Corpus Callosum is written by a psychiatrist at a small community hospital somewhere in midwestern USA. Email to cc.scienceblogger at gmail dot com.
September 29, 2006
Category: Science in the Media
The voting closes tomorrow, so be sure to go vote for your favorite. This is from a selection of political cartoons, in the "Scientific Integrity Editorial Cartoon Contest."...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:43 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
These two things might be connected. The Washington Post reported yesterday on the findings of a CDC report on emergency room preparedness. The Economic Policy Institute reported on further erosion in health insurance coverage. Crowded ERs Raise Concerns On Readiness...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:01 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 28, 2006
Category: Photos of Interest
The food bank, that is. This is from a sculpture contest. The rule: everything had to be made entirely from canned foodstuffs. The canned food is to be donated to a food bank in LA. TENTACLE SPECTACLE: “A Call...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:22 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 27, 2006
Category: Politics
On the way home from work, one day last week, I heard some excerpts from the book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. (Chandrasekaran also has some articles in the Washington Post, here:...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:02 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 26, 2006
Category: Photos of Interest
Who is this? The first in a series of not-very-challenging science questions... Notice the resemblance to one of our ScienceBloggers. This bust is in an engineering building on the University of Michigan's North Campus. ...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:31 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
These are red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) photographed by Elaine R. Wilson. She kindly uploaded the photo to Wikipedia, where it was voted Feature Picture of the Day. Note: the image is copyrighted, but the copyright holder permits the photo...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 2:41 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Personal
Someone around these parts was writing about chilies recently, but failed to mention the best: Mesilla Valley chilies. Zingerman's sells "New Mexico chilies." Although it would be better for them to specify "Mesilla Valley" chilies, the vast majority of New...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:58 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
The Detroit Free Press has a brief article on a book, Wierd Michigan, by Linda Godfrey. One choice selection: Bill Jarrett, 81, of Wyoming, a self-described authority on toilet paper who's out to solve a great debate: Should the loose...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:09 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 25, 2006
Category: Social Issues
I am not feeling well today, so here is a low-overhead (for me) set of links. Anything thoughtful that goes up here yesterday, today, or tomorrow was written ahead of time, and scheduled. The last one was from science news....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 4:50 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
I am not feeling well today, so here is a low-overhead (for me) set of links. Anything thoughtful that goes up here yesterday, today, or tomorrow was written ahead of time, and scheduled. Anyway, here goes: Stem Cell Transplantation Safely...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 4:09 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
One of the nutty aspects of the Medicare prescription drug program is the so-called "doughnut hole." The doughnut hole occurs once the beneficiary reaches a certain spending limit. This is described in a recent Washington Post article: Under the standard...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 2:14 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Personal
...That the hospital I work in finally installed an electronic medical record system. I was messing around with it and discovered that the hospital administration had accessed a record of a sleep study the hospital had done on me. It...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Environment
This is a follow-up to yesterday's post. Yesterday, I pointed out that the EPA ignored the advice of its own scientists in developing new rules for fine particulate matter pollution. Now, we hear what some of those experts have to...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:01 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
...or we'll bring democracy to your country. HT: Saline...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:53 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 24, 2006
Category: Environment
Frank O'Donnell, writing at TomPaine.com, has an article about the RWOS as applied to clean air regulation. It turns out that the EPA has developed new air quality standards for the control of particulate matter pollution. But the new rules...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:38 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 23, 2006
Category: Social Commentary
There is no additional comment needed; the study speaks for itself: Business grad students most likely to cheat: study Wed Sep 20, 2006 Reuters BOSTON (Reuters) - Graduate business students in the United States and Canada are more likely to...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:44 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 22, 2006
Category: Armchair Musings
Funny how sometimes things fall into place. Yesterday, I wrote a post about DeVos' promotion of the teaching of Intelligent Design/Creationism. I also heard that Hugo Chavez' mention of Noam Chomsky's book, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance,...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:24 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 21, 2006
Category: Politics
When I came home from work, and saw the headline: DeVos Backs Discussion of Intelligent Design, I knew I wanted to blog it. Alas, I get the afternoon paper. Ed Brayton gets the morning paper, and had already beaten me...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:29 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Armchair Musings
If you decry the practice of "legislating from the bench," then why is it OK to legislate from the corporate boardroom?...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:18 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Photos of Interest
The Foo Bar is closed. You will have to come back in the morning....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 6:33 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 20, 2006
Category: Psychiatry
I find it interesting that one of the recipients of a Lasker Clinical Research Award this year was Aaron Beck. Dr. Beck is a psychiatrist. He is widely regarded as the originator of cognitive therapy. The rationale is outlined in...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:08 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
I'll be curious to see if there turns out to be a parallel between what is happening now in the auto industry, and what happens in the future in the computing industry. We recently passed the 25th anniversary of...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:35 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 19, 2006
Category: Photos of Interest
This is from the Chicago Tribune "Images in the News" feature. Unfortunately, I saved it to my flash drive earlier in the week. Now, it is no longer on their site, so I cannot provide the caption or the...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:00 AM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Armchair Musings
The tagline on my old blog was "Observation are gold; hypotheses, silver; and conclusions, bronze." This reflects my philosophy, that observation is the fundamental source of all knowledge. The father you go from your raw observations, the more likely you...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:04 AM • 8 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
Now we learn that the keys that open Diebold voting machines are widely available on the Internet. These people are fools. The nutty thing is this: Diebold also makes ATMs. Are their ATMs constructed with such shoddy security? Probably not....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:47 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 18, 2006
Category: Computing
Facetime Communications has announced that they have seen evidence of a new Internet worm that spreads via AOL Instant Messenger. It comes in the guise of a picture, that is astually an executable file. The user first sees an...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:58 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
The Impeach BUSH Yard Signs .org site is back online. It was shut down for a few days because it was hosted on a site that got the Internet bandwidth from the County government. Now it is on a private...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:22 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Stumpy is a fabled Texan Tan tarantula, Aphonopelma anax, that was hit by a car and nursed back to health with triple nail hardener. I assume that is finger- and toenail hardener. Stumpy had narrowly missed being yet another...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:30 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Social Commentary
The rest of the world would be laughing at us about this, if we did not have nuclear weapons....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:10 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 16, 2006
Category: Medicine
Yes! magazine is one of my favorite progressive publications. The reason is that they tend to take a positive view of everything. That is unlike a lot of politically-oriented publications, most of which somehow manage to make everything sound...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 11:01 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
I missed this the first time around, but now I am "happy" to report that the gender pay gap is narrowing. On August 31, 2006, just in time for Labor Day, the US Dept. of Labor issued a report that...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 6:27 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 15, 2006
Category: Politics
What Congress set out to do, was to come up with ethics reform legislation that would show that they are addressing the concerns of the public, in the wake of numerous scandals. Reportedly, though, both parties were reluctant to put...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:57 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 14, 2006
Category: Medicine
GARDASIL®, the vaccine intended to prevent infection with human papillomavirus (HPV), was controversial even before it was approved by the FDA. Debate rages on use of cervical cancer vaccine Rob Stein, Washington Post Monday, October 31, 2005 (10-31) 04:00...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:40 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 13, 2006
Category: Humor
There's a kerfuffle in Washtenaw County, Michigan, over the use of a website that promotes the sale of "Impeach Bush" yard signs. According to the Ann Arbor News, the host, Huron Valley Community Network, is "indirectly operated using Washtenaw County...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:26 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 12, 2006
Category: Photos of Interest
This is from the Nasa Earth Observatory site. If you've ever been curious about the dynamics of sand dunes, be sure to go to their site and read the little essay on the subject....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:28 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 11, 2006
Category: Armchair Musings
All day we've been hearing about the terrorist attacks that took place on 9/11/2002. We've heard especially from the families of victims, and from the workers who continue to have health problems. Some of you probably even listened to our...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:29 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
The adjective extreme has been extremely overused in recent years. For example, I recently saw a sign in a gas station that advertised an Extreme Meal Deal: a hot dog, chips, and soda for $2.49. But Extreme Drug Resistant...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:12 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Psychiatry
There is a lot of information about vagus nerve stimulation as a treatment for depression, that you can get from the latest New York Times article (Battle Lines in Treating Depression, permanent link) on the subject. Unfortunately, most of the...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:59 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
Actually, it was many days ago; but it still is relevant: Bush Sought ‘Way’ To Invade Iraq? During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:36 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 10, 2006
Category: Psychiatry
Today is suicide prevention day. Dr. Serani has the details here....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:00 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 9, 2006
Category: Personal
But this time, being late is further proof of my point. (It would have proved it more convincingly if I never went to a party.) Additional evidence: in eighth grade, I got a book from the library to learn to...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 12:01 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
The little guy pictured to the left is dapoxetine, a drug under development for the treatment of premature ejaculation. I wrote about this before, in the context of recent criticism of the pharmaceutical industry. Some have argued that the...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:22 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 8, 2006
Category: Medicine
Just a quick note to spread the word: The University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine has put up an online archive of material about the 1918 influezna pandemic. The 1918-1920 Influenza Pandemic Escape Community Digital Document Archive...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 3:01 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Bioethics
This has been a topic here at ScienceBlogs, and elsewhere. In this post, I point out some of the blogosphere commentary, and provide links to some commentary published in journals that might otherwise escape widespread attention. ...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 7:50 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 6, 2006
Category: Photos of Interest
This is a pair of twin albino pygmy monkeys, recently born at the Frösö Zoo in Ostersund, Sweden. They are featured in the National Geographic website's Photo in the News section. Click on the photo to visit the site, and...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 3:37 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 5, 2006
Category: Science News
Via the Christian Science Monitor: Formerly a part of Yugoslavia, and on the brink of ethnic war only a few years ago, Macedonia has become what may be the first "wireless country" in the world. With $3.9 million from the...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 8:04 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 4, 2006
Category: Social Issues
You might have seen the article, The Terrorism Index, in Foreign Policy magazine a while ago. If you did, here is a reminder of the high points. If you did not, go read the whole thing....
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:31 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 3, 2006
Category: Armchair Musings
A couple of days ago, I heard this interview on NPR, with Steve Inskeep. Inskeep was interviewing Spc. Mark Wilkerson, just before he turned himself in for having gone AWOL. Wilkerson served one tour of duty in Iraq, but refused...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:57 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Social Commentary
I remember thinking about this film, shortly after the fall of Baghdad. After yesterday's University of Michigan win over Vanderbilt, which happened on the anniversary of the surrender of Japan in 1945, I was reminded again. From Wikipedia: The...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 9:06 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 2, 2006
Category: Bioethics
The August 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has an interesting article with policy implications. Unfortunately, they did not make this one freely accessible. The authors argue that the increased medical costs that we faced between...
Posted by Joseph j7uy5 at 10:58 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
