oracknows | August 16, 2006The latest edition of the History Carnival, a blog carnival of writing about--what else?--history has been posted at Mode for Caleb. Enjoy.
While I'm hawking carnivals, I won't forget hawk my own. Be sure to join Interverbal tomorrow for the Skeptics Circle.
oracknows | August 16, 2006Yesterday, on the way home, I was flipping through the AM dial. Yes, as embarrassed as I am to admit it, even now I still occasionally have a soft spot for conservative talk radio. At the risk of being shunned by my fellow ScienceBloggers (most of whom are--shall we say?--a bit to the left) and driving away half my traffic, I will even admit to having listened regularly to Rush Limbaugh for a period of several years back when I was in the lab fulltime. Say whatever you will about his views (which have tended to become more odious over the years), he was (and sometimes still is) a powerful and…
oracknows | August 15, 2006Mentioned in the comments on this post was this story:
MIAMI (Reuters) - The man who made the Statue of Liberty appear to vanish may soon claim to do the same for unsightly bags and wrinkles.
Master illusionist David Copperfield says he has found the "Fountain of Youth" in the southern Bahamas, amid a cluster of four tiny islands he recently bought for $50 million (26.4 million pounds).
One of his islands in the Exuma chain, Musha Cay, is a private resort that rents for up to $300,000 a week and the other islands serve as buffers to keep prying eyes away from celebrity guests on the white…
oracknows | August 15, 2006Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 46 has been posted at Hospital Impact, this time in the form of a letter to a new son.
oracknows | August 15, 2006Damn you PZ!
(Heh, I haven't gotten to say that since he shamed my profession by showing us an example of a certifiably loony young earth creationist physician running for Lt. Governor of South Carolina.)
This time around, I'm annoyed at PZ for pointing me in the direction of an article so absurd, so ridiculous, so full of postmodernistic appeals to other ways of knowing with respect to science that at first I thought that it had to be a parody of postmodernism in the form of, as PZ put it, suggesting that Foucault or Derrida should have as much value treating your cancer as evidence-based…
oracknows | August 14, 2006Skeptics! (And those who value critical thinking and science.)
Don't forget, the next edition of the Skeptics' Circle is scheduled to be posted this Thursday, August 17 at Interverbal. If you're a blogger interested in critical thinking and rationality and have written a post that would do The Amazing Randi proud that you'd like to expose to a wider audience, send it to Interverbal before Wednesday night. Instructions are here.
Then join us on Thursday for the usual assortment of the best skeptical blogging out there.
oracknows | August 14, 2006Here's a feature I've been meaning to start almost since I started this blog, a series along the line of Dr. Bard Parker's Tales of the Trauma Service. Oddly enough, it only took me over a year and a half to get around to writing the first entry, for reasons that, quite frankly, I don't know. It just sort of got away from me. (And, believe it or not, there is at least one more series idea I've had floating around just as long.) It's not scientific, but it is medical, and in particular surgical.
I don't recall if I have mentioned this before on the blog, but for about two and a half years when…
oracknows | August 13, 2006Pediatric Grand Rounds vol. 1, no. 9 has been posted at Unintelligent Design. This time it's in the form of a test. Do you think you're ready for...the Pediatric Grand Rounds Review and Education Program (PGRREP)?
oracknows | August 13, 2006Four words: Star Trek inspirational posters.
These are just freakin' hilarious, especially if you love the old series as much as I do.
An example:
Via Bad Astronomy Blog.
oracknows | August 13, 2006From an actual personal ad:
Gorgeous blonde model, tired of being patronized. Looking for sincere, understanding man. Must be willing to listen to stories of alien abduction.
(Source: The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said Calendar 2004)
Would anyone out there answer this ad?
oracknows | August 13, 2006Bora beat me to this one (which is what I get for not posting about it yesterday morning when I first saw the story), but some holy water is coming out of a tree in San Antonio, and why has not yet been solved:
SAN ANTONIO (Aug. 12) - Is it an artesian spring, a broken water pipe or an abandoned well? Lucille Pope's red oak tree has gurgled water for about three months, and experts can't seem to get to the root of the problem.
Pope, 65, has sought answers from the Texas Forest Service, the Edwards Aquifer Authority and nurseries. They have taken pictures and conducted studies, but none have…
oracknows | August 12, 2006After my experience with using (or, as at least one of my readers has suggested, misusing) my blog to get an article to which my university does not provide online access, it occurred to me just how much our means of accessing the scientific literature has changed in the last decade and just how radical those changes have been. Again, those who are old farts with me may remember that a little more than 10 years ago at the institution where I did my residency, we could do electronic searches of the Medline database, but it wasn't over the Internet. Basically, the library bought access to…
oracknows | August 12, 2006Thanks to those who sent me a copy of the article I requested. Sadly, the library at my university has some rather large holes in its online collection. Even some fairly common journals are not represented. I'll have to read it this weekend. You'll all get personal e-mails from me later today, after I finish rounding on our service.
As for finding the paper online at the author's website, personally, I find that to be a very uncommon situation, although I have had some luck in the past e-mailing corresponding authors. This is much the same as in the old days, when we old geezers would…
oracknows | August 11, 2006Here's a humble request of my readers. I'm looking for an article in a journal to which my university library does not offer online access. I'm interested in reading it, but not so interested that I'm wililng to pay the $40 to download it. If necessary, I can get it via interlibrary loan, but they'll just send me a poorly photocopied hard copy, possibly even a FAX. The article on evolution and cancer; so you can see why I might be interested. This is the article:
B. J. Crespi and Summers, K. Positive selection in the evolution of cancer. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 81(3):407-24 (2006).
Would…
oracknows | August 11, 2006I haven't done this in a while; so now seems as good a time as any. I fired up iTunes and let 'er rip on "Shuffle Play," and this is what came up:
Woody Guthrie, Talking Dust Bowl Blues (from: Dust Bowl Ballads)
David Bowie, Lady Stardust (from: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars)
The Sisters of Mercy, 1969 (from: Enter The Sisters)
The Mamas & The Papas, California Dreamin' (from: Greatest Hits)
The Stooges, Little Doll (from: The Stooges)
Do Make Say Think, Bruce E Kinesis (from: Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead)
The Animals, Monterey (from:…
oracknows | August 11, 2006It's time for a change of pace on Your Friday Dose of Woo.
I'm getting the feeling that you my readers may have gotten tired of the theme I've been doing the last three weeks. I can relate somewhat but I think it served a purpose (other than giving me free rein to indulge in a lot of bathroom humor, that is). First, I subjected you to a rather disgusting foray into the bowels (if you'll excuse the term) of colon cleansing, complete with links to some truly disgusting websites where people not only enthusiastically discuss their poop, but take pictures and post them on the web. Next, I moved…
oracknows | August 10, 2006The latest Change of Shift, the blog carnival for nursing, has been posted at It's a nursing thing.
oracknows | August 10, 2006Deep within Yankee Stadium, a timeless evil had arrived (well, an evil around 61 years old, anyway--well, 117 years old if you count its entire existence) shambling through the dark service corridors and halls, on a never-ending quest to satisfy its unquenchable hunger. Why it had come to this place, it did not know. Perhaps it was drawn by the eminations of pure baseball evil that routinely flowed from the so-called House That Ruth Built. Maybe it was because this place was a an icon of its hated enemy from a previous life, representing the national pastime favored by that enemy and…
oracknows | August 9, 2006I got this in my e-mail the other day that may be of interest to folks interested in countering the pseudoscience of "intelligent design" creationism:
I would like to announce the birth of CommentsOnID, a Pile-blog and ask for support.
A Pile-blog is a blog intended to offer unmoderated comments and trackbacks space, related to blogposts from blogs where moderation/censure or even absence of comments and trackbacks is the rule.
This particular Pile-blog concerns pro-ID blogs/blogposts. It was setup to circumvent the censorship practiced at the time by Dembski and DaveScot and now by Denyse O'…
oracknows | August 9, 2006I got this request the other day and finally decided to take the survey that it asked me to. It was relatively painless and it might gather useful information (although obviously it's not a scientific survey); so I thought I'd help publicize it. If you're a health care/ medical blogger, this survey is looking for you.
This poll is co-produced by Envision Solutions and The Medical Blog Network (TMBN).
WHY WE ARE CONDUCTING THIS SURVEY
Over the past few years, the healthcare blogosphere has grown in size and importance. This means that more people are blogging about medical issues, healthcare…