From today’s headlines: 1st dates (circa ’10), Gaga-eyes, Inception, “the July effect”, soft circuitry & rising labor costs

• New data from a Web site suggests that not only do many people plan similar dates, but like lemmings, they also collectively migrate from one theme to the next.
• Young women have been copying Lady Gaga’s wider-than-life eyes, but the contact lenses are contraband, and doctors are concerned.

• The crucial breakthrough to completing [Christopher Nolan's] “Inception” script was considering what could happen if multiple people could share the same dream.“Once you remove the privacy,” Mr. Nolan said, “you’ve created an infinite number of alternative universes in which people can meaningfully interact, with validity, with weight, with dramatic consequences.”

• A recent study found that more patients die of medical mistakes in the month of July than any other month.
• The health care industry has a garbage problem.

• After years of effort to coax empathy from machines, robots and devices designed to soothe, support and keep us company are venturing out of the laboratory.
• The psychological devices people use to manage what they express can affect social interactions in unintended ways.

• Soaring labor costs caused by worker shortages and unrest, a strengthening Chinese currency that makes exports more expensive, and inflation and rising housing costs are all threatening to sharply increase the cost of making devices like notebook computers, digital cameras and smartphones.
• Slurp digital eyedropper sucks up, injects information wirelessly.

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