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Shots - Health Blog
4:31 pm
Mon August 20, 2012

Dr. Seuss On Malaria: 'This is Ann ... She Drinks Blood'

Credit Theodor Geisel / Courtesy of USDA
During World War II, Capt. Theodor Geisel — better known as Dr. Seuss — created a small booklet explaining how to prevent mosquito bites.

Originally published on Tue August 21, 2012 9:34 am

Before he cooked up green eggs or taught us to count colorful fish, Dr. Seuss was a captain in the U.S. Army. And during World War II, the author and illustrator, whose given name was Theodor Geisel, spent a few years creating training films and pamphlets for the troops.

One of Geisel's Army cartoons was a booklet aimed at preventing malaria outbreaks among GIs by urging them to use nets and keep covered up.

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Destination Art
3:13 pm
Mon August 20, 2012

North Adams, Mass.: A Manufacturing Town For Art

Originally published on Tue August 21, 2012 2:06 pm

If you ever decide to visit one of the largest museums of contemporary art in the world, prepare yourself: It's a little intimidating. First, you have to drive to upper Massachusetts, just south of the Vermont border, where you'll behold 26 hulking brick buildings: We're talking 600,000 square feet of raw, sunlit space, roughly equivalent to a mid-sized airport.

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Remembrances
2:29 pm
Mon August 20, 2012

Phyllis Diller, Comedy's Self-Deprecating Pioneer

Credit Chris Pizzello / AP
Diller poses with a photo at her Los Angeles home in 2005.

Originally published on Mon August 20, 2012 5:02 pm

A queen of comedy has died. Phyllis Diller had audiences in stitches for more than five decades with her outlandish get-ups and rapid-fire one-liners. She died at her home, where she had been in hospice care after a fall. She was 95.

Diller was glamorously outrageous — or at least the character she created was glamorously outrageous, the one who wore wigs that made her look like she had her finger in an electrical outlet, who wore gaudy sequined outfits. She was known for her laugh and those nasty jokes about her dimwitted husband, "Fang."

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Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!
1:42 pm
Mon August 20, 2012

Sandwich Monday: The Energy Bar Sandwich

A few of us are doing a 5K tonight (burger-themed, of course), and rather than doing any training whatsoever, we're getting ready with our very own Energy Bar Sandwich. Luna Bar bread, a Clif Bar patty, topped with a Powerbar, carbohydrate goo and something called Clif Shot Bloks. It adds up to 1,200 calories, more than twice that of a Big Mac.

Ian: This sandwich tastes like exercise feels.

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Movie Interviews
12:32 pm
Mon August 20, 2012

Mike Birbiglia, 'Sleepwalk'-ing On The Big Screen

Originally published on Mon August 20, 2012 12:58 pm

When comedian Mike Birbiglia opened his one-man show Sleepwalk With Me in 2008 at the Bleecker Street Theatre in New York, he didn't anticipate that it would become material for a popular piece on This American Life and a New York Times best-seller. He especially didn't think it would turn into a feature film.

Birbigilia had never made a film before. And he was initially hesitant to make one about his dangerous sleepwalking condition, because he wanted to distance himself from the topic he had been immersed in for more than four years.

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