People do not necessarily ‘suffer’ from diseases

Actor and strong science advocate Alan Alda recently revealed that he has had Parkinson’s disease for the last three years.

The 82-year-old told the CBS This Morning show he was diagnosed three-and-a-half years ago but had only decided to speak about it now.

“The reason I want to talk about it in public is… I’ve had a full life since then,” he said.

“You still have things you can do,” he went on, revealing he was “taking boxing lessons three times a week.”

Parkinson’s is a progressive condition in which the brain becomes damaged. It can lead to tremors, difficulty moving, speech changes and eventually memory problems.

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How airports make money

I had not realized that London’s Heathrow airport was a fully privately owned, profit-seeking enterprise. This video explains what it costs to run the airport, how the company covers the costs, and how the need to make a profit changes the way that the airport is structured and the kinds of flights and destinations that are available, compared to airports that are run by governments.

The US has not privatized its major airports and efforts to do so with smaller ones have not been a success.

Korean must be a very compact language

I do not speak Korean but was intrigued by this tweet from Donald Trump containing a note sent to him by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that contain the original Korean and its English translation. The Korean version takes up so much less space, only about 50% of the English.

How the Thai boys and coach were rescued

During the time when the boys and their coach were being rescued from their long stay in the caves, there was not much information about how the rescue was carried out. More details have now emerged of how they survived their ordeal in the cave and how the rescue endeavor that was much more harrowing and difficult than I had imagined. It was sad that a navy seal died in the rescue attempt.
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An expandable round table that remains round

We used to have a circular dining table that was expandable in that you could separate the two halves and insert an extra leaf in the middle. The extra leaf was rectangular shaped which meant that the expanded table was no longer circular.

Seamus Bellamy points me to this expandable circular table that remains circular. Pretty cool and clever. It would have helped King Arthur as the number of his knights fluctuated.

Female sports reporters are routinely harassed while on camera

Take a look at the video below taken during the soccer World Cup in Moscow. What impressed me is how calmly she continues with her report, without missing a beat. It shows to me that she has experienced this kind of thing many times before.

This reporter also at the World Cup expertly avoided the kiss and used the occasion to angrily lecture the man on proper behavior, saying “Never do this to a woman, ok? Respect!”