Narcissistic self-involvement

If you like the new banner, kudos goes to Matt Yarbrough. I don't really know who he is, but he was kind enough to design a banner and work with the picky blogger on a font. For the rest of the info on the image and copyrights, see the About page.
I'm normally not one to believe in the improbable, but someone has laid some serious ju-ju on me. While away at my fabulous geek-cation, my computer bit it, my furnace at home died, and....(God, I can hardly type it...)...MY DSL WENT DOWN!!!1! Just in time for the launch of my brand-spanking-new blog, just in time for me to share all of my insightful thoughts from ScienceOnline09, my tech life imploded. So please, dear reader, give me a few days to try to fix everything (meh, the furnace can wait...it's above zero. But the computer and teh tubes...NOOO!!!)
So, remember that little summary I gave you a few weeks ago? You know, the one where I sort of laid out my blog history, etc.? Well, I have to amend that. You see, as I was writing, I realized how much I missed my White Coat Underground. It's silly really, because it's just a name, a label, but it's my label, and I just love the darned thing. When I started up the PalCast, I used the WCU name, and it's just all sort of been falling into place---as I expand my web activities, I want my own space to stretch out and be at home. But... While my own writing is the reason I'm a successful…
There's no way a day can be entirely predictable, but I do like sharing a glimpse into the personal/professional life every once in a while. You see, the personal and professional can't be so easily disentangled, and whether you are a physician, scientist, grad student, or barrista, you only have one "real life". 0600: Pager. Nurse reports Mrs. M. has a very high fever and foul-smelling urine. I order cultures and antibiotics, and wander sleepily toward bathroom. 0605: Offspring bursts into bathroom excitedly. "Daddy, I had an accident and I was a little wet and I changed my diaper and my…
There's been a lot of talk about the work hours of resident physicians. Given that sleep deprivation has been shown to impair various aspects of human performance, it certainly seems reasonable to limit the level of "resident impairment". But we have surprisingly little data to work from. And, for better or worse, physicians post-residency don't have much of a choice when it comes to work hours. My wife often remarks on how I'm able to answer a page out of a deep sleep, give orders, and go back to sleep. Upon morning review, these orders do, in fact, make sense. It was my training that…
Aside from taking 4th year medical school classes it's also the time of year that medical students who plan to graduate in 2009 (like me) are applying to residency programs across the country. This is an interesting process and one that many people outside of medicine are unfamiliar with, and quite surprised by. For one, did you know that we don't have final say on where we train in residency but that the decision is made by a computer? It's true. The process is called "the Match" and it's a time of great excitement and anxiety for 4th year medical students. For one, there are far more…
Perhaps because I don't blog anonymously, or maybe for other reasons, I don't write that much about my personal life. That kind of writing can be self-important, insipid, and boring. But it can also have real power. A number of the anonymous bloggers here describe the intersection of the scientific life and family life with powerful relevance. Still, that's not my talent, and I don't do it much. One of my med school classmates, when I showed him one of my first pieces, said, "that's good, Pal, but how do you feel?" That has always stuck with me (thanks, S!), and it's in that spirit, and…
I told you earlier about Proposal 2, a proposed constitutional amendment here in Michigan. The lies being spread about this proposal are thick and vicious. Orac also goes into a bit of detail about the dishonest tactics being used, mostly by religious groups, to try and stop this prop. Just to remind you, Prop 2 would prevent the state and local governments in Michigan from passing laws against human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research that are any more restrictive than federal law. That's about it. The law does not set up any government agencies, taxes, fees or mandates. It only keeps…
What Chad said. Fastest post ever.
On Saturday, I'll be heading up north. Way up north. To the north where the precious intertubes do not reach, where pagers are for skipping across the water, and cellphones are coasters. It's that far north. I'm going to take pictures, and take notes, and my plan is to have a bunch of non-medical, non-debunking posts to write when I get back. I think. Anyway, just because we aren't posting a ton over the next week doesn't mean you should delete the feed.
I almost forgot! It's my blogiversary! On May 21st of 2007, I opened my Wordpress blog after keeping a few notes on Blogger, which I didn't love. I started out blogging about the abomination that is Conservapedia, added my own medical musings that I had collected over the years, and then branched out into the world of medical science, skepticism, and whatever else I wanted to do. In the 10 months I was at Wordpress, I published 332 posts. In my first full month online, I had 381 visits. In August of 2007, I had almost 22,000 page views. In March of this year, the Hoofnagle brothers…
There's been some chat around here regarding why people blog. I'll leave out the entire matter of why people write in the first place---that topic is so well covered in undergrad, there's no reason to try to add to an already voluminous literature. But why blog? Well, anyone can do it. I don't have to apply for a job, submit samples---I don't even have to be good. I can just type away to my heart's content. So lack of ambition and talent could explain a large segment of the blogosphere. But that's too cynical even for me. Some bloggers truly enjoy the less formal area of communication,…