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On the Trail of Physiology: Tennessee

The Tennessee Physiological Society held their annual meeting October 13-14 at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) in Johnson City, Tennessee. The meeting opened with a seminar by Dr. David L. Williams from the Department of Surgery at Quillen College of Medicine, ETSU. He spoke about how the macrophage scavenger receptor A, previously thought of as just as cholesterol receptor, has now been found to play important roles in the response to septic shock, normal immune responses, oxidative stress and ischemia/reperfusion injuries. Dr. William's research focus is on the pathology of sepsis.…

Ele-Comm: Short for Elephant Communication

Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell is a Stanford University professor whose research focuses on how elephant vocalizations travel through the ground for great distances, and how other elephants can understand them, just as they understand acoustic sound, which travels through the air. O'Connell-Rodwell is the author of The Elephant's Secret Sense. You can see videos of some of the elephant communication experiments she describes in the podcast on her Utopia Scientific site. The links to the videos are on this page. Early in her research, O'Connell-Rodwell noticed behavior that indicates elephants…

The fine print and grading on the curve

I was reading the July 2009 Consumer Reports (as usual, I'm about a month behind on magazines) and reached a set of ratings for chain restaurants. Read the commentary and the neat little sidebar where trained tasters compared oversized New York strip steaks at Morton's with slightly less oversized New York strip steaks at Outback, Applebee's and Friday's. (Conclusion: The steak's best at Morton's--duh--but Outback's probably the best value.) But then got to the actual ratings--and noted a lot of chains with black dots (the worst rating) for taste, some also for service, mood and choice. And…

Baby Love

I'm a firm believer in the idea that the world can be broken up into two kinds of people: Those who purchase motivational posters festooned with baby animals and those who laugh at them. I've always placed myself firmly in the latter category. Does this make me a misanthropic killjoy? Maybe. But I'm willing to live with that, which is why I find it so odd that I've become completely and utterly addicted to Cute Overload. Given that the site won this year's Best American Weblog Award, I'm guessing you've heard of it. But perhaps, you (unlike me) have better things to do with your time than…

Blogging and disaster response

There are plenty of bloggers who consider themselves to be serving a larger social purpose. How much of a service they actually provide depends very much on your own ideology. I'm sure RedState thinks they are providing vital, timely political analysis, while I think they're a waste of bandwidth. Similarly, there are countless quacks offering all sorts of bad medical advice (in fact, one of Pal's Laws is that the internet is 90% porn and 10% bad medical advice). Some of this bad medical advice serves an active "anti-public health" purpose, discouraging vaccination or claiming that the…

Recursive nonsense on health care

People who support our current abominable health care system like to cite Canada's supposed failures as an example of what could happen to us. The argument is a non-starter---it's a straw man designed to scare people. We are a very different country, with a different economy and different needs. Even with a single-payer system, we are unlikely to have the exact same successes and failures as the Canadians. Still, the Right has latched on to any lie they can to try to scare us. That's why a recent article from my hometown newspaper is so upsetting. Any of us who have practiced medicine…

How do you say it?

On July 4th at 5 a.m., I'm loading the family into the car and driving very far away, where cellphones, pagers, and most critically the internet, do not work. Blogging has been very hard for me lately. I love writing, but due to work and family mishegos it's been hard to keep up with the posting. I'm hoping a stint up in the woods providing medical supervision to 400 souls will be rejuvenating. While I'm gone, I'll leave you with some of my favorite posts about the human side of medicine. I hope you enjoy reading them again, or for the first time. --PalMD I am often the bearer of bad…

Overheard---evidence is for suckers

Overheard from the 210th annual emergency meeting of the Society for Evidence-Free Healing. Chair: The meeting will come to order. Some Dude: Seconded. Chair: Um, I'm the Chair. I don't need a "second". Some Other Dude: That sounds like an oppressive application of the dominant paradigm. Chair: Fine, fine. Would anyone object coming to order? No? Thank you very much. While it may seem to many of you that we have made great strides in having our ancient, holistic healing methods given an official stamp of approval (and perhaps Medicare reimbursement) we have some very troubling…

Do fake autism activists have souls?

I don't know what it's like to be autistic. I don't know what it's like to raise an autistic child. For this knowledge, I have to rely on others, and there are plenty of talented bloggers out there who write about these experiences all the time. What I do know is that there is a cadre of autism "activists" out there who do a great disservice to people who do know something about these experiences. One such example is Dr. Jerry Kartzinel, who co-wrote Jenny McCarthy's latest monument to her own idiocy. "Dr. Jerry" is infamous among many parents of autistic children for this quote: Autism,…

Flitting hither and yon with PZ

You may be wondering where I've been. It's been a busy couple of days, and the next few weeks look even busier. The full itinerary is below the fold. I flew into New York on Monday, and attended a book party for Chris Mooney (he was handing out copies of his book like popcorn), hosted by Adam Bly, who also presided over the next day's event. On Tuesday, I was at the Inspiration Festival, which I'm sorry to say I later learned was a fairly pricey event to get into—it was part of a series of advertising week events going on around the city. If you tried to show up and weren't let in without…

Matt Ridley responds with a “sleight of hand”

Matt Ridley’s first response to my post about his failed prediction was denial: I did not write for the Globe and Mail in 1993 let alone about climate! Then he moved onto stage 3, bargaining: global av temp (ignoring pinatubo drop) is about 0.2C above 1991 level after 22 yrs - so I was spot on so far! As you can see, the graph he cites shows 0.5 degrees of warming since he made his prediction, so it seems that he is applying a 0.3 degree correction for Pinatubo.   Which brings us to Ridley’s next column, published in The Sunday Telegraph on 30 Jan 1994 (one month after his column with the…

A Review of Peer Review

I was alerted to the fact that strange things are happening at Nature Magazine. From the Nature website: Peer review is the bedrock of scientific publication (for Nature's position on peer review, see our Guide to Authors). It is widely considered essential for improving submitted papers and enhancing the credentials of scientists as well as those of the journals in which they choose to publish. But, like any process, peer review requires occasional scrutiny and assessement. Has the Internet bought new opportunities for journals to manage peer review more imaginatively or by different means…

The Three Types of Experiments

I'm not sure about the history of "the three types of experiments" (3tes), but they are referred to quite often in the labs I've been in. So what exactly are they? Here goes ... Type A Experiment: every possible result is informative. Type B Experiment: some possible results are informative, other results are uninformative. Type C Experiment: every possible result is uninformative. There is even a little saying that accompanies this ... The goal is to maximize type A and minimize type C. There are some that even name the 3tes 1 through 3 instead of A, B and C. I have a few comments about the…

Hybrid Ships...R/V Prius?

The Blue Economy has started a list of hybrid sea going vessels. With with research institutes and industry starting to feel the crunch there seems to at least something other than apathy for the issue. The list is below the fold. The African Cats hybrid Fast Cat 435 Vector K: The vessel combines a lithium-ion battery or an absorbed lead-acid glass mat battery with newly designed lightweight brushless electric motors that recharge while sailing. The version weighs less and sails faster mainly due to the lack of diesel engine. LEDs replace all external and internal lighting. The best…

New and Reinvented?

Rick points out that Planktos is back. Planktos is one of those groups who wanted to fertilize the oceans with iron to sequester C02 out of the atmosphere. Both Rick and I were skeptical. Of course we weren't the only ones. This group feels it is premature to sell carbon offsets from the first generation of commercial-scale OIF experiments unless there is better demonstration that OIF effectively removes CO2, retains that carbon in the ocean for a quantifiable amount of time, and has acceptable and predictable environmental impacts. As with any human manipulation of the environment, OIF…

More bubblin crude

Unlike people in the glamour states of Florida and California, folks here in Texas don't mind a little offshore oil development. We view the petroleum industry as two parts necessary evil and one part benevolent overlord. And, we feel this way for free. We don't get paid off like the lucky folks in Alaska. Our complacency is almost a kind of nostalgia. You might say Big Oil has it pretty easy here in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2001 there were 46 deep water rigs operating in the Gulf and the mood was one of cautious optimism. Now, thanks to escalating oil prices, the mood is more like a rich man'…

I Choose Sharks Over Cigarettes

People are freaking out about the recent outbreak of shark attacks. This recent massive increase in shark attacks has media outlets claiming that a shark is "seeking human targets", "sharks are hunting humans", and maybe even developing a taste for human fish. O' my god grab the children and run for the hills! Maybe it was just a matter of time before sharks went on the hunt as a matter of retribution. So how many shark attacks have there been in Mexico in the last month? 3 Sharks have attacked three surfers in less than a month, two fatally, near the southwestern resort of Ixtapa-…

Climate Induced Collapse of Deep-Sea Ecosystems

Beginning with Victorian science and progressing through the onset of modern deep-sea biology, the dominant paradigm was that the deep sea was a stable ecosystem. Organisms, and the communities that contained them, were unchanging because the deep ocean was buffered against climatic variability. Move head to the 1980's and beyond and the picture has changed considerably. Work led by John Gage, Paul Tyler, Craig Young demonstrates that many species exhibit seasonal reproduction. Work by Ken Smith and Henry Ruhl here at MBARI reveals an ecosystem where biodiversity shifts are triggered by…

Casey Luskin "channels" Dr. Evil "again."

So I dusted off the Pitiful and Laughable Intelligent Design Creationist Dissemblers links today and found a classic Luskinism in which Casey takes Nature to task for its brown-shirted propaganda campaign to defend evolution at all costs (scroll down to sidebar for link). Excerpted from Luskin's article: In his acclaimed book Evolution: The History of an Idea, the respected historian of evolution Peter J. Bowler explains that the journal Nature was originally founded in the late nineteenth century by T. H. Huxley and others for the express purpose of promoting a "campaign" to support…

The Sound (and Cost) of Worship

Audio is where I spend much of my time, both professionally and as a hobby. In fact, quite a few years ago I used to design public address systems and components (most notably loudspeaker systems and subwoofers). That venture didn't last too long because I discovered that many people just didn't care that much about high quality audio and weren't willing to pay for it. If only I had been born 20 years later. One of the pro sound magazines I receive is Pro Audio Review. Lots of material on new equipment, studio redesigns, and stuff like that. They have a column entitled "Worship Audio" which…

What's Up With The Bombeck Insults?

Last time I checked, Erma Bombeck, when she was alive, was a hugely popular American humorist who wrote a newspaper column and published 15 books, most of which were best sellers. She came from the working class, and made quite a successful career for herself in publishing, at a time when women normally did not have careers. But apparently, since she wrote about housewives and domestic issues, there's nothing to admire about what she did. And if you want to mock a woman writer these days, why, you just link her to Erma Bombeck and call it at day. See: "Erma-Bombeckian" (Steven Pinker…

Links for 3-10-2009

I found Light-skinned-ed Girl via Acmegirl's blogroll. Lots of good stuff about the process of writing, quotes from writers, and the experience of being biracial. I like her idea about the Oscars for books. That is an awards ceremony I would definitely watch! Black on Campus has a post about Lisa Jackson, chemical engineer, and head of the EPA, with links to several articles about her. Also check out the post on (Not So) Affirmative Action, wherein names are named of the selective admissions schools who admit Black students at a lower rate than other students. You don't hear the likes of…

Gov. Beshear has been twittered

We have at least a cursory account of the creationist press conference in Kentucky, in which Governor Beshear proudly announced the state's cooperation with Answers in Genesis in promoting lies to children. It's via Twitter, so just read it from bottom to top: joesonka Video of the press conference (Kentucky's Shame) coming soon. Yaba Daba doo! 31 minutes ago joesonka Press conference over. Kentucky has had many humiliating days in its history, but this has to rank near the top 32 minutes ago joesonka I ask if Beshear supports young earth creationism being taught in public schools…

Why is Small still at large at the Smithsonian?

Set aside, for the moment, Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small's conviction for violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Set aside, too, that he petitioned the judge to allow him to perform his 100 hours of community service by reading about that law and the Endangered Species Act, and coming up with ways to change those laws. Set aside, too, the fact that Small has presided over a Smithsonian which is falling behind in critical maintenance, with reports of severe roof leaks in the collections. Set aside the institution's wrongheaded almost-endorsement of Privileged Planet, a creationist…

Sounds like an endorsement

Today's editorial from The Parsons Sun: The race is on Voters can tell when there's a real race by the big guns that come out, and we in the 2nd Congressional District have a real race. Challenger Nancy Boyda is taking another run at Congressman Jim Ryun, and the one-time Republican has Ryun searching for help. The proof is in an invitation to a Ryun fundraiser, and the big gun is Vice President Dick Cheney. The whole point of the effort is to help Ryun rake in the dough so he can outspend Boyda, which should be interpreted as buying his seat in Washington for another two years. The price to…

DI figures it out

Reposted from the old TfK. The DI figured out how a typo gets into print: [Times reporter Bumiller] apologized for the error saying it was "nothing more than a mistake madie in haste" and has assured us that the Times will run a correction in the print edition tomorrow. In explanation she indicated that she'd taken notes very quickly in shorthand and later under deadline pressure from editors inadvertently substituted "biblical" for "biological." Whether it's a Freudian slip or not it is likely to be a comment that grows into an urban myth. So, it is with relief that we see the reporter and…

How were you taught about evolution?

In a week I'll be headed back into the dusty, faded-pastel halls of higher learning for the fall semester, and given that I expect many of you will be doing the same I thought I would open up a thread about evolution education. As I have said multiple times, just because creationism isn't being taught doesn't mean that students are receiving a firm grounding in evolutionary biology. In my own experience, during high school evolution was a quick sub-unit that was paired with population genetics toward the end of the spring. Even in college courses I attended, evolution was relegated to the…

Speculation overload = hed asplode

I didn't get a chance to see last night's Jurassic Fight Club (you can see my thoughts on the first episode here) but someone has put the "main event" up on the web. I don't know whether to laugh or cry; I know I promised to try to be more even-handed in reviewing science media but there are some real howlers in that clip. First is that it has yet to be conclusively established that Nanotyrannus was an actual distinct genus of tyrannosaurid; the fossils attributed to the "pygmy tyrant" may just be young Tyrannosaurus. The debate is ongoing, and I hope that this point was made in the show.…

A few words about the cats

As some of you know, I take in an extra cat that needs a foster home from time to time, rotating them out as they are adopted or go to the pet store so people can see them. Here's a quick run-down of how the cats my wife and I have fostered (each in turn) have been doing; Beatrice: Bea was the first cat my wife and I took in last year, and she still hasn't found a home. She's been back and forth to a few places, but it's been difficult finding her a home. She's happy here for now, although she'll probably go back to the adoption center soon in the hopes that someone will find her charming…

Photo of the Day #127: Thalassomedon haningtoni

Before I knew very much at all about ancient marine reptiles, I had only encountered two names for the long-necked plesiosaurs (Plesiosaurus & Elasmosaurus) and had assumed that the incredibly long skeleton hanging from the 4th floor ceiling of the AMNH was a representative of the latter. I wasn't right, but I wasn't far off; it was a skeleton of Thalassomedon haningtoni, and elasmosaurid and close relative of Elasmosaurus. While not scientifically accurate, today's photo reminded me of Will Cuppy's sketch of "The Plesiosaur" collected in How to Become Extinct (just remember that this is…

Cooking on the Fly: my lime chicken & shrimp recipe

As I promised the other day, here's the instructions for how to make one of my favorite meals, lime chicken & shrimp. It's just about the only thing that I can make that tastes halfway decent, although I unfortunately have no written down the exact proportion so if you try this it'll have to be on the fly (at the same time, though, it's hard to get wrong). Here's what you'll need to make it for at least two people; Chicken (boneless breasts are best) Peeled & cleaned shrimp (as many as desired) Olive oil 10-15 limes or a bottle of non-concentrated lime juice Basil Oregano…

Wolfram Alpha Widgets

Try to say that 5 times really fast. Go ahead, try it. Well, at least it is not as difficult as Fox in Socks - man that book is a killer. This WAW is basically a means to embed Wolfram Alpha queries into a webpage. Pretty cool idea, but I am not sure how well it does the job. In fact, I have tried to embed calculations in my posts before. So, how about I just give a quick review of some different ways to do this. For all these methods, I will put in a calculator to determine the density of something given its mass and volume. Javascript version Density calculator Enter the mass: kg…

On the 8th Day, God made Pi

Pi day is March 14th - get it? (3.14) I am a big fan of Pi. Here is my first post to celebrate the awesomeness of Pi (I know this is early, but I was too excited to wait). How can you determine Pi? Oh sure, tons of high schools do the classic experiment. Measure the circumference and diameter of as many round things as possible. Plot diameter vs. circumference. The slope will be Pi. Really, this is a great lab to do for all sorts of ages. The key thing is that students can see what Pi really means. I am not going to talk about this lab, I am going to do some thing cooler. What if I…

When to not use a camera flash

Check out this picture. These camera flashes are just awesome (well, they look awesome). They are not a very useful thing for pictures in this case. Here is the problem. Well, first here is what the flash on a camera is supposed to do. Suppose there is a camera and a ball in a dark room. In order to get light to reflect off the ball and be detected by the camera, you need light. The flash is that light. You can think of it like a flashlight that is only on for a moment. It doesn't need to be on for long since it doesn't take very much time to get an image. Notice that I drew red…

Circular Motion Lab

Sometimes it is difficult to come up with new labs. Ideally, a lab should show use some of the basic physics principles as well as have something the students can measure. What to do with circular motion? I don't know how I forgot this, but here is a lab I used to do as an undergraduate student. I also like it because it doesn't really need fancy stuff like PASCO probes or anything. The basic idea is that a small mass is swung around in a circle with the tension in the string controlled by hanging a mass on the other end. Here, let me show you. Circular Motion Lab from Rhett Allain on…

Student Letters from the Future

I wrote two letters (for two different classes). These are letters from the students of the near future to themselves in the present. this first one is for a non-majors lab. In this lab, I let them turn in "informal" lab reports that they can then use on the midterm and the final exam. The thing is that a lot of students don't even turn this in. Here is the letter: Dear Past Me, How are you? I know how you are because I am you and I remember this day. Really, you should be asking how I am. I am not doing so well. I just took the midterm for the physics lab and it didn't go too well.…

Shorter conservative take on Obama's response to the imminent financial collapse

I don't know, but I suspect that Republicans think we Obama-voters are thinking this about the collapse of AIG and Lehman brothers: I can't wait until President-for-life Hussein Obama X puts these people all up against the wall and expropriates their funds to pay for slave reparations. As Atrios explains, we're heading towards a drastic financial situation. John McCain's response to the imminent collapse of the 18th largest corporation in the world is to claim that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Obama knows that they aren't and haven't been for some time now. George Bush…

Palin-genesis: Too extreme for (Cindy) McCain

In an interview with CBS News, Cindy McCain lights into Sarah Palin: "We differ on many issues; we differ with, across the board with people. We don't have to agree on every issue," the Arizona senator's wife said. …CBS anchor Katie Couric asked if she supports an outright ban on abortion including in cases of rape and incest, she said no. "No? So that's where you two differ," Couric asked. "Uh-huh," McCain replied. "What I agree with is the fact that she is a social conservative," McCain said. No one disagrees that she's a social conservative. Indeed, her views are so far into the…

Autism, vaccines, and the candidates

Hilzoy compares three candidate comments on the alleged autism/vaccine link: Last month I wrote about John McCain's statement claimed that there is "strong evidence" that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. I expect better from Democrats, and while saying that we don't know whether vaccines cause autism is better than saying that they do (or did, while thimerosal was still used), it's not better enough. And both Democratic candidates have said this. Obama: "We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The…

Attention DI: Skepticism != Dissent

Mike has some astute observations about the Disco. Inst.'s Dissent from Darwinism List. Noting that Rob Crowther claims: Signers of the Dissent List have signed the list because it is their professional opinion that the evidence is lacking for the claims for the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Period. Nothing more, and nothing less. Mike proceeds to point out that most of the signers have no professional basis for such an assessment. This is a fair and important point, but it misses an even fairer and more important point: the barrier…

Science = bad

As French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde tells the National Assembly and the French people "Enough thinking, already," and calling on them to work harder, not smarter, we find the American anti-intellectual party warming up. Mitt Romney told a crowd: Senator Obama is wrong if he thinks science-based sex education has any place in kindergarten. Rick Perlstein comments: He's referring to a quote from Obama: "'But it's the right thing to do, to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools.'" But note how Romney is careful to repeat the phrase "science-based…

Bookshelves and the Demarcation Problem

As the author of a book that's equally divided between descriptions of neuroscience and descriptions of art, I've spent far too much time pondering the organization of book stores. How should books be classified? Is my book a "science" book, or does it belong in the neglected "Criticism and Essays" section? Personally, I've always been drawn to the books that elude neat categorization. For example, one of my weirder hobbies is checking to see where bookstores put William James. I've seen him shelved in any number of sections, from "Science" to "Philosophy" to "Essays" to "Mysticism". Which…

Autism and Neurodiversity

It's a gripping video, a youtube window into the autistic mind: And now Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the telegenic brain surgeon on CNN, has spent time with Amanda, the "low-functioning" autistic woman produced and starred in the video: She taught me a lot over the day that I spent with her. She told me that looking into someone's eyes felt threatening, which is why she looked at me through the corner of her eye. Amanda also told me that, like many people with autism, she wanted to interact with the entire world around her. While she could read Homer, she also wanted to rub the papers across her face…

When Healthy Kids Think They Are Sick

I had a happy and healthy American childhood, but perhaps I was an exception. According to a new report by UNICEF on children in developed countries, the US and UK rank last and second to last in the "well-being" of their children. (The Netherlands and Sweden were first and second.) The report looked at a variety of factors, from rates of teen pregnancy to infant mortality to poverty. But perhaps the most convincing evidence, at least for some observers, was the fact that American and British children are most likely to describe their own health as "fair" or "poor". In other words, kids in…

Milgram and Prisoner Abuse

This is the Milgram experiment come to life. Eric Fair was a civilian interrogater in Iraq, working for the 82nd Airborne. The Washington Post published his op-ed today: The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him. Despite my best efforts, I cannot…

Harvard Goes Practical

It's only fitting that Harvard, the birthplace of pragmatism, is trying to reform its pedagogy by making learning more practical and "active". Here's the Boston Globe: In his 2006 book, "Our Underachieving Colleges," Bok cited a study that found that students remembered only 42 percent of what they heard in a lecture by the end of the lecture and only 20 percent a week later. He argued that students learn far more when they are actively engaged in activities related to the course. As an illustration of how to make learning more active, students in an art course might meet with performers or…

The Cultural Self (East vs. West)

What is the neural correlate of the self? The easy answer is that nobody knows. We have yet to discover a neurological patient who has lost their sense of identity, but still retained their conscious sensations. Nevertheless, certain brain areas have been implicated in distinguishing the self from non-self. This 2006 paper by Todd Heatherton of Dartmouth, for example, detected increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) when people were forced to perform "self-referrent tasks". In other words, the mPFC is what recognizes your reflection in the mirror. It might not be the…

Acceleration due to gravity or the gravitational field

You see this all the time in textbooks: This is often described as "the acceleration due to gravity". Is this really the best thing to call this? No. A better name would be "the local gravitational field" and list it in units of: Where does g come from? The usual source is from the weight, or gravitational force: This is the best way to write it (in vector notation) but you will often see it written as: which looses the vector nature. In the vector notion, the vector g is a vector pointing towards the center of the Earth. Why not acceleration due to gravity? Take the following case…

Jet Lag

Jet lag is an annoyance of modern life for which our pleistocene brain is completely unprepared. This ability to zip around the globe, to trapeze from time zone to time zone, is an invention of the late 20th century. Unfortunately, the brain is an organ of routine, equipped with a stubborn circadian clock. We are wired to expect a 24 hour day, and when our day extends far beyond that, the result is a set of symptoms that remind us we are far from home. The problem of jet lag is also an interesting case study of stress. Hans Selye, the great Canadian endocrinologist, defined stress as the…

Updike

John Updike died today. He was one of my favorite writers, although I didn't fall in love with his work until I lived for a few years outside of America. It was then that I first read the complete Rabbit series, from "Rabbit, Run" to "Rabbit Remembered" and became rather obsessed with his short stories. In the dank dark of an Oxford winter, I repeated one of my favorite Updike lines to myself several times a day: "America is a conspiracy to make you happy." Perhaps more than any other writer, Updike's sentences have a way of getting stuck in my consciousness, so that I think of his words when…