terrasig | June 5, 2009
Just a quick note to dial up Ira Flatow's Science Friday show on NPR today at 3 pm EDT. Supporting information and the archived show can be found here.
Guy-who-I-would-kill-to-be, Tom Levenson, will be on with Ira to speak about his new book, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist.
Here is also a link to other appearances Professor Levenson will be having related to the book.
For those of you who don't know Thomas Levenson, he is currently a Professor, Interim Program Head, and Director of the Graduate Program in Science Writing at the…
terrasig | May 31, 2009When one thinks of a heroin user, thoughts most often come to mind of a person living in squalor in a big metropolitan city or that of an artsy, poetic hipster (while there are many literary works on the life of heroin users, my all-time favorite is Basketball Diaries, an autobiographical account written by Jim Carroll during the ages of 12 to 15. From this description of Carroll's two works on his life with heroin at the catholicboy.com website of Carroll scholar, Dr Cassie Carter: "After reading about 30 pages of the Diaries, [Jack] Kerouac stated that 'at the age of 13, Jim Carroll writes…
terrasig | May 30, 2009I was tagged with a meme by BikeMonkey (whose initials "BM" make me laugh) at Sun Dappled Forest a few days ago but didn't have a chance to get to it.
Post your best/worst covers and tag some more muppethuggers. Oh and do a linkback to whomever tagged you if it wasn't me.
In the meantime, several of those tagged have posted many of those songs that the world agrees are among the best covers of all time: The Jimi Hendrix Experience's "All Along The Watchtower" is phenomenal and so beyond comparison that even its creator, Bob Dylan, is on the record as loving it so much that he adopted Hendrix…
terrasig | May 28, 2009A recent discussion with some of my neuropharmacology colleagues led me to go back through the cobwebs and revisit the Terra Sig archives for posts on drugs of abuse. The following was my third post ever and the first on actual scientific substance (the first two were introductions: a hello post and an explanation of what the heck Terra Sigillata actually is).
The following post appeared at the Blogspot home of Terra Sigillata on 26 December 2005.
Let me start by saying that the draconian US laws in the 'war against drugs' would ever prevent the following from happening here:
Sounds like a…
terrasig | May 24, 2009Award-winning investigative journalist friend, Barry Yeoman, passes along this morning a fantastic post from awesome local Durham, NC, blog, Bull City Rising.
Heh. Rising.
Now Men's Health magazine has given Durham another trumpeting tribute, having taken a long, hard look at one of the rankings that only such a periodical could bring.
Durham found itself in stiff competition -- one hundred other cities and metro areas, to be precise -- but stood tall to prevail, ranking sixth in the U.S. among...
...cities that don't need Viagra.
Just what we need: another reason for the University-That-…
terrasig | May 23, 2009
The US Food and Drug Administration is usually the first federal authority to take action on adverse event reports for any health product. But few appreciate that the FDA is also responsible for regulation of cosmetic products: pretty much anything applied to the skin.
So, it was no surprise when I was trolling the FDA adverse event reports and news releases to find their announcement of a recall of a number of children's face paints due to rashes and undue skin irritation. The products are manufactured by Shanghai Color Art Stationery Company Limited, Shanghai, China.
The original recall…
terrasig | May 20, 2009About four years ago, I started reading blogs. One of those, Respectful Insolence, was written by a surgical oncologist who writes under the name, Orac. This was before he was asked to be at ScienceBlogs and about a year before Terra Sig was. He has since become my friend and colleague.
Orac is one of the most consistently excellent medical bloggers in the sci/med blogosphere. But today's post resonated exceptionally with me. In discussing the ongoing case of Daniel Hauser, a young man with Hodgkin's lymphoma whose parents are fighting to withhold his chemotherapy, Orac writes a concise,…
terrasig | May 19, 2009
Although I saw this obituary over the weekend, I didn't get to posting it until today. I was reminded by a local friend, an outstanding young scientist in her own right, of the impact that Dr Schanberg had made on so, so many lives in science, medicine, and our larger community.
I only had the honor of meeting Dr Schanberg once, shortly after his cancer diagnosis, while we were at a Duke Cancer Patient Support Center fundraising dinner. His wife of over 50 years, Rachel, is founder and former director of the organization which they started following the loss of their own daughter.
Among…
terrasig | May 16, 2009So it's a bit late on a Saturday here and I will not try to snow you into thinking that I actually had a Friday Fermentable post that I just accidentally forgot to post yesterday.
However, I wanted to leave you with a link to a column by the husband and wife wine columnists for "Tastinggs" at the Wall Street Journal, Dorothy J Gaiter and John Brecher. Dottie and John capture the vibrancy of wine and its role in celebrating life like no other pair in the business.
They are serious but are not snobs - they encourage the full enjoyment of life that includes wine. Plus, they are the only wine…
terrasig | May 15, 2009Well, it's mid-May at 36° North, the honeysuckles are blooming, my allergies are miserable, the air is damp, and that can only mean one thing: the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting is nearly upon us.
Held this year beginning on 29 May, the annual ASCO meeting coincides with all sorts of announcements of miracle cancer drugs and the sound of cash changing hands. Although being held in Orlando, Florida, this is far from a Mickey Mouse operation; in fact, the buzz of bullion here rivals that of the Walt Disney empire. With the abstracts released last night at 6 pm EDT,…
terrasig | May 13, 2009
Ski Train? Wasn't that the title of a Cat Stevens song?
I was just getting around to putting up a science post when I just received a Tweet from my Rocky Mountain peeps at Denver's Westword magazine, the indy pub of the Queen City of the Plains. (Actually, this is kind of a science post because I did a lot of science in Denver.).
In his post, "Video: Goodbye, Ski Train! We'll think of you the day we finally punch Phil Anschutz," Jared Jacang Maher writes:
The train had been making trips between Denver and Winter Park since 1940. The operation was owned by local billionaire Phil Anschutz. […
terrasig | May 10, 2009
This is for all of my peeps in SW Florida and all who love folk music. I received a lovely e-mail last week from Robin Leach, wife of mandolin player Dan Leach (and mother of bassist Andy Leach), who came upon my posts about a very special musician. Dan played with a gentleman named 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.
Yesterday, my friends celebrated Steve's life and…
terrasig | May 9, 2009I'm having trouble writing today for various reasons. However, let me leave you with two signs I've encountered today. I like signs.
terrasig | May 8, 2009I was having a lovely conversation this week with scribbler50, our beloved blogging bartender at Behind The Stick. Describing him as "just" a blogger does not do him justice; scribbler50 is a writer. If you haven't been over to Brother Scribb's crib, do yourself a favor and read a few of his essays. In fact, read the whole archives.
Scribb and I got into a discussion of wine connoisseurs sometimes being as pretentious and annoying as the single malt scotch drinkers about which he has written with piercing accuracy and humor. Thinking that perhaps he had offended me, he qualified the…
terrasig | May 8, 2009Each summer, the fair City of New York plays host to a cosmic convergence of bloggers within the ScienceBlogs.com corral. It's a great time to meet all the folks we know very well online, but perhaps not IRL. Moreover, we had a really nice reader meetup last year where - thank you very much - all four of you came to see me, including Dr Val of Better Health and Peter Frishauf, Medscape founder.
The planning for this summer's gathering has led to the two following posts. One is a throwing-down-of-the-gaunlet by Isis the Scientist to Ed Brayton, challenging him to a duel over the 40 oz…
terrasig | May 7, 2009The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has long had programs to make available to researchers any variety of compounds, natural and synthetic. These offerings are administered by the Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP) of the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD).
So, I was very happy to see this e-mail last evening:
Dear Colleague,
I am pleased to announce that the NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis can now bring a new, important resource to drug discovery efforts. Oncology drugs that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration are being offered in…
terrasig | May 6, 2009The other day I wrote about a really nice post someone wrote about a cardiologist with whom I have had a relationship since postdoc years.
I also have several physician friends and colleagues IRL and on these interblogs who must constantly be questioned about their motives, their pharma connections, etc.
Let me state from this place and time: t
There are far more physicians who uphold our idealistic Rockwellian view of them than not.
Two years ago, I shared a cab with a doc on his way to a basic and clinical cancer research meeting focused on an organ we both study. Good guy. I might have…
terrasig | May 5, 2009I wanted to contribute to today's discussion of anti-vaccinationist, pseudoscience-pawning Jenny McCarthy being given not only an appearance on Oprah but, as reported by Orac, a deal with Oprah's production company for her own show.
The public attention that Jenny McCarthy's rants have gotten were bad enough. But, now, to have the soapbox of one of the most influential names in society?
I had to go outside the science blogging community with this. So, I wrote to the Philadelphia attorney who writes the award-winning blog, Field Negro.
Good evening, Counselor,
I know that your view of Oprah…
terrasig | May 5, 2009Bear with me this morning because I am growing very weary of my physician colleagues enduring all sorts of haranguing for being hateful, pharma shills who only want to cut, burn, and poison.
I was extremely fortunate, personally and professionally, to train in two clinical units with strong basic science programs. As such, I worked at the bench with MD fellows and we schooled each other on our respective strengths. I loved when when my colleagues would come back from clinic and tell me of experiences that put our bench work in real world perspective. Yes, not all bench work is immediately…
terrasig | May 4, 2009My clinical counterpart, surgical oncologist Dr David Gorski, has an excellent post up today at Science-Based Medicine on the irresponsible and misleading information being provided at The Huffington Post during the current H5N1/2009 influenza ("swine flu") outbreak. "The Huffington Post's War on Medical Science: A Brief History" provides a cautionary tale for us in embracing web-based news sources as our excellent print newspapers are going by the wayside.
Within the post, Dr Gorski shows that he is even more familiar with my writing than myself by citing a post at the old Terra Sig on the…