Evening Read for Tuesday Night

The top 10 life-forms living on Lady Gaga (and you) by Rob Dunn (Scientific American)

Long before she strapped on her sirloin, her prevailing condition was contaminated. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the bacteria out of the girl’s large intestine. But before you get holier than thou, I should point out that the condition with which Gaga is afflicted is the human condition. We are all covered in other species, gowns of life far more outrageous than a few strips of wayward meat. Here then are the 10 life-forms you (and Lady Gaga) are most likely to be wearing this spring.

Tanks in the cloud (The Economist)

Clouds bear little resemblance to tanks, particularly when the clouds are of the digital kind. But statistical methods used to count tanks in the second world war may help to answer a question that is on the mind of many technology watchers: How big is the computing cloud?

Now This Is What a ‘Death Panel’ Looks Like by Abram Sauer (Esquire)

Here’s something Fox News won’t tell you: While the controversial billing code for an end-of-life conversation did not exist on Medicare forms until January 1, many doctors had the chat anyway — uncompensated. One primary-care physician at the nursing home told us that others found a way to bill “for the disease, and then add a v66.7 ‘encounter for palliative care.’ And then I bill by time and code them usually a 99215, as it is usually 40-plus minutes.”