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ScienceDebate2008--The Latest

Well it has been a wild ride so far...I wish this was my day job. ScienceDebate2008 now has, by my count, more than 80 bloggers in our coalition. And honestly, I'm very much afraid that some bloggers seeking to join up may have slipped through the cracks or not been added yet. And that's just one indication that we have generated a seismic online discussion of the need for a presidential debate on science in the current campaign cycle. Bora, who invaluably tracks such things, tallies well over 100 posts on the subject since Monday. This is, like, bigger than the famous framing debate. No…

Between the Folds premiere on PBS

Origami is as ephemeral as art gets - delicate paper, with no more than creases and physics to maintain its shape. It's also the ideal art form for blurring the boundary between art and science, because it's all about geometry. You could argue that the origami medium is math, just as much as it's paper. That's why Between the Folds, a documentary film by Vanessa Gould about origami-happy artists, mathematicians and scientists "working in the shadows between art and math," is such a success: the connections between math, science, art and paper aren't strained at all, so you can sit back and…

Couch Potato, Meet Veg-O-Matic!

I've said it before and I'll say it again - in fact I just said it to a patient of mine who came in for his ten-year checkup after battling one of the nastier cancers coiled in the soft, verdant field we call "life." (He's cured now, thank God.) He expressed dire unhappiness with his weight, so I said it to him: "Exercise Beneficial In Breast Cancer Radiation Therapy." Hmm...this may be a tad inaccurate. I think what I was trying to say was that exercise is beneficial for cancer survivors. Unfortunately my words of wisdom seemed to have the same effect on this patient as the advice I gave…

Cholera is shitty

(No pun intended) This just sucks: As cholera rampages through Haiti, some epidemiologists are warning that the country could face more than half a million cases over the coming year. Yet tracking and treating the disease is proving increasingly difficult as civil unrest grips the county. As if Haiti hasn't already suffered enough. Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes the disease is transmitted in contaminated water, and can divide rapidly in the digestive tract. The bacterium causes disease by secreting cholera toxin, a group of proteins that hitches a ride into the cell, sneaks…

Science and the European Elections: Open Access

This entry is part of the Science and the European Election series, a collaboration between SciencePunk and the Lay Scientist blog to encourage public discussion of the science policies of the major parties standing at the forthcoming European elections. Although the EU distributes billions in research funding, the results are often locked in pay-for-access journals. How will you improve open access to publicly-funded research findings? Tim Worstall, UKIP: A typical result of the EU's misguided thinking. Public subsidies for research are justified on the basis that science itself is a public…

Whoa…ScienceOnline has gone and died

They announced their decision to shut down the organization and cancel future conferences yesterday. This is sad news -- it has always been an innovative, interesting event, but they faced a terrible hit when one of their founders, Bora Zivkovic, was slammed with charges of harassing women, and they've been struggling to get donations to support the organization. I suspect they may also have gotten a bit over-extended, too, since they'd been creating satellite conferences on narrower topics at different locations (which was an excellent idea, by the way, but may not have been wise if their…

How did we get here?

My wife is an accomplished professional. She loves her profession, and she's damned good at it. But she is officially "unemployed", and it kills her every time she has to put that down on a form. So how is it that she came to be unemployed? When we met, MrsPal and I were both working full time---more than full time, actually. I'd have to say she was actually working quite a bit harder than I was. After we were engaged, an opportunity arose for her to cut back on her grueling schedule, but to do it she would have to quit her job entirely. For a variety of reasons, that is what she chose…

Why the new Supreme Court Justice matters

James Grimmelmann considers the Supreme Court's inability to understand the difference between the pager and the e-mail: Reading about the Supreme Court oral arguments in City of Ontario v. Quon makes me sad and angry in equal measure. Why so emotional? Here are the Court's questions, in a case about whether messages on an employer-provided pager are private or the property of the employee: CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Maybe â maybe everybody else knows this, but what is the difference between the pager and the e-mail? ⦠CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: What happens, just out of curiosity, if youâre â he…

Comments of the Week #152: from NASA's future to testing your scientific theories

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” -Khalil Gibran Another incredible week has gone by here at Starts With A Bang! If you didn't get a chance to catch me in Jacksonville, don't fear; I'll be at MidSouthCon in Memphis, Tennessee in just a little over a week. Catch me there! Our Patreon campaign is really taking off, and with the new rewards commitments I have,…

Ear wax table

I've been getting queries about the ear wax paper...below the fold I've copied table 1, which shows the frequencies of the haplotypes in various populations. First, note the sample sizes. Keep these sample sizes in mind as you try to get an understanding of the clines the authors were talking about. Greg Cochran points out that since dry ear wax is a recessive trait it seems plausible that the phenotype being selected is different. It might be dominant or additive so that a total approach toward fixation of the allele would not be necessary for the fitness to be maximized. Consider the…

The Trip from Hell

So here I am, stuck at the airport with no internet connection. Don't ask me why. I am showing a signal, but this has been the Trip from Hell, so I'm not surprised. It should have been easy. One hour flight time, nice hotel on the waterfront, all day meeting with interesting people discussing laboratory security policy, hop on the plane, home in another hour. It should have been easy. So far it hasn't been. I got to the airport early to discover Delta had canceled my flight, the last Delta flight of the evening. Don't wait in line at the service desk, the helpful attendant told me. Use the…

Bird flu: the young hit hardest

Influenza is a seasonal disease. Some seasons are worse than others. In some locations they can be even more deadly than 1918 pandemic influenza (see post here). What characteristic, then, distinguishes a pandemic outbreak from "regular" seasonal influenza if it is not severity? Severity is, on average, a characteristic of pandemic strain outbreaks because it involves a virus to which the general population has no or little previous immunity. There is another feature of pandemic outbreaks of importance: age distribution. Limited but fairly reliable evidence indicates that pandemic outbreaks…

Hello, ScienceBlogs!

We're delighted and honored to be joining the ScienceBlogs community. It's a bittersweet occasion, because we're starting out here just as the Reveres are folding up their stellar public health blog Effect Measure. It's fair to say that The Pump Handle probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Reveres; they inspired us to launch our blog on Wordpress (old site here) back in November 2006, and have been a constant source of support as well as actual blog content. We're lucky that the Reveres have agreed to continue occasional posting here at TPH, so the blogosphere won't lose them…

Naturopathy drug prescribing proposal in Ontario: Rx for a liability nightmare

Two weeks ago, Canadian Skeptics United published on their Skeptic North site a piece by an Ontario pharmacist criticizing a proposal by the province to grant limited prescribing rights to naturopaths. The essay, which was reprinted in the National Post on Tuesday, outlines the intellectual and practical conundrum presented by allowing those with education that diverges from science-based practices to prescribe drugs. The naturopath lobby has come out in force and appears to be relatively unopposed in the 54 comments that follow, primarily because the NP closes comments 24 hours after online…

Stealth in Space

While doing some poking around online, I came across a website called Project Rho, which tries to provide some science background for science fiction writers who want some degree of technical accuracy in their imaginative work. Generally it looks like they're on the right track. In their section on stealth in space, they explain with the weary air of repetition that there's no such thing. The flare of a rocket is bright enough to be seen from basically anywhere, and the thermal signature of even a spacecraft with rockets off is visible from clear across the solar system. The first I can…

The Climate Auditors: The End of Information Asymmetry?

Last month, Judith Curry had an important essay at Physics Today that deserves more attention than it has received. Curry argues that unlike the industry-funded climate skeptic movement of the past, contemporary debate is driven by a new generation of blog-based "climate auditors" who merge their own professional expertise with online communication strategies to demand a greater level of transparency in climate science. Here's how Curry describes the movement: So who are the climate auditors? They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have…

'Wasabi receptor' is snake's infrared sensor

SNAKES have a unique sensory system for detecting infrared radiation, with which they can visualize temperature changes within their immediate environment. Using this special sense, they can image the body heat radiating from warm-blooded animals nearby. This enables them to track their prey quickly and with great accuracy, even in the dark, and to target the most vulnerable parts of the prey's body when they strike. It also warns them of the presence of predators, and may be used to find appropriate locations for building dens. Infrared detection is known to be mediated by a specialized…

The virtual body illusion and immersive Second Life avatars

SECOND LIFE is an online "virtual world" which enables users to create a customised avatar, or digital persona, with which they can interact with each other. It has become incredibly popular since its launch just over 6 years ago, with millions of "residents" now using it regularly to meet others, socialize and even to have virtual sex. Second Life is now filled with virtual communities and institutions - it has businesses and universities, and its own virtual economy. Now, imagine a futuristic version of Second Life, in which avatars can transfer sensations to the bodies of their users.…

Cystic Fibrosis? Blame Eve

Last night, as my family settled into a three-hour drive home, I began scanning the AM radio dial. The tuner stopped at on a well-produced segment in which the announcer was talking about recent evolution of pigmentation genes and lactose-digestion genes in humans. This is a surprise, I thought, and I settled in for a listen. It took about twenty seconds for me to realize that this was the work of creationists. I spent the next fifteen minutes listening to the piece with jaw aslack, making sure I didn't get so distracted I missed my exit. There is something so absorbing about the elaborate…

NASA - science and sensibility

The below-the-fold note was seen on WIRED. It's a plea to prevent political interference from continuing to demolish the scientifically worthwhile aspects of the NASA program, in favour of the bread and circuses smell to the lunar base. A friend worked in the Astrobiology Program NASA funded, which is where nearly all "origins of life" research takes place, apart from some European labs. They closed it down to fund the President's "Vision". Also, go read NASAWatch. From: tpsmbl@planetary.org Subject: NASA Science Situation More Dire Than We Thought! Date: December 5, 2006 8:30:00 AM PST Dear…

23andMe launches new effort to recruit patients for disease gene studies

Personal genomics company 23andMe has always differentiated itself from its more sober competitors through an emphasis on collaborative, consumer-driven research - essentially, encouraging its customers to contribute their genetic and trait data to internal research projects designed to find new genetic associations. It is widely believed that generating novel associations between genetic variants and traits is actually the core business strategy for the company, although the precise mechanism for converting such associations into cash-flow remains unclear. The company's initial attempt at…

Goodbye Tet Zoo ver 2. This really is the end.

On January 23rd 2007, Tet Zoo ver 2 - the ScienceBlogs version of Tetrapod Zoology - graced the intertoobz for the first time. There was rapturous applause, swooning, the delight of millions. Looking back at it now, that very first ver 2 post is rather odd. It's on the blood-feeding behaviour of oxpeckers (Buphagus) and it only really mentions the move to ScienceBlogs in passing, as if it wasn't a big deal. In reality, being invited in to join the ScienceBlogs collective was a big deal, and were I to go back in time and re-live the writing of that particular article I'd do much more of a "…

It is with some dismay that I announce Tet Zoo's first hemi-decade

Today, my friends, is January 21st 2011. Do you know what this means? It means (drumroll)... that Tet Zoo is five years old today. Wow. Five years. With apologies to those who've heard the story before, things started in 2006 over at blogspot, and in 2007 Tet Zoo ver 2 kicked off here on ScienceBlogs. So: happy birthday Tet Zoo! The fact that I've now been blogging about hardcore zoology for five years is a little scary; it makes me worried that things here might have become stale or blasé. To be honest, if that's so I haven't noticed and, anyway, my motivations for blogging are almost…

The Tangled Bank

This is the February 20, 2008 edition of The Tangled Bank web carnival. The next edition will be hosted at Archaeoporn. Behavioral Ecology Blog Thinking like an economist (about Parent-Offspring Conflict) Published in 1974, this paper is arguably Bob Trivers 2nd most influential paper behind the paper describing reciprocal altruism... Because very few people read long blog posts, and the idea is to introduce these ideas to people that might not already be familiar, I'l go ahead and list the main points/finding, and then go into some brief discussion about ... PodBlack Blog She's Already…

An antivaccine mother asks for advice on Reddit about how to convince the baby's father not to vaccinate. It doesn't go well.

Well, I'm here. Yes, last night I arrived in Boston for the Society of Surgical Oncology meeting down at the convention center. For any skeptics who might be so inclined the Boston Skeptics are planning a meetup on Saturday, details firming up. No talk this time, but at least we can hang out for a while. There probably won't be too much drinking on my part, either, because I'll be flying home Sunday morning, and flying with a hangover is not a good thing. How do I know this? Don't ask. I am, however, happy not to be in Detroit tonight, given that the Republican debate will be occurring mere…

Pluto Has Tail, X-Rays

Did you ever notice that Pluto doesn't have much of a tail? No, not that Pluto! This Pluto: This has been known for a while. NASA noted this last year: New Horizons has discovered a region of cold, dense ionized gas tens of thousands of miles beyond Pluto -- the planet’s atmosphere being stripped away by the solar wind and lost to space. Beginning an hour and half after closest approach, the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument observed a cavity in the solar wind -- the outflow of electrically charged particles from the Sun -- between 48,000 miles (77,000 km) and 68,000 miles (109,000…

More Bloggers Bioblitzing Across the Sphere

From Ontario to Greece to Panama, what are participating bloggers finding out in the field? This thread will be constantly updated throughout the week, blog carnival style, compiling all of the bioblitzes that are being conducted. Please contact me if you have something up; I'll make sure I add it to the list. Don't forget to check out all of the participant's photos at the Flickr group (over 300 photos now). For info about the Blogger Bioblitz, follow the links: Read more about the blitz Visit the forum See submission guidelines Join the Flickr group Find a field guide online Download a…

And so the dismantling of public health begins: Donald Trump meets with antivaccine ideologue Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to discuss "vaccine safety" and autism

I remember when I first heard on Twitter yesterday afternoon that our President-Elect, Donald Trump, was going to meet with longtime antivaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Remembering how Trump had met with antivaccine "hero" Andrew Wakefield before the election and how after the election antivaccine activists were practically salivating over the thought of what Trump might do with respect to the CDC and vaccines, I was reminded of just how much I fear for medical science policy under the Trump administration. I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. For a moment, I actually…

Where the blame lies

We're worried about the current financial crisis — in fact, the whole world is concerned. Most of us have simple explanations for the mess we're in right now, such as excessive deregulation, lenders raking in short term profit at the expense of long term stability, a weakening economy, and the misrule of George W. Bush and his gang of Rethuglican cronies, but we're missing the real root cause: it was the gays. Some big flaming homo flaunting his ungodly desires one time too many finally tipped God over into a big snit, and as we all know, God's aim sucks, so when he tossed that lightning bolt…

A month into surgery - back to the books

I've just completed my first month of my surgical rotation and still find almost every day fascinating. I just finished a 4-week rotation in the hepatobiliary service (liver, biliary and pancreatic surgeries mostly) and now go on to thoracic for 2 weeks, and then trauma for 2 weeks to complete the core requirement. I'll also be doing orthopedic trauma and neurosurgical rotations before I'm done in March and I'll be sure to write about those as well. Friday night we had the medical student pimp-off AKA surgical jeopardy. For the uninitiated, pimping refers to the practice of quizzing…

Basics: Innumeracy

I've used the term innumeracy fairly often on this blog, and I've had a few people write to ask me what it means. It's also, I think, a very important idea. Innumeracy is math what illiteracy is to reading. It's the fundamental lack of ability to understand or use numbers or math. And like illiteracy, true innumeracy is relatively rare, but there are huge numbers of people who, while having some minimal understanding of number and arithmetic, are functionally innumerate: they are not capable of anything but the most trivial arithmetic; and how anything more complicated than simple basic…

Strings and Apples

Yarn theory seems like a good way to go... I have been plowing through the comments and thought I'd do a meta-response, especially since no one is likely to be reading that far down any more. I should note that my comments on apples and physics hirings has in some ways been taken the wrong way, in particular, I am not advocating the hiring of people who are beyond the scientific fringe and pushing theories that are "not even wrong", but I do genuinely worry that physics in particular, and academia in general is too "faddish" - there is too much chasing after the latest greatest flash in the…

Keep that sword out of the hands of the Lord

Here's a much more serious issue than a goddamned cracker: it's the steady accumulation of military power in religious hands. It's not overt policy, but we should be worried that there is an increasing association between religiosity and military service — an association between credulity and obscene amounts of physical power. Jeremy Hall is discovering this first-hand. Hall grew up reading the Bible every night and saying grace at dinner. Then, after his first tour of duty, he met some friends who were atheist and decided to read the Bible again. He read the whole Bible, and had so many…

California's Amazing Geology

California's Amazing Geology by Don Prothero is an amazing book about -- wait for it -- California's geology! California is one of the most geologically interesting and complex geopolitical units in the world. But so is Minnesota, and Minnesota is boring, geologically, for most people. Why? Because Minnesota is all eroded down and flattened out and covered with glacial till, so most of the interesting geology is buried, while California is actively engaged in its own geology in a spectacular and visually appealing way! Lots of places have volcanoes. California has volcanoes that blow up, or…

Just say "NO" to ScienceBlogs adverts

For those of you who read only Terra Sig and not others at ScienceBlogs (post-morning coffee delusions of grandeur), you may not be aware that a number of questionable advertisements have been appearing on the frontpage run by the purveyors of our pontifications. Many of this adverts have been of content diammetrically opposed to what each of us stand for professionally and personally. So, it was to my dismay this morning that I awoke to this ad for a bodybuilding supplement that exploits the endogenous vasodilator, nitric oxide. Commenter Daedalus will be convulsing in a corner somewhere…

The Australian's War on Science 57: the Monckton Gallop

The Australian continues to express institutional contempt for science, scientists and the scientific method with a piece by Christopher Monckton Graham Readfern has already commented on some of the errors in Monckton's piece, but there are plenty more. Cap-and-tax in Europe has been a wickedly costly fiasco. ... Result: electricity prices have doubled. In the name of preventing global warming, many Britons are dying because they cannot afford to heat their homes. It's not hard to check this. The average annual bill for electricity in the UK increased from £285 in 2005 (when the EU ETS…

Bird flu, TB, anthrax and some thoughts on New Years Day

The Reveres get a lot of emails from folks who think their issue is worthy of mention on Effect Measure. For the most part, they are right, and the only reason for not mentioning them is the time and attention span of The Reveres. One of the privileges of blogging is the blogger gets to set the agenda. Periodically I get emails from someone who feels very passionately about the harm being done to military personnel by mandatory anthrax vaccination. I've even blogged about it on occasion (on the old site, here, here, here and here), and I think there are some serious public health issues…

A Way Forward for OSHA

By Adam M. Finkel Two weeks ago, Congress officially asked a question that would have been unutterable during the first six years of the Bush Administration: "Have OSHA Standards Kept up with Workplace Hazards?" I was not surprised to read Assistant Secretary Ed Foulke's testimony, in which he tried mightily to make the molehill of OSHA regulatory activity since 2001 look like a (small) mountain.  In my experience as a former OSHA executive, each of the Assistant Secretaries since at least 1997 has assigned a small army of spin-meisters to look for data, any data, that will make the agency…

Effect Measure's second blogiversary: still crazy after all these years

by revere [This is another cross-post from Effect Measure but it fits here because it lays out some of the history of the progressive public health blogosphere and welcomes The Pump Handle as its newest -- and we hope brightest -- member!] This weekend is Effect Measure's Second Blogiversary and it coincides with two other events: the new Flu Wiki Forum and the incipient debut of a new progressive public health blog, The Pump Handle, to which The Reveres will be occasional contributors (some original posts, some cross posts). We are semi-thrilled to still be around after two years. Semi-…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At Reveal, Jennifer LaFleur writes about the U.S. veterans who witnessed the country’s many nuclear weapon tests, the health problems they’ve encountered in the decades since their service, and their fight for compensation. One of the “atomic veterans” LeFleur interviewed — Wayne Brooks — said: “We were used as guinea pigs – every one of us. They didn’t tell us what it was gonna do to us. They didn’t tell us that we were gonna have problems later on in life with cancers and multiple cancers.” LaFleur writes: All of the atomic vets were sworn to secrecy. Until the secrecy was lifted decades…

Making excuses

The editor of Life, Shu-Kun Lin, has published a rationalization for his shoddy journal. Life (ISSN 2075-1729, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/life/) is a new journal that deals with new and sometime difficult interdisciplinary matters. Consequently, the journal will occasionally be presented with submitted articles that are controversial and/or outside conventional scientific views. Some papers recently accepted for publication in Life have attracted significant attention. Moreover, members of the Editorial Board have objected to these papers; some have resigned, and others have questioned the…

Neural basis of congenital face blindness

Prosopagnosia is a neurological condition characterised by an inability to recognize faces. In the most extreme cases, the prosopagnosic patient cannot even recognize their own face in the mirror or a photograph, and in his 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, the neurologist Oliver Sacks describes the extraordinary case of a farmer who lost the ability to recognize the faces of his cows! Also known as face blindness, prosopagnosia is associated with damage to specific parts of the temporal lobes. But there are also documented cases of patients who have the condition in the…

The Weird History of Vaccine Adjuvants

Last week the Times ran a story by Andrew Pollack, Benefit and Doubt in Vaccine Additive, that covered some of the ground I trod in my Slate story, "To Boost or Not to Boost: The United States' swine flu vaccines will leave millions worldwide unprotected. Pollack also had the room to explore something I lacked room for -- the fascinating history of adjuvants, and the strange mystery of how they work. Like so many things that work in medicine, adjuvants were discovered more or less by accident -- and were in fact a "dirty little secret" in a fairly literal sense. As the Wikipedia entry…

AWIS Washington Wire and "Beyond Bias and Barriers" Report

From the September 15, 2006 AWIS Washington Wire Women at Work-Striving for 25% Female Faculty In 2000, the European Research Ministries set the goal that 25% of all faculty members would be female by the year 2010. Unfortunately, the numbers are likely to fall far short. To show what the visual impact of this proportion of women would be, Petra Rudolf, a professor and materials scientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, convinced 35 of the university's 50 female professors to show up at the opening ceremony of the new academic year. As a result of Rudolf's planning pushed…

Pathological video gaming in kids: How common is it? (updated)

A few weeks ago, a new study made headlines in major newspapers across the country: Study Finds Some Youths 'Addicted' to Video Games, proclaimed the Washington Post. The Post article cited a figure of 8.5 percent of gamers age 8-18 nationwide showing signs of a behavioral addiction. Since the study found that 88 percent of children play video games, the scale of this problem is potentially vast -- as many as 3 million kids, addicted to video games. The claim of "addiction" is quite serious. Just doing something a lot isn't enough to qualify as an addiction, it must have a detrimental effect…

More heavy metals in dietary supplements

Via Terra Sigilatta (who beat me to this one, as I saw the press release yesterday but never got around to blogging about it), we find yet another case of heavy metal contamination of a popular supplement, this time herbal kelp supplements. This discovery was prompted by the investigation of a case of woman who suffered real harm from these supplements: The new study, published in this month's issue of Environmental Health Perspectives - available online at www.ehponline.org - was prompted by the case of a 54-year-old woman who was seen at the UCD Occupational Medicine Clinic following a two-…

How We Decide (Paperback Remix)

The paperback of How We Decide is now shipping from your favorite online retailers and should be in local bookstores. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I'd repost an interview I conducted with myself when the hardcover was published last year. If you'd like more, there's also this interview on Fresh Air, and this interview on the Colbert Report. Q: Why did you want to write a book about decision-making? A: It all began with Cheerios. I'm an incredibly indecisive person. There I was, aimlessly wandering the cereal aisle of the supermarket, trying to choose between the apple-cinnamon and…

Children, Childless, and Academia: The Need for Better Scientific Managers

There's been a lot of discussion about why women in academia have fewer children than those in medicine or law. Unfortunately, it seems to be veering dangerously close to the 'pro-kids, anti-kids' argument that ultimately breaks out, when instead, I think the problem has less to do with children and more to do with a fundamental problem within academia (and academic science in particular)--we suck at management. As bad as we supposedly are at defending evolution (if Randy Olsen is to be believed), we really do a piss poor job at managing. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Dr. Crazy at…

Reading Diary: Who We Are: Reflections on My Life and Canada by Elizabeth May

For those that don't know, Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and one of only two Greens in the Canadian Parliament -- and the only one elected as a Green. As such, you would expect that she would be a strong advocate for democracy and the environment, willing to stand up to the current Conservative government of Stephen Harper and tell it like it is. In her latest book, Who We Are: Reflections on My Life and Canada, she does just that in an entertaining and inspiring amalgamation of memoir and manifesto. This is an amazing book, sarcastic and hopeful but still witty and…

Bourbon, vodka and hangovers

I went to medical school in the days when controls on human experimentation were not very robust (I understate). I think about that around Christmas time because one of the ways this penurious medical student used to make a few bucks was by volunteering for medical experiments (and eating Spaghetti-Os at 19 cents a can). One year I desperately wanted to buy my girlfriend an expensive ($20) book (Larousse Gastronomique; last time I mentioned it here she told me -- via email since she lives across the ocean -- she still has it after more than 40 years; hug and a wave from me and Mrs. R.). I…