Miscellany
signout | September 17, 2007Over the weekend, I got an email from Thomas over at Hope for Pandora. Thomas blogs about science and society from a lefty point of view. Now that he's about to start in on clinical medicine, he's hoping to blog about his patient experiences, too.
Not without reason, he is fraught with panic (OK, it's really just mild anxiety) over the potential for disaster:
I was wondering if you could offer me any suggestions about blogging experiences on the wards such that I am not out of compliance with HIPAA, but more importantly, I respect patients' privacy.
He has some of his own ideas, to which I…
signout | September 10, 2007Seen taped to the cover of a large emergency medicine text:
Sick --> admit to medicine or surgery
Not sick --> Vicodin, generic discharge paperwork
Not sure --> admit to neurology
sporte | September 6, 2007Yes, indeed. I got the Red Hot blog of the Day award from RedOrbit.
Not for science, though; it's for showing why genome sequencing is expensive.
Sigh.
signout | July 17, 2007It's unbelievable, the company I somehow manage to keep in this blog neighborhood: Rob Knop of Galactic Interactions is one of the cosmologists today awarded a portion of this year's Gruber Prize in Cosmology.
Since pretty much the second he hung out his ScienceBlogs shingle, Rob has regularly been served a pretty good helping of shut-the-fuck-up, just because he's into God. And yet, he still bothers to educate readers--often with surprising gentleness--on the ways in which faith can be constructive. Although I've never met him, his blog shows him to be a principled, reasonable, and…
signout | July 7, 2007Every now and then, I get email from young aspiring physicians who wish to drink from my fount of wisdom with respect to Choosing a Life Direction. I find this hilarious, seeing as my path to where I am now has been of the relatively winding variety, and that even on the best of days, I still see myself as a seeker. Although I am honored that these bright stars look to me for suggestions, they really could do better.
And do better, they shall! I'd bet that at least a couple of the medical types that read this humble blog could offer guidance greatly exceeding mine on multiple levels. To them…
signout | June 19, 2007Huzzah! The winner of SEED Magazine's Threadless t-shirt contest has been announced. Finally.
You wear, you like!
signout | June 15, 2007Today, I want to tell you about puppies. And chocolate cake. And violets! All things we can agree we love, and discussion of which never generates a hostile environment.
The thing I like best about puppies is how kickable they are. Just kidding! Oh my God, you people are so sensitive.
I've been away for a while, due to a schedule apparently created by a sadistic baby, or a drunk monkey, or maybe a drunk baby monkey. Either way, the other day, I went to a concert given by a really famous musician, and about 15 minutes into this person doing his thing, I fell asleep. And he was really famous.…
sporte | May 23, 2007Okay, gossip really isn't my thing and I'm not going to make a habit of it, but I'm really kind of surprised by this. Tech crunch (as I learned from Deepak and Eye on DNA) has a post on 23 and me that is quite bothersome.
Apparently, one of the Google founders has invested in a company that specializes in personal genomics. All kinds of accusations of nepotism are flying in the Tech Crunch comments section.
So what if Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google) and Anne Wojcicki (one of the co-founders of 23 and me) are married. Don't you think Brin has proved himself capable of making good…
signout | May 10, 2007I was recently asked by Blog, MD to weigh in on how I'd spend the $456 billion that has so far been spent on the U.S. military effort in Iraq if, by some terrible error, I were made Queen of the World. This is a difficult question for me because the only items of whose cost I am sure these days are grocery store sushi and sturdy shoes. And while it would be kind of awesome to buy enough spicy tuna rolls to last me until I'm too old to chew anything but the wasabi, that wouldn't exactly benefit humanity.
So.
If it were up to me, I'd spend this wad of cash entirely on education. I'm no expert…
signout | April 8, 2007It was street, y'all.
Team Phylogenetics came out busting chops, with a
and a
"Your mom," said HIV:
"She's so fat,"
Team Phylo sputtered.
"I thought we were brothers, man:"
"Oh yeah?"
"Booyah, biatch."
And as quickly as it had started, the game was over.
HIV moves on to the next round.
signout | March 28, 2007For the past week and change, ScienceBlogs has been nerdily (and happily) hosting the Science Spring Showdown. It is Signout's distinct honor to host the Sweet Sixteen match-up between HIV and Phylogenetics. (Please see the SSS Press Center for details of previous rounds' results.)
As a microorganism, HIV is dazzlingly cunning and elusive; as an epidemic, it is insatiable; and as a PR campaign, it is straight-up sexy. In the past, if you wanted to talk about condoms, prostitution, anal sex, and men who have sex with men, you'd have to go to a shady bar, or maybe a Democratic convention. Now…
sporte | March 26, 2007It's dyscalculia.
The curse of math instructors everywhere.
A few years ago, students at the community college, where I taught, petitioned to have math removed from the list of courses that were required for a degree. Part of the reason, they argued, was that one student claimed that he shouldn't have to take math because he had dyscalculia.
(Dyscalculia is like dylexsia, except that it makes it harder for people to do arithmetic. )
The math instructors argued that they weren't going to eliminate requirements for a "fictional disease."
Now, it appears that miscalculations do have a…
sporte | March 11, 2007I don't often play these meme games but since none of the other female SciBlings have jumped on the bandwagon, and I've read at least as much science fiction as some of the other Scibs in the game (PZ, Mark, Afrensis, Orac, Joseph, Bora, and John), I just had to join in.
First, for the record, I think whoever came up with this "The Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, 1953-2002" overlooked some truly wonderful authors. I'll share some of my favorites in a little bit.
How did I get started reading SF?
When I was a child, we lived in a house with a crawl space…
sporte | January 1, 2007It's been quite a year since I joined ScienceBlogs in June and there've been many interesting things to write about.
Here's a sampling of your favorites (and some of mine) from month to month.
June:
Hello Kitty! or Don't Eat Me, I Study Genetics!
The story of the endangered Florida Panthers and the danger of getting confused between preserving the signs of inbreeding and preserving a species.
I also gave a workshop for teachers in June at the Bio-Link conference. So, June has quite a few posts about Bio-Link.
July:
Am I really related to Cleopatra? Qualitatively measuring DNA…
sporte | December 8, 2006Laurie David claims that National Science Teachers' Association (the NSTA) is inconveniently hooked up with big oil because they won't spend the money to send out 50,000 copies of the "An Inconvenient Truth" DVD.
If I do the math and estimate that it costs $4 to mail each DVD, that includes packaging, mailing, the costs of hiring a distribution center, I get $4 x 50,000 = $200,000. I think that's an expensive gift.
Is there really a smoking gun?
For the record, I saw the movie and personally, I would like a large number of teachers and students to see it, too. But, I'm bothered by Ms.…
sporte | October 4, 2006This may seem strange to anyone who hasn't lived in Minnesota, but when I was a child, kids in my elementary school used to have fist fights when it came to the question of which famous European discovered America.
To most children in the U.S., this is probably a very silly question indeed. Not so, to the kids I knew. Some kids were convinced that it was Leif Erickson and were ready to fight to defend the point.
Since I now live on the West Coast, it's probably safe for me to say that the first white people on the continent might NOT have been the Vikings.
NOVA's series for teachers has…
sporte | August 15, 2006Folks have been enthusiastically commenting around the clock on the possiblity of using prisoners in clinical trials.
Meanwhile, Thomas Hargrove has analyzed obesity and death rates in the National Football League. He suggests that those pharmaceutical companies with anti-obesity drugs might be better off taking a look at Monday night football. Or, at Monday night football players. He found that 56% of the players in NFL are obese, with offensive tackles weighing in at an average of 313 lbs.
From Mark Uehling, Bio-IT world:
Some of Hargrove's data came from a retired pollster, David…
sporte | July 31, 2006I've been fortunate, living in Seattle, to hear talks from many people that my colleagues and co-bloggers might consider to be rock stars - people like Mary-Claire King, Nancy Wexler, Francis Collins, Leroy Hood, Eugenie Scott, David Haussler, Harold Varmus, and Elaine Ostrander. But, if I think about who the public might see as a rock star, the list gets much shorter.
To the kids, I know, there are two people who qualify as rock star scientists.
One, of course is Jane Goodall. I am seriously disappointed in Afrensis for not mentioning her. I nominate Jane for the Aretha Franklin of…