purepedantry
Posts by this author
March 2, 2007
I don't know if you have ever seen this show on Animal Planet -- Meerkat Manor. It is disgustingly cute. It is about a family of meerkats that were followed over several years.
Anyway, I love that show, so lately I have had meerkats on the brain.
Some other researchers are also apparently…
February 27, 2007
A damn-building mammal...get your mind out of the gutter:
Beavers grace New York City's official seal. But the industrious rodents haven't been spotted here for as many as 200 years -- until this week.
Biologists videotaped a beaver swimming up the Bronx River on Wednesday. Its twig-and-mud lodge…
February 27, 2007
Bill Gates, writing in the Washington Post, makes two concrete appeals to help maintain American competitiveness:
Two steps are critical. First, we must demand strong schools so that young Americans enter the workforce with the math, science and problem-solving skills they need to succeed in the…
February 26, 2007
Arrgh. Avast ye dogs. This Encephalon will have a pirate theme -- largely because I am coming off a wicked three day flu extravaganza, and I am still slightly delirious. Be like when the plague took me whole crew. Arrgh.
So enjoy your piracy and brains, say aye.
Ouroboros discusses the…
February 21, 2007
In June, we talked about a new human papiloma virus (HPV) vaccine that was being opposed by a Christian group in Colorado on the grounds that it might promote premarital sex. HPV is a virus that commonly infects the female reproductive tract. It has many strains, and some of those strains confer…
February 21, 2007
Nicholas Genes -- the host of Grand Rounds and an illustrious ER resident at Mount Sinai -- interviews me on Medscape about this blog. Enjoy my shameless self-promotion.
February 21, 2007
I am hosting Encephalon on Monday February, 26th. You can submit to Encephalon by emailing me at jamesjyoung [at] gmail {dot} com, by no later than 7 pm on Sunday night.
Thanks.
February 20, 2007
Hi everyone, and welcome to Grand Rounds, vol. 3 no. 22.
The Oscars are this Sunday, and -- since I know we all look forward to this yearly 4-hour marathon of farcical self-absorption -- this edition of Grand Rounds will be themed according to movies nominated for awards this year.
However, I…
February 19, 2007
A squirrel running around the innards of the plane grounded a Dallas-Tokyo flight:
An American Airlines flight made an unscheduled landing after pilots heard something skittering about in the wire-laden space over the cockpit.
The airline blamed the emergency landing of the Tokyo-Dallas flight…
February 19, 2007
I saw Ghost Rider last night, and I have a brief review:
In this movie, there are many farcical things: demons, irrational property damage from physics-flouting motorcycles, Nicholas Cage's acting, etc. However, the most flagrant absurdity -- the most laughably impossible event -- is when Nicholas…
February 19, 2007
The Man He Killed
by Thomas Hardy
"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
"I shot him dead because --
Because he was my foe,…
February 19, 2007
Just a brief reminder, Grand Rounds will be hosted here tomorrow.
Submit your medicine-related posts to me no later than 7 pm this evening if you would like them to be included.
February 16, 2007
Lazy Middlebury students have lost a valuable resource:
Middlebury College history students are no longer allowed to use Wikipedia in preparing class papers.
The school's history department recently adopted a policy that says it's OK to consult the popular online encyclopedia, but that it can't be…
February 16, 2007
I know that a bunch of other people covered this story, but I managed to find a video of it so I thought I would post it anyway.
Researchers working in Ivory Coast have found remnants of a chimpanzee habitation from over 4,000 years ago, and these remnants include tools that chimps use to break…
February 16, 2007
Dr. Henry Miller, writing in TCS, argues that the FDA has over-reacted to problems with drug safety by excessive regulation:
In spite of increasingly more powerful and precise technologies for drug discovery, purification and production, during the past twenty years development costs have…
February 15, 2007
Not to be catty, but what the hell is up with that hat? Did Britney Spears skin Santa and send him to a furrier?
Hat-tip: WWTDD.
February 15, 2007
In light of the Lisa Nowak love triangle/kidnapping/nutness NASA is re-evaluating how it...well...evaluates astronauts for psychological fitness for space flights.
Part of the problem is one of sex frankly; astronauts are not allowed to have it while on duty.
NASA has been intransigent about…
February 15, 2007
I guess they are really serious:
The organizers of Spain's top annual fashion show on Sunday rejected five out of 69 fashion models as being too thin to appear in this year's event, acting on a decision to bar underweight women from the catwalk.
The show, known as the Pasarela Cibeles, decided in…
February 14, 2007
Restless Legs Syndrome is a neurological disorder, in spite of what you might think from the ridiculous ads on television. RLS is a syndrome where the individual has weird sensations in their legs while they are trying to relax. These sensations can be just unpleasant, or they can be quite…
February 14, 2007
Cathy Young has an interesting column on the tension among libertarians between the desire to be tolerant about other people's lifestyles and personal convictions about those issues:
Within the libertarian milieu, there is a tension between political libertarians, whose chief concern is limiting…
February 13, 2007
Hi everyone.
Grand Rounds is up at Chronic Babe.
Grand Rounds is being hosted here next week on Tuesday. The theme will be Oscars-related, but I won't be giving preference to any particular type of medical piece. Just send me your very best stuff.
To submit, please send me an email with your…
February 13, 2007
I am not really that into online poker; I lack the patience to be truly great at poker.
However, I have several friends that swear by it, and we were all quite annoyed when Congress decided to attach a ban on transfers to online gambling companies in a rider to a port security bill last year.…
February 13, 2007
I'm sorry, but parents like this should be shot:
Helicopter parents -- so named because they hover over their children -- have reached the workplace. The same generation that turned parenting into a competitive sport, prepping 3-year-olds for preschool, then replacing the umbilical cord with a…
February 12, 2007
Harvard Psychologist Steven Pinker was on the Colbert Report. Priceless. Videos under the fold:
Part 1
Part 2
February 12, 2007
Take that PZ, I'm Magneto. What kind of supervillain are you?
Your results:You are Magneto
Magneto
64%
The Joker
63%
Apocalypse
63%
Mr. Freeze
56%
Dr. Doom
55%
Lex Luthor
50%
Riddler
49%
Green Goblin
44%
Venom
42%
Poison Ivy
35%
Kingpin
34%
Dark Phoenix
32%
Mystique
32%
Catwoman
31%…
February 12, 2007
Oh wow.
Oh wow.
This press release is simply astonishing. Maybe it is because it has been a long time -- and as a consequence I have a mind for dirty press releases. Maybe it is just because I quite generally have a dirty mind. However, this is the singularly most amazing press release ever to…
February 12, 2007
In Memory of Sigmund Freud
by W.H. Auden
When there are so many we shall have to mourn,
when grief has been made so public, and exposed
to the critique of a whole epoch
the frailty of our conscience and anguish,
of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
among us, those who were doing…
February 8, 2007
We have been talking about this paper in PNAS around the lab, so I thought I would share.
Hassabis et al, publishing in PNAS, have shown that patients with hippocampal damage lack the ability to imagine novel situations. This is a truly interesting finding, but it isn't why I want to talk about…