The American South
terrasig | January 4, 2009I should really save this new item for next week's Friday Fermentable but I was too excited walking back from picking up the NYT and local fishwrapper from the cold, rainy driveway this morning.
Beer enthusiast, brewer, and public policy wiz, Sean Wilson, is staring back at me on the front page of the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer as "Tar Heel of the Week," in a Josh Shaffer article entitled, "Brewer to blend mad science, local flavor."
Each week, the N&O recognizes a citizen making substantial and often unique contributions to the state's economy, community, cultural patina, or all…
terrasig | December 31, 2008I just sent out an e-mail to a bunch of friends asking what they were doing this New Year's Eve.
We'll be at home in the City of Medicine drinking a bottle of 1997 Grongnet "Special Club" Champagne. Then I'll try to do a 8K trail run being held tomorrow at Duke Forest. Feel free to join me - I'll be the 151-year-old dead guy wearing these shoes.
But in Brasstown, NC, (right at the NC-TN-GA tri-state border) they will be dropping the opossum - yes, the famed New Year's Possum Drop. It's a non-alcoholic family event that begins with a blessing and singing of church songs followed by the…
terrasig | December 24, 2008Okay, Dear Reader, I know you are tired of my ranting about Key West no matter how much I try to make it a focus of natural product therapeutics. So, with your indulgence, I need to make two serious awards to acknowledge the warmth and kindness of the good souls of Key West. Two people went above and beyond the call of duty to make our trip wonderful:
1. To the waitress (and likely owner) of Flamingo's Cafe: We had a terrific brunch at one of the few places (thankfully) that does not serve alcohol on Duval Street. I indulged otherwise with the incredible Crabcake Eggs Benedict and a side of…
terrasig | December 23, 2008In our last few hours bidding farewell to the Conch Republic, we stopped at the Southernmost Point marker. Regular commenter and blogger leigh (the path forward) reminded us to "get a picture of the family pharmboy at the southernmost point marker, that's classic cheesy fun." Well, dear leigh, we found that the marker does not currently look like the photo to the right - as of Saturday, the buoy is only repainted with the bands of color and devoid of any identifying lettering.
In fact, this classic comment appeared in the Citizen's Voice section of the Key West Citizen on Sunday, 14 December…
terrasig | December 21, 2008I wrote at length the other day about my visit and talk at the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden, noting that Duke students and their Key West High School mentees would be presenting the results of their 2008 projects yesterday afternoon. Well, we were sadly flying out about the time of the presentations but one of them captured all of the results.
In fact, one project chronicled all the projects dating back to 2002 - kind of like looking in a mirror's reflection of a mirror.
This project established the Science Corner for the garden website, hosted at Duke but linked on the…
terrasig | December 21, 2008
Click on the photo to find out where we spotted these little miracles of nature.
And nary a PLoS T-shirt among them.
terrasig | December 19, 2008As I mentioned in my intro post to our week in Key West, I was definitely going to make a visit to the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden. We took the then-PharmToddler there in November 2003 when this gem was just being relaunched after decades of negligence. According to Georgia Tasker at the Miami Herald:
It was begun in the Great Depression days of 1934 by the City of Key West, and built by the WPA at the same time as the city's aquarium. At one point, the garden contained an aviary, hand-made rock walls, green houses and 7,000 plants. It opened in 1936 and flourished for…
terrasig | December 16, 2008While my Left Coast US and Japanese readers may scoff at the fuss, folks along the southeast US coast are abuzz with this morning's minor tremor near Summerville, South Carolina. I'm not a seismology expert, or even an enthusiast for that matter, but I do remember reading a waterfront plaque about the Great Charleston Earthquake of 1886 when invited there for a talk at the Medical University of South Carolina. That magnitude 7.6 (estimated) monster stands as the strongest earthquake in recorded eastern US history.
Local coverage of the recent temblor is here.
terrasig | December 14, 2008Welcome readers of the It's Only Key West (IOKW) discussion forum (and thanks to Kategoe for sending you here) - keep your suggestions coming in the comments below the post. I just came from Hogfish tonight where I sat between two people thrown out of the bar by 7:15 pm, one for regular old drunkenness and the other for nearly starting a fight. Cynical me wants to say they were paid actors. But the food was superb.
Seizing upon our new tradition of getting out of Dodge for the week before Christmas madness, the Family Pharmboy will be broadcasting this week from Key West, Florida, The Conch…
terrasig | October 24, 2008From this press release:
It is with deepest sadness that North Carolina Central University announces the passing of photojournalist Alex Rivera [Alexander M Rivera, Jr]. Rivera, a nationally renowned and prominent photojournalist, established the public relations office at North Carolina Central University, and served as the office's first director.
"This is a sad day for NCCU", said Chancellor Charlie Nelms. "Not only was Mr. Rivera an integral part of the university's history, he made invaluable contributions to the world through his photography. He was a valued member of our community and…
terrasig | October 16, 2008We here at the Terra Sig World Headquarters have been inundated with traffic directed by search engines following our post the other day directing readers to the NPR story on Douglas Prasher. Prasher, as is now widely known, is the former Woods Hole science who cloned the cDNA for green fluorescent protein (GFP) that enabled the work leading to this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry to at least two of the three laureates. Prasher is currently driving a courtesy shuttle for Bill Penney Toyota in Huntsville, AL, for $10 (USD) per hour. Prasher had been working for NASA in Huntsville until his…
terrasig | October 5, 2008The author, human rights activist, folklorist, and environmentalist, Stetson Kennedy, is celebrating his 92nd birthday today in the company of friends and family near St. Augustine, Florida.
His website, StetsonKennedy.com, used to have a guestbook but the webmaster, his grandson Sean, took it down after extensive spamming.
So, please leave your birthday wishes in the comments below as we have it on very good authority that those close to Stetson actually read Terra Sigillata.
Much of my generation probably only knows Stetson Kennedy as the Klan-busting infiltrator popularized in…
terrasig | September 20, 2008Dr Ernest Eliel, a past-president of the American Chemical Society, passed away in Chapel Hill, NC, on Thursday evening. Dr Eliel was 86.
His obituary notes:
Born December 28, 1921, in Cologne, Germany, Dr. Eliel was the son of the late Oskar and Luise Tietz Eliel. He moved to the United States in 1946, and received a Ph.D degree from the University of IL at Urbana-Champaign in 1948. Dr. Eliel lived in South Bend, IN, where he taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1948 until 1972, at which time he moved to Chapel Hill, where he was the W.R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemistry at the…
terrasig | September 9, 2008When I went away to college after the summer when MTV was first launched, I had never heard of the term, "Historically Black Colleges and Universities." But during the following summer while taking organic chemistry, I lived in a dorm with two visiting HBCU students who were doing internships at a local pharmaceutical company. The gentleman who I grew closest to had come from Hampton University (then-Hampton Institute) in Virginia.
As a Yankee born the same year as passage of US Civil Rights Act, I had not truly appreciated that African Americans, particularly in the South, had…
terrasig | September 4, 2008Today is the second anniversary of the passing of Steve Blackwell, a Midwestern transplant who came to the Sunshine State as a high school English teacher and became a fixture in the Florida folk music scene. My path crossed with Mr Blackwell in the months before his untimely departure from melanoma at age 58.
I detailed my connection with Mr Blackwell in this repost of my thoughts from the day of his memorial service. Mr Blackwell's daughter and other former bandmates continue performing as Still Friends. Steve's memory was also honored musically this past March with SteveFest '08 in Port…
terrasig | March 1, 2008DrugMonkey just had an interesting post about the potential influence of cocaine use trends following the 1986 death of Maryland college basketball player, Len Bias, just days after his being selected in the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics. DM's post and the ensuing discussion got me thinking tonight about a variety of issues in substance abuse, realistic assessment of risk and, ultimately, parenting.
In the comments, I mentioned that Heath Ledger's recent death might be a trigger for pop culture to pay more attention to the risks of recreational use of prescription and over-the-counter…
terrasig | January 21, 2008
From "Lesser Known Wise and Prophetic Words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr." by liberal writer and California Democratic Party delegate, Deborah White:
"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values.
The two are not rivals. They are complementary.
Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral…
terrasig | October 12, 2007The Southland is all abuzz today following yesterday's Charlotte Observer article by Lisa Zagaroli that members of the US House Homeland Security Committee were advised to get vaccinations (for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria and influenza) before traveling to car races in Concord, NC, and Taladega, AL.
Neither NASCAR fans or local politicians were pleased with the insinuations:
Rep. Robin Hayes, a Republican from Concord, took umbrage when he heard about it.
"I have never heard of immunizations for domestic travel, and as the representative for Concord, N.C., I feel compelled…
terrasig | September 19, 2007A few days ago, I posted about a 1 September Cancer Research paper showing that a muscadine grape skin extract (MSKE) lacking resveratrol had activity in killing prostate cancer cells. I've finally had a chance to look at the paper. The study was very well-done by Dr Jeffrey Green's group at the US National Cancer Institute with colleagues at Georgia, Texas, USDA, and George Washington University. The studies showed that the grape skin extract (at 10-20 μg/mL) had cytotoxic activity against progressively tumorigenic prostate cell lines but had no effect on normal prostatic epithelial cells…
terrasig | September 4, 2007A press release came in from the US NIH before the weekend noting that NCI's Dr Jeffrey Green has identified potential anticancer activities from a grape skin extract that is not dependent on the presence of the well-known compound, resveratrol. The report is to appear in the 1 September issue of Cancer Research, but the article is not yet online.
Green's group investigated a skin extract from muscadine grapes (Vitis rotundifolia) that was apparently nearly devoid of resveratrol but contained high levels of compunds called anthocyanins (they called it MSKE for "muscadine skin extract"). The…