pay for it. Russell makes an average of $ 100 per day from 3,000 page views.

Update 01/13/2007:
Corporations Web 2.0 logos by gtmcknight on Flickr, link via Micro Persuasion.

References:
What would you do with an extra $100 a day? Russell Beattie.com
Sweating out the Google nose dive. 02/05/2006. The Denver Post
Google's Stock Plunge Rattles Investors. February 2, 2006. The Washington Post
The Web 2.0 Yellow Pages
The Logos of Web 2.0. FontShop.com.
Rising Dead Pool Indicates Web 2.0 Bubble is Popping. Micro Persuasion.
Image source: Stabilo Boss
Link via Russell Beattie.com

Related:
Social Media Starfish and 6 Axes of Medical Education in Web 2.0

Updated: 11/12/2007