terrasig | August 26, 2008[Sort of a repost from the last two years, updated appropriately - APB]
Six years ago at 11:24 am EDT (1624 GMT), your humble blogger was handed the keys to a whole new vocabulary of love.
The gift came in the form of a 7 lb. 13 oz. (3,544 gm), 20.5 inch (52 cm) bundle of drooling, peeing, meconium-pooping bundle of baby girl, yanked from an incision in PharmGirl's abdomen.
The lessons of compassion and unconditional love I have been taught by these two women have comprised the most formative experiences of my life.
In return, PharmGirl has suffered tremendous indignancies on my behalf: the…
terrasig | August 26, 2008I was surfing around the DNC site last night and came upon this nice addendum to yesterday's post: a series of videos about the Denver area narrated by a proud native and six-term Congresswoman Diana Degette (D-CO, 1st).
I was reminded while going through 5280 magazine that Rep. Degette had written a book about the war on science by the Republicans called, "Sex, Science, and Stem Cells: Inside the Right-Wing Assault on Reason." (Actually the book was "co-written" with Daniel Paisner, the amazingly prolific and self-effacing "author, ghost-writer, reasonably nice buy.").
I'm a little short…
terrasig | August 25, 2008Get me in my 1977 Chevy pickup with KBCO blasting from the radio, head up for a trail run at the Dakota Ridge Red Rocks Trail near the I-70 geologic cutout (the hypoxia makes the colors seem even more intense), then back to town to the Wynkoop Brewing Company for a few pints of Railyard Ale and fish and chips.
That's where I'd be right now instead of inside the Pepsi Center or at Tent State University (although outside is always better than inside in Colorado).
I'm trying to dig some science out of this week's Democratic National Convention being held in Denver this week, other than ranting…
terrasig | August 22, 2008As a former resident of The Queen City of the Plains, my goal today was to write some travel tips for those bloggers attending the DNC in Denver next week.
However, I got a bit sidetracked by the case a couple of weeks ago about the gentleman who died of cyanide poisoning at a hotel near the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. You'll recall that "a pound" of sodium cyanide was also found with his dead body in room 408 of The Burnsley Hotel at 10th Ave. & Grant St. one needs only 50-100 mg of sodium cyanide to kill oneself so I still don't know what the other 453.9 grams was intended for.…
terrasig | August 20, 2008Many thanks to science and medical senior writer Cathy Arnst of BusinessWeek for the unexpected coverage online a couple of days ago in their Working Parents blog.
Ms Arnst cited Terra Sig and one of our previous posts in discussing the additional FTC settlement funds to be provided by the makers of Airborne for false claims to consumers:
For background on the charges against the product check out the informative blog terra sigillata, by a pharmacologist, which pulls apart false claims made on behalf of natural remedies (in fact, he pulls apart false medical claims in general--a blog worth…
terrasig | August 18, 2008I'm sure this question has been addressed in the educational literature to which I do not currently have electronic access.
The question for the day is whether a department that has, say, a 10-year record of awarding tenure to every faculty member who has come up for evaluation is one that has standards that are too low.
One might argue that such an outcome would be the result of outstanding and prescient recruiting of new faculty. Alternatively, superb resources and an enriching collaborative environment might promote such a culture of success.
Another reason might be that underperforming…
terrasig | August 17, 2008I am officially embarrassed.
It was recently brought to my attention that my previous post misattributed the new Praxis blog to Bora Zivkovic.
Bora did indeed host the first edition of Praxis, the new blog carnival of academic life.
However.
The Praxis experimental carnival of "the experience of living the scientific" was established, founded, and otherwise continues to be led by Martin, author of The Lay Scientist blog.
Mini Bio:
Well I'm Martin, I live in Cambridge, England, and this is me on the Amazon in 2007. I did a frankly weird Ph.D. looking at the relationship between models from…
terrasig | August 16, 2008CORRECTION: The following was to be a part-sincere/part-serious sendup of my buddy Bora's penchant for monitoring the entire Internet. Bora did indeed host the first edition of Praxis, the new blog carnival of academic life.
However.
The Praxis experimental carnival of "the experience of living the scientific" was established, founded, and otherwise continues to be led by Martin, author of The Lay Scientist blog.
Mini Bio:
Well I'm Martin, I live in Cambridge, England, and this is me on the Amazon in 2007. I did a frankly weird Ph.D. looking at the relationship between models from ecology,…
terrasig | August 15, 2008The statin class of cholesterol-lowering agents is rich with history and lessons in the power of natural products, the potential of the prepared mind, and just how precarious the path of drug development can be.
American Scientist, the official publication of the scientific research society Sigma Xi, hosts this issue an absolutely lovely article entitled, "Statins: From Fungus to Pharma."
Expertly and engagingly written by University of Pennsylvania biology professor Dr Philip A Rea, the article launches with the story of a then-young Japanese biochemist, Akira Endo. (Evidence of my…
terrasig | August 13, 2008Most people know of methadone as a long-term substitution therapy for people addicted to heroin, morphine, or other similar drugs called opiates or opioids. A good, free full-text description of methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) can be found in the 15 June 2001 issue of American Family Physician.
Now, in the 1 August 2008 issue of Cancer Research, Claudia Friesen and colleagues at the University of Ulm report that methadone can kill leukemia cells in culture and reverse acquired resistance to other drugs like doxorubicin (Adriamycin). Press reports to this effect appeared at the beginning…
terrasig | August 11, 2008After a long sit on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport, I'm home from the ScienceBlogs blogger and reader meet-up. Many thanks to all of you readers who came out on Saturday to meet the bloggers at Social Pub, sponsored jointly by Seed Media Group and NYC Skeptics.
The threatened anti-vaccination crowd did not materialize and I had a delightful time chatting with Dr Val Jones of the Voice of Reason blog, Peter Frishauf, founder of Medscape, one of the Medgadget proprietors, a reader named Dawn whose blog I cannot remember right now, and Steve, a pharma/biotech attorney.
Dr Val was totally…
terrasig | August 7, 2008So said Seth Grahame-Smith on Tuesday about the Paris Hilton video that responds to John McCain's ad comparing she and Britney Spears to Barack Obama.
I first saw the video when I was going to respond to a very nice comment here by Lisa Emrich, blogger at Brass and Ivory, musician extraordinaire, and founder of the Carnival of MS Bloggers. (btw, Brass and Ivory is widely regarded as one of the premiere sites not only for information on MS but, perhaps even more so, as providing tremendous insight on living with a disability - Lisa is a terrific writer).
So rather than post the video here, go…
terrasig | August 6, 2008It appears that a number of bloggers who write under the ScienceBlogs.com masthead will be converging on New York City this coming weekend. For those of you who know my background, I simply call this "The City."
I mentioned earlier that it was unlikely that I would be there due to family and job commitments (and the fact that my sister and her family were elsewhere that weekend when we could've otherwise had a lovely family gathering).
But with the generous blessings of PharmGirl and PharmKid, I will indeed venture to New Amsterdam for about 32 hours that will include the highly-touted 'meet…
terrasig | August 4, 2008It's a lovely crescent moon this evening up here in the Northern Hemisphere so I can't blame the latest unbelievable and irrational happenings on a full moon (which would be unscientific, of course). Okay, maybe sunspots?
First, the Bush administration was proposing draft legislation to grant medical professionals the right to withhold care, prescriptions, etc., based upon religious beliefs or other objections by reclassifying birth control pills and IUDs as "abortion." PalMD covered this among others, but reminded me of several of my old posts on my objections to pharmacists refusing to…
terrasig | August 2, 2008
Yes, I owned this album when it first came out in 1978.
A recent post by Prof Matt Nisbet raised some Saturday night reflections for me as to how one measures one's impact as a blogger if one is so inclined to do so. But does this apparent impact or "influence" actually mean anything?
I've got to admit: I'm a numbers guy. When I first started this blog on Blogger, I was so stoked to see when more than 10 people per day were dialing up. I was delighted when I started getting international visitors and, moreover, those international folks would actually come back.
That is the intoxication…
terrasig | August 1, 2008This morning our dear friend and colleague whose wine escapades often fill this spot awoke to the rewards of retirement. My senior cancer research colleague, Erleichda, has just closed the book on 30 years with a single pharmaceutical company, unheard of in today's climate of layoffs and jumping from one company to the next.
My friend began in this industry when it was still considered a noble pursuit and continued to be an ambassador for all that is good about pharmaceutical research & development, with his primary concern the welfare of those stricken with cancer and the cultivation…
terrasig | July 30, 2008Unlike the blogosphere and some unhinged stakeholders, I've been quietly watching the PZ Myers crackergate episode unfold. My concerns have been less theological than educational, primarily because I am the beneficiary of an arm of the University of Florida public higher education system.
I've been beating my head against the wall as to why the leadership and student government of the University of Central Florida in Orlando would be taking such drastic action against Webster Cook. Cook is the student who took a consecrated communion wafer uneaten from a Sunday 29 June Catholic service at…
terrasig | July 26, 2008Jake Young, the MD/PhD student blogging at Pure Pedantry, has a great post this week on the detection of a novel formulation of the erythropoiesis stimulating agent (ESA) erythropoietin in Riccardo Riccó, the Italian cyclist who was thrown out of the Tour de France. Jake's post is a superb primer on the use of this peptide hormone as a therapeutic agent (in the anemia caused by kidney failure and in cancer chemotherapy).
His essay also reminds me that I commented on this issue at DrugMonkey's a post exactly a week ago (and from this same couch at my local coffee shop while waiting for…
terrasig | July 25, 2008Yes, I know that my science blogging has been light as of late but I couldn't resist putting up this article I found in today's local fishwrapper.
Two of the most polarizing names in American politics and US collegiate athletics, respectively, come together as Rudy Giuliani's son sues Duke University for being booted from their NCAA men's golf team.
DURHAM - Andrew Giuliani, son of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and a rising senior at Duke University, is the latest in a wave of Blue Devil students to take grievances from the playing fields or classrooms to the courthouse.
Giuliani, no…
terrasig | July 22, 2008As you may have read elsewhere on ScienceBlogs, a bunch o' bloggers will be converging on New York City ("The City" as I knew it growing up) on Saturday, 9 August.
Seed Media Group, the host of this blog network, is proposing a meet the bloggers session sometime around 3 pm EDT somewhere in the city - certainly air-conditioned - and will offer some swag, a few vittles, and other such items of pleasure beyond the opportunity to meet the faces behind these words. I've been told that I have a great face for radio.
I was not originally not scheduled to attend as my sort-of-local sister will be…