I have some bad news for the medical blogosphere. Well, actually Sid Schwab does. Apparently, he's decided to drop out of the blogosphere, at least for now.
Sid's grown enormously as a blogger since he first started hawking his book a couple of years ago in the comments here. He got on my nerves at first, but I quickly took a liking to him and his blog, realizing that his early self-promotion came from his being new to the blogosphere and not realizing that too much of that sort of stuff is generally frowned upon. Now he's a well-respected medical blogger, and definitely one of the best. The evidence is in his Sampler of some of his best posts. He does mention that he might go back into practice. If that happens, his community will only benefit from his surgical expertise.
Fortunately, he may not be gone forever. He leaves open the possibility of coming back. Personally, I hope he does. The blogging bug, once it bites, often won't let go for long. A few months to recharge his batteries, and Sid may well find himself hearing the siren call of the blogosphere, luring him back.
Yeah, excessive self-promotion is so foreign to the blogosphere. We are all self-effacing humble wallflowers. lolz!
Not everyone is like you.
I had actually not realized that it was Sid Schwab who pushed his books in the comments back then. Or if I did, I have forgotten it in the meantime.
It's a pity that Schwab decided to put his blog on the shelve, but some times that's understandable. Given my current workload, I am sometimes considering it as well (for now I've cut down my posting instead)
Oh, after more than three years of this, there are many times when I contemplate taking a hiatus. If my blogging ever starts to interfere with my day job, that's one reason to do it. (Given that I have recently gotten a promotion that is likely to mean more work, a slowdown at least may well be advisable in any case). If it ever interferes with personal relations, that's another.
I am in awe of those of you who can produce cogent posts daily. I doubt I can do that in my own field, and very few people care about the confusion between (for example) peptide cyclizations and hydrolysis reactions. The literature research takes a long time; but, the subject is less complex than medicine, so I can make more concrete statements.
On the, more interesting, subject of medical quackery; even though it has been my hobby for 30 years, I would be hard-put to produce one article per week.
I look forward to whatever you produce.
Thanks, Orac. And I apologize once again for my transgressions back then. But your reprimand was likely one of the impeti for me to start my own blog. So it wasn't all bad, other than being pretty bad.
And it seems a fitting end that I annoy you further by double-posting.
No annoyance at all, except perhaps annoyance to you and other commenters due to ScienceBlogs' irritating and seemingly unfixable tendency to give error messages, leading people to think that their comments didn't go through and that they have to post them again. In that, I think I annoyed you.
Godspeed, and I wouldn't be surprised to see you back in the blogosphere someday.
Sid does have a tendency to take breaks, but nonetheless I keep suregonsblog in my feed reader. There is not structure in the immune system yet found that will permanently suppress the blogging bug.
Trust me, he'll be back.
I hope you're all right that dr Schwab will return.
He seems embarrassed by his 'rants', but I rather like them. He may have a little of the same problem that some of the Sciblings do: readers taking labels to be definitions. "Surgeonsblog" merely means that it's written by a surgeon, not that it's all surgery all the time - or at least it needn't be.
And if you ever decided to stop blogging, I'd probably have a bit of a myocardial infarction...or at least a bit of shocked syncope! Yours was one of the first blogs I started reading when I first became acquainted with the medical blogosphere, and I have been a faithful reader since that time. Dr. Schwab's has also been one of my regular reads, and I've been one of those trying my best to convince him not to give up on blogging entirely. Not asking much, just that he poke his head in every now and again to let us know he's still out there. I've learned many interesting things from BOTH of your blogs, and you both seem to have that "no B.S." stance that's so refreshing in a world where it seems to come at us from all sides, all the time! Science and reason need guys like you to stand up against the woo, after all...