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March 3, 2008
Hoisted href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/02/clear_think_about_the_overmedi.php#comment-768312">from the comments: I find it particularly alarming that children are prescribed some of these drugs. How much is truly known about how various psychiatric drugs affect the…
March 2, 2008
Generally, no.  But some can.  Some are rather good at it.  A contest was reported in Science Magazine: The rules were simple: Using no words or images, interpret your Ph.D. thesis in dance form. Entrants were divided into three categories—graduate student, postdoc, and professor—and the prize for…
March 2, 2008
One of the darker chapters in the history of the title="American Medical Association">AMA is their historical opposition to universal, single-payer health care coverage.  The term socialized medicine came into use in the post-World-War-II period, in an attempt to falsely conflate such a health…
February 28, 2008
Judith Warner has some insightful essays in the NYT column, pertaining to the long-raging question about whether psychiatric patients are style="font-style: italic;">overmedicated or style="font-style: italic;">undermedicated. One of the essays addresses the question directly: style…
February 28, 2008
I noticed this photo on Flickr... style="width: 375px; height: 500px;" class="inset" alt="click for original" title="click for original" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2281/2289722392_4203b644c1.jpg?v=0" border="0" height="500" width="375"> A smile is always worth something.
February 25, 2008
A fellow blogger, Logtar,  href="http://blog.logtar.com/2008/02/18/bodies-revealed-boycott/">tipped me off to a controversy, and asked if I had anything to say about it.  The controversy has come about over an exhibit: rel="tag" href="http://www.bodiesrevealed.com/index-home.html">Bodies…
February 23, 2008
Sigmund Freud was right about a lot of things, but he also was wrong about a lot of things.  For example, he thought that there were only two fundamental motivations: sex and aggression.  Bloggers know better, as this xkcd panel illustrates... href="http://xkcd.com/386/"> (I know href="…
February 19, 2008
The FDA has been making a strenuous effort to combat the problem of href="http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2005/405_confusion.html"> look-alike, sound-alike drug names.  The reason is simple: there have been tens of thousands of documented medication errors, in which the wrong drug is…
February 18, 2008
Do cell phones decrease male fertility?  Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic think so.  According to href="http://www.clevelandclinic.org/reproductiveresearchcenter/staff/agarwala.html">Ashok Agarwal, et. al., greater use of cell phones is associated with decreased sprem count.  Other factors,…
February 17, 2008
The US Food and Drug Administration is a weird chimera: it contains some elements of rule-bound regulatory hell, and some elements of laissez-faire libertarianism.  On the libertarian side, they allow physicians to prescribe any drug that they have approved, even if was not approved for the use for…
February 11, 2008
I noticed while writing this, that the word style="font-style: italic;">numb, if modified by adding the suffix -er, becomes an entirely different word.   style="font-style: italic;">Number does not convey the meaning of more numb. According to Answers.com, number is a adjective, with the…
February 10, 2008
...You are trying to run a country.  What would you like to do? href="http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/02/overwhelmed-at-work.html"> This must be old, before Powell joined the torrent of acceptably competent persons leaving the Administration, and before MS Office 2007.  It is still…
February 7, 2008
Zyprexa Adhera is a new formulation of href="http://zyprexa.com/index.jsp">Eli LIlly's antipsychotic medication, href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/medmaster/a601213.html">olanzapine.  It contains the same active ingredient as the pills, but it is a long-acting injection.  …
February 4, 2008
I haven't been posting much.  I have been trying to figure out why.  Probably it is because all I want to say is that Bush is an idiot, and I guess I have said that already.  More than once.   But this latest gig is a particularly egregious case.  I would like to comment upon the situation,…
February 3, 2008
This absolutely blows my mind.  Evidently, it is OK to drop cluster bombs on municipal areas.  But show your derrière, and you're off the job. href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080203/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictisraelmilitary">Israeli soldiers suspended for mooning Palestinians…
January 28, 2008
There are no cash rewards, and no instant fame.  But I have looked at a great many "best photo" series, and this is the most enjoyable.  Why?  Because every single one of the photos is in the public domain. It's the href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bild_des_Jahres/2007">…
January 27, 2008
Several days ago, I saw href="http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2008/01/expensive-wine.html">an article about some research on the relationship between the price of wine, the subjective experience of taste, and the effect of wine on brain function as assessed by title="…
January 25, 2008
Usually I cringe when I see yet another newspaper article about suicide.  But I always read them.  This time, I did cringe, but needlessly.  The article turned out to be OK. href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/washington/24fda.html?ei=5090&en=69952ee3ab69a7b3&ex=1358917200&…
January 21, 2008
Deputy Dog has a post detailing " href="http://deputy-dog.com/2008/01/04/5-unbelievably-cool-research-facilities/">5 unbelievably cool research facilities."  The one shown here is the Z Machine, at the Sandia National Lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  (Sandia Labs have more than one location…
January 20, 2008
Usually when we think of href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_medical_record">electronic medical records (EMR) as being three-dimensional, we think of the relational aspect of databases.  Researchers at IBM, however, are testing a different concept. The idea is to have a rendered…
January 14, 2008
href="http://www.researchblogging.org/"> alt="Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research" src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_gray.png" height="50" width="80">Sounds too good to be true.  Perhaps it is.  For one, there is only one published case.  For another, it…
January 14, 2008
In the great role-playing game of life, I did not get very many audiophile points.  I mean, fine machinery is something I can appreciate, but I'm pretty indifferent to the sounds those machines make.   So it strikes me as remarkable that anyone would make, much less buy, a $300,000 turntable…
January 9, 2008
The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Baze v. Rees ( href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010700618.html">WaPo, href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/washington/07cnd-scotus.html">NYT).  This is a case about a guy who killed a sheriff and a…
January 8, 2008
Previously, I posted a photo of href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/07/noctilucent_clouds.php">noctilucent clouds, as seen from earth.  Now, NASA's Earth Observatory Newsroom presents us with href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17883"…
January 7, 2008
Several of the candidates have been found to have made egregious misstatements in the href="http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/05/nh.debates/?iref=mpstoryview">New Hampshire debates.  FactCheck.org, the organization made famous by Dick Cheney when he href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
January 6, 2008
Keith Olbermann Special Commentary on Bush Lies Ron Paul was href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01042008/watch2.html">interviewed by Bill Moyers last Friday (1/4/2008).  Paul Responded to Moyers' observation that the media have been complicit in keeping the War out of the public eye…
January 6, 2008
I know I've been a bit lax with this blog lately, but just in case anyone still cares, and has a mobile device (such as a Palm Pilot, smart phone, etc.) you now can get the RSS feed for Corpus Callosum on your device.  You have to use the href="http://www.avantgo.com/">AvantGo service.   If…
January 5, 2008
There are only two interesting things about what happened in the Iowa caucuses.  One, the turnout for Democrats was much higher than the turnout for Republicans.  Voter turnout is everything in US elections.  It will continue to be the single most important factor, until we adopt a civilized form…
January 5, 2008
Instantly!  This product gives you an immediate Save!  It's like getting a thousand gold coins in Super Mario Brothers all at once! Doubters say it works via the placebo effect, but why not try it, if it could give you eternal life? (source)
January 2, 2008
This photograph expresses my hopes for the new year: href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/" title="Click this link to find out details of the Creative Commons license associated with this image."> src="http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif" alt="…