Narcissistic self-involvement

I credit my youngest sister for introducing me to these guys playing this piece, but it might have been my father. I've listened to several different musicians playing this, and none matches these two. None. The vid starts in the middle, but it's still worth watching Rostropovich make the cello weep.

Bach's first solo cello suite looks deceptively simple on the page. It doesn't call for virtuosity as such, but to sound like more than an étude requires someone like Pablo Casals.

DrugMonkey has revived a blog meme that originated with uber science writer Ed Yong. It is basically a request for readers to "de-lurk". On any blog, the majority of readers never comment, and the people who do comment tend to so over and over again. Writers are inherently narcissistic. As bloggers we can get an idea of how many people are reading us, but not that much else. So for the sake of the community, I'd like to ask you all, without revealing any important identifying information, who you are. Just leave a comment, even if you never have before. Don't worry about the email…

I'm looking forward to having some time to read this summer. I've planned a total of two weeks away from work, and if all goes well, I'll get some time to plow through a few good reads. My first trip away will be my usual gig as a camp doctor in Ontario. Last year I brought up The Great Influenza by John Barry, which was ironic, given I landed at flu central. My second week off will be up in northern Michigan. Here's my list, which is heavily biased in subject matter (I'm far too lazy to give a three-source bookstore link, so you'll have to google them): Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes…

I visited a physician this week as a patient. The details of the meeting are in the TMI category, but the long a short of it was he gave me advice that the altmed folks wouldn't believe. Surrounded by the most advanced diagnostic technology, armed with a nearly infinite pharmacopoeia, he made a single recommendation: stop caffeine. Stop caffeine. Ugh. He said, "Stopping caffeine often solves the problem you're having. You know, it's a drug. You don't need it. It's like speed. Stop it, and I'll see you in a month." Caffeine is my friend. In college I always wrote my papers in one,…

Of all the crappy things I eat, bacon is probably the crappiest. Thankfully, I eat it only rarely, but if you were to put a pound of cooked bacon in front of me, I would eat a pound of cooked bacon and ask for more. But since I want to live long enough to watch my kid grow up, it's better to wax nostalgic on previous bacon encounters than to accrue new ones. How can something so good be so bad? On Sunday mornings, my dad and I used to drive down to the car wash and then over to the bagel store. We'd pick up fresh bagels, and sometimes smoked fish, and usually, by the time we got home…

Most mornings, I get up with my daughter, or more accurately, I wake her up. We have our little morning rituals---I turn on her lamp (or this time of the year, open her shade), pick her up and take her downstairs (something I might not be able to do for much longer). I turn on the TV and let her wake up slowly---she's not the morning person I am. Usually, there's a good deal of whining and moaning, stalling and kvetching. This morning, though, she was up and ready to go. Today, her family was coming to see her in a school play, and she had memorized her lines and just about everyone else'…

Many years ago, when fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen was riding a wave of racist sentiment in France, I was a young student out with friends on a perfect spring evening along the Seine. There was at that time always a vigorous national police presence in Paris. The CRS with their sub-machine guns were visible outside government buildings and patrolling the streets. Racism was a palpable presence in Paris. A popular deli, Jo Goldenberg's, had been bombed a few years earlier, and the nearby Holocaust museum had bullet holes in one of its glass walls. One time when I tried to order coffee at a…

I never thought it would happen, but here we are. I can smell the ocean, hear the wind in the coconut palms. My arms are leaden from swimming, my shoulders reddened by the sun. A little while ago, I was body surfing. When you catch a wave---really catch it---you are weightless, and it is magnificent. But even the missed waves have their surprises. A large breaker sneaked up behind me, brown with sand, capped with white, and tried to take me. It could have---if the ocean wants someone, it will take them. But it didn't, and after it passed, it left a pool of calm. Out of this pool…

It's a cold day here in Lake Woebegone southeast Michigan. I'm looking out the kitchen window at the thermometer: +11 F, which is apparently the same -11 C. From my kitchen table, I can see the neighbors let out the dog, who seems unfazed by the cold. He's some sort of little fuzzy white dog and he's currently sniffing happily. It's not quite cold enough for the air to have that extra clarity you see when it gets really cold, but I'm still not rushing outside. It's pretty cold upstairs. We probably need to replace more of the windows, and I'm not so sure about our insulation, so we were…

I'm hard on hardware, apparently. My current computer, an hp tablet, is falling apart. I need to start thinking about replacement. Cost is the number one issue, so I was thinking about an Acer or a Dell Mini or similar product. I use my computer all day, every day, for work and for writing. My hospital and my office use IT systems that requires Windows. So, geeky folks, I need some suggestions. What have you folks found to be useful and economical?

I was traveling on the 14th, the official date of my first blogiversary at WCU, Sb edition. I started blogging in May of 2007 at the original WCU on Wordpress, then was invited to join the denialism blog here at Sb, and then decided to reclaim my brand. It's been a helluva year, blogging-wise, and I like to thank you all for your traffic, your time, and your comments.

I don't know if Garrison Keillor is anti-semitic and I don't really care, but the question was raised by his Christmas editorial at Salon.com. After reading it last month I decided I had nothing to say about it. Who really cares what Garrison Keillor says, right? This morning I was on my way to work and yesterday's Prairie Home Companion came on. I found my hand reaching for the dial to change the channel. Then I realized why I haven't been able to get this out of my head. I've been listening to PHC for about 20 years. I always enjoyed the quirky humor and most of all the music. When I…

New Year's Eve. This is a profoundly arbitrary designation---the end of the year, end of the decade---really, there is nothing about December 31st that's any different than any other day. But for historical reasons, this is the secular new year. Looking back on the last 12 or 13 months I can say that I'm happy we're marking a new year and hoping the next year is better. Even though the New Year holiday takes place at an arbitrary time, as human beings, we look to it as a chance to improve, to change, to have hope. My wish for the new year is better health for my family and friends. What…

Merry Christmas to my readers who celebrate this one. For those of you who do, you may sometimes wonder what those of us who don't are doing today. Well, I find that Christmas is a great time to work at the hospital. It gives my Christian colleagues a break. Here in Michigan Jewish groups have traditionally worked various missions and shelters to give Christian charity workers a break. This year local Muslims will be joining Jews to help out. Detroit has large and strong Muslim and Jewish communities, and anything that brings them together is generally a very good thing. Conflicts…

There are so many things I want to blog about today, but the muse just isn't with me. But I have a deal with myself to at least put out a little something once or twice a day (and my diet updates don't count). Things I'm happy about today: I'm keeping to my diet very well. My child is not only surviving kindergarten but wants to be dropped off and have me disappear. Things I'm finding painful today: I'm keeping to my diet very well. My child is not only surviving kindergarten but wants to be dropped off and have me disappear.

The "summer without summer" continues with fall blowing in early. Sitting outside with the kiddo yesterday we found a garter snake sunning itself (and it was pretty big for a garter snake!). Despite the strong north wind, we hopped on the bike and rode up to the school where she'll be starting kindergarten in a couple of weeks. This isn't a hilly part of the country, but when you're a bit out of shape and pulling seventy pounds of nearly dead weight, even a little rise slows you down. PalKid had plenty of questions about why I was going so slow (annoying) and about what the gears do (not…

It's about time! Thanks to some terrific folks, like my buddy JB, we are having our first SE Michigan Skeptics in the Pub. This is an informal pilot, originally a small get-together, but seems to be growing. If you're in SE Michigan and want to have a beer with a group of like-minded folks, including this blogger, and perhaps some other better-known bloggers, c'mon down.

Thankfully, I'm not a week into this lifestyle change yet, because I'm getting good advice from experts. I know from my reading, that certain foods are better at inducing a durable sense of satiety, and I've been trying to incorporate these foods. For example, my typical lunch of late has been a good salad with either a few ounces of grilled chicken breast or a hard boiled egg on it, and a nice portion of melon. This gives me a meal with a high volume of fruits and veggies, but still some fats and proteins. I think, and we'll see what the experts say, that it is a bit too carbohydrate-…

So, Dear Readers, I've been "dieting", that is, changing my lifestyle now for nearly a week, with some success. Lots of people have their own advice, their own stories, their own beliefs. One fascinating discussion is about whether one must or will necessarily be hungry when eating right. My contention is that most overweight people feel hungry, defined as a desire to eat more, if they have a negative calorie balance. BUT.... As one super-hot physiologist has pointed out, there are ways to mitigate this. I say "mitigate" because I really think that there are some people who, if the…