Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine focusing in Neuroscience. He is due to graduate in 2032. He received a BS and a MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University -- where he spent most of his time drinking heavily and building vegetable catapults instead of learning information that would now be eminently useful. When he is not failing terrifically to perform his sworn duties, he enjoys watching bad movies, ethnic food, and running.
Pure Pedantry is a blog about science -- social sciences and otherwise -- as well as academic and scientific culture. No one can live on science alone, so I also like to dwell on pop culture, periodically explore the humanities, and indulge in other types of geeky goodness.
Jake is joined periodically by two wonderful guest bloggers: Kara Contreary and Kate Seip. See the About Page.
DISCLAIMERS: 1) Jake Young is not a licensed physician (yet). He is merely a medical student. The information published on this site is not intended for use in medical decision making. Please seek advice from a licensed, medical professional before making any health decisions. 2) The opinions expressed are my own or those of my co-bloggers. They do not represent the views of SEED magazine or the educational establishments we currently attend.
December 23, 2007
Category: Comments
Gregory had this to say about the post on why you sometimes feel like you are falling when you are going to sleep: there is a spiritual explanation for this, it is the moment when awareness stops identifying with the...
Posted by Jake Young at 8:48 PM • 3 Comments •
December 22, 2007
Category: Economics
I mentioned in an earlier post on Ron Paul that one of the policies he advocates that I do support is a return gold standard. I used to think this for two reasons -- both moral rather than economic principles,...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:20 PM • 15 Comments •
Category: Quotes
Jesse Walker at Hit and Run had this to say about anti-immigrant activist Tom Tancredo dropping out of the GOP Presidential race: Tom Tancredo has dropped out of the presidential race. He will be replaced by Montezuma Aztlan Calderon, an...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:41 PM • 0 Comments •
December 20, 2007
Category: Funding
.5%. Woohoo! High fives all around! It is going to be another year of suck for NIH spending. The omnibus spending bill that has been passed by the House and Senate and is expected to be ratified by the President...
Posted by Jake Young at 7:39 PM • 6 Comments •
December 19, 2007
Category: Libertarian politics
Ron Paul just lost my vote (not that he really had it before). See the video below the fold (the question is at about 2:40):...
Posted by Jake Young at 3:34 PM • 26 Comments •
Category: Other People's Work
Encephalon 38 is up at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Highly Allochthonous discusses an issue I had never heard of before: geovandalism or the destruction of geological samples that could be used in research. There are clearly trade-offs involved here: you...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:53 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Perception
Vision is the process by which the brain converts the light stimuli into a mental world filled with abstract visual objects. If you stop to think about it, this is an incredible feat. There is nothing in the photons coming...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:39 PM • 2 Comments •
December 14, 2007
Category: Words and Writing
Lame. w00t is the word of the year. Pssh. I can come up with so many better words that w00t. How about Pecksniffian? Sesquipedalian? Casuistry? All those are way better. Just try using Pecksniffian at the bar, and see how...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:48 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Haha, a funny
Sadly we are all susceptible. I spent like thirty minutes trying to ponder the answer to the question in this cartoon. Thanks xkcd. (Click to enlarge.) This is a real issue for me. In order to get any work done,...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:39 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Drugs
An investigative report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer looks at the FDA Fast Track. For those who don't know, the FDA Fast Track was created to accelerate the drug approval process for drugs targeted at under-treated diseases. Yet there is...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:12 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Economics
Alan Greenspan argues in the Wall Street Journal that the housing bubble was the direct result of geopolitical changes and their effects on long-term interest rates. Therefore, some correction was inevitable: The root of the current crisis, as I see...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:30 AM • 1 Comments •
December 13, 2007
Category: Biology
This is just too good. All molecular biologists have had a conversation at least once where they try to actually explain what they do with their day to a lay-person, rather than just talking in stale generalities. The problem with...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:36 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Physics
I am not even close to qualified enough to critique this paper, but I did find it interesting. The authors speculate about how you could create a warp drive -- an engine for faster than light travel -- by creating...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:21 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Sleep
I get a lot of random questions from friends and relatives. It is an occupational hazard. This one just came down the grapevine: Do you know how sometimes when you're lying in bed, starting to fall asleep and all of...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:11 PM • 17 Comments •
December 12, 2007
Category: Movies
I guess I suspected that Golden Compass might not be good, but I went to see it last night if for no other reason than to see why thousands of people would attempt to boycott it on Facebook. The Catholic...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:41 PM • 17 Comments •
Category: Books
...but how you give matters quite a lot, it would seem. Just in time for the season of giving (and, of course, drinking oneself silly on eggnog), I'd like to share my holiday reading list, which is coincidentally heavy on...
Posted by Kara Contreary at 6:39 AM • 0 Comments •
December 11, 2007
Category: Haha, a funny
What does Jake do when he has nothing to do? (Actually Jake has quite a bit to do, but he is desperately avoiding writing a manual for the use of MATLAB for his labmates, and for this purpose nearly anything...
Posted by Jake Young at 5:13 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Blogging
Here at Seed we take pride in at least pretending to not be English-centric. I mean yours-truly is actually horrible at languages. There was an abortive attempt to learn Mandarin in my past that culminated in me only knowing when...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:29 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Philosophy
This Kant attack ad is awesome:...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:57 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Violence
Last week, in response to a multiple homicide shooting in an Omaha mall, I wrote a post showing the mental illness is actually a pretty weak indicator of violent behavior. I made an argument in passing that this would imply...
Posted by Jake Young at 9:31 AM • 9 Comments •
December 10, 2007
Category: Science politics
Scientific issues are becoming more and more a staple of American life, which means that they should be becoming more and more included in the questions we ask our Presidential candidates. We want to know what they think about health...
Posted by Jake Young at 3:02 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Medicine
Shelley has an exquisite example of why radiologists no longer do double-takes: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on intestinal obstruction caused by ingestion of a condom filled with alcoholic beverage and its successful transcutaneous...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:44 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Intelligence
If there has been at least one good side-effect of Dr. Watson making a jack-ass of himself, it is that it has given scientists the opportunity to set the record straight about heredity, race, and IQ. (He has since recanted,...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:06 PM • 5 Comments •
December 7, 2007
Category: Haha, a funny
They have oh so many more. Hat-tip: PZ...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:24 PM • 1 Comments •
December 6, 2007
Category: Obesity and Heart Disease
Now that is pretty clear. This is from Miller and Silverstein in Nature Clinical Practice. It is in reference to childhood obesity: There has been much debate about the cause of the current epidemic of obesity. Most experts agree that...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:53 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Violence
I was distressed to wake up this morning to coverage of another shooting, this time in a mall in Omaha. A teenager named Robert Hawkins went into the mall and shot 12 people, killing 8 thus far, and then shot...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:42 AM • 7 Comments •
December 5, 2007
Category: TV
The absence of historical education in this country hurts me here. (points to heart) Exhibit A: The View (see below fold)...
Posted by Jake Young at 2:14 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Haha, a funny
Daniel Drezner in reference to the altered US position towards Iran: Tomorrow in Bizarro world politics -- Dick Cheney buys Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a flower. UPDATE: Quote of the Day, Part 2 from Christopher Preble at Cato@Liberty Were that question to...
Posted by Jake Young at 1:47 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Other People's Work
Sean at Cosmic Variance does Q&A on why time has a direction: Is the origin of the Second Law really cosmological? We never talked about the early universe back when I took thermodynamics. Trust me, it is. Of course you...
Posted by Jake Young at 12:21 PM • 1 Comments •
December 4, 2007
Category: Atheism
This is just lame. Atheist parents in Palo Alto have set up an atheist Sunday school: The Palo Alto Sunday family program uses music, art and discussion to encourage personal expression, intellectual curiosity and collaboration. One Sunday this fall found...
Posted by Jake Young at 3:42 PM • 9 Comments •
December 3, 2007
Category: Neuroscience
Spence et al. wanted to test the use of fMRI for lie detection. In order to do so, they found a subject who had been convicted for child molestation because she has Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. There are two important...
Posted by Jake Young at 11:35 AM • 4 Comments •
