Blogging community
terrasig | February 24, 2008Following last week's outtakes from church bulletins, the synthetic organic chemist who goes by Milkshake of Org Prep Daily sent along this for our pleasure.
terrasig | February 22, 2008I am very deeply touched (as I was literally yesterday) by the outpouring of support and best wishes from fellow bloggers on the liveblogging of my vasectomy.
For all of the dark humor and puns, you have each been instrumental in supporting my aim of telling men relatively quick and painless the procedure is, or at least getting them to think about this as a contraceptive alternative to having their wives undergo a more involved tubal ligation.
I'll still never understand what makes things fly in the blogosphere as I spend hours writing what I think are thoughtful posts about drug safety…
terrasig | February 21, 2008Back in January several science bloggers had an exchange that degenerated into discussion of the process and aftermath of the vasectomy.
Well, as PhysioProf is wont to say, today I will sack up, literally. As part of my gift to PharmGirl for her [significant] bday next week I will undergo the knife this afternoon to render me no longer able to contribute to the gene pool. Of course, I won't be completely sperm-free until 20 to 30 post-operative ejaculations, the thought of which brings me great comfort. We have had one child and do not anticipate wanting any more - we got us a good one the…
terrasig | February 19, 2008For more details on this story, you can go to Mark Chu-Carroll, Orac, Mike the Mad Biologist, or the Autism Blog. I just wanted to share my personal views on the need for childhood vaccinations and support a public information campaign from the AAP.
Until I started medical blogging, I had not realized quite how vocal was the community of individuals refusing to vaccinate their children, mostly at the urging of those who claimed that vaccines and related components caused illness in their own children. I will first say that no drug product, natural or otherwise, is completely and absolutely…
terrasig | February 13, 2008
We comply with the HONcode standard for trustworthy healthinformation: verify here.
Regular readers may note that I have been diddling with the content of my left sidebar and posting a new disclaimer tab to indicate the accuracy and objectivity of the health information presented herein.
I added these details as part of my application for accreditation by the Swiss-based Health on the Net (HON) Foundation, a non-profit organization formed in 1996 to deal with the then-new issue of how a reader can determine the quality and objectivity of medical information on a website. You…
terrasig | February 9, 2008I'm an engineer. But a comparatively weird engineer: a feminist, radical, social justice-y engineer. In my research, I combine theoretical frameworks from women's studies, sociology, science and technology studies to apply to the study of engineering and engineering education - I like to think of my work as feminist engineering research.
With that introduction, Dr Alice Pawley joins ScienceWoman at On being a scientist and a woman.
Welcome, Alice - we look forward to some great discussions and commentary.
terrasig | February 5, 2008For those looking for some new material here, I wanted to say that I spent my energy on the first post of the week for a piece over at the ScienceBlogs editor's blog, Page 3.14.
Readers may recall that I sang the praises of the DrugMonkey blog here a few weeks ago on the occasion of their first anniversary in the blogosphere at their old site. With their joining the Sb network, new ScienceBlogs community manager, Virginia Hughes, asked me to write a welcome/introductory post to recognize my new colleagues, DrugMonkey and PhysioProf. (Ginny is an awesome blogger in her own right, here and at…
terrasig | February 3, 2008Many of us who are principal investigators of academic research laboratories operate essentially as CEOs of our little empires. Therefore, I throw out to the Terra Sig readership a very interesting Sunday morning story entitled, "Bloggin' Bosses", by Frank Nelson of the Raleigh News & Observer.
Of course, true CEO bloggers have to contend with somewhat bigger issues and must always use their real names:
Angry customers swarmed Burt's Bees in November as soon as the all-natural cosmetics maker announced plans to sell itself.
Critics consider the buyer, bleach maker Clorox, to be far from…
terrasig | January 23, 2008Plenty of e-ink has already been spilled regarding the panel on "Changing Minds Through Science Communication: a panel on Framing Science," from this past weekend's NC Science Blogging Conference (see Larry Moran, Rick MacPherson, Molly Keener, and Ryan Somma for examples). The panel was the least "unconference" session of the meeting, beginning with 10 min presentations from ocean conservationist and marine biology bloggers Jennifer Jacquet and Sheril Kirshenbaum followed by Chris Mooney, Sheril's co-blogger, freelance writer, and author of The Republican War on Science and Storm World.…
terrasig | January 23, 2008Via Berci Meskó at Science Roll, I learned that the medblogger-formerly-known-as Flea has just given his first detailed interview since shutting down his blog during his pediatric malpractice case. Fellow physician, Orac, had a characteristically complete commentary on the situation that included the admonition not to blog about one's own ongoing malpractice trial. I also recall being shocked at the time that Flea would make off-color comments about the plaintiff attorney's bedroom habits.
In his interview on Eric Turkewitz's New York Personal Injury Law Blog, Dr Robert "Flea" Lindeman…
terrasig | January 20, 2008. . . but in a good way. I'm working frantically on a project due 31 Jan and then spent much of the weekend at various blogger gatherings associated with the NC Science Blogging Conference, the second annual unconference for those interested in writing about science topics for all audiences.
The conference was bracketed by a well-attended Friday evening dinner and a Sunday brunch, the former with Jim Neal, a Democratic candidate for US Senate, and the latter with Representative Brad Miller (D-NC) from Carolina's 13th District.
I could go on and on about all of the great people I met but…
terrasig | January 18, 2008We're a little bit late here in wishing the DrugMonkey blog a happy 1st blogiversary. Contributors DrugMonkey, BikeMonkey, and PhysioProf have had a very productive year of offering valuable career advice for graduate and postgraduate trainees in the biomedical sciences, general discussions on NIH grant funding, and various topics in neuroscience.
The sci/med blogosphere is populated quite heavily by graduate students, medical students, and postdoctoral fellows. This situation is perhaps easy to explain in that most of these trainees are of an age that is comfortable with social networking…
terrasig | January 12, 2008The word on the e-streets is that DrugMonkey co-blogger, PhysioProf, has hung out a new shingle at. . .PhysioProf, the blog. (So as not to confuse the issues, DrugMonkey is the lead blogger at DrugMonkey the blog. . .does that make sense?).
But we get the best of both worlds: PhysioProf will still be continuing his more academic gig at DrugMonkey.
PhysioProf has been a thoughtful commenter 'round these parts and has been a strength over at DM, especially with regard to academic research, funding, career development, and general issues such as how not to screw up one's own faculty interview…
terrasig | January 5, 2008The e-ink wasn't even dry last night on my Friday Fermentable post about the Flying Dog Open Source Beer project before I received a comment from Josh Mishell, Creative Manager for the brewery:
Thanks for writing about our Open Source Beer! $12.79 is a great deal, considering we sell it out of our tasting room for $18, as well.
By a strange stroke of luck, your blog entry is very timely. Today is the first Friday of the month, and every first Friday, beer bloggers everywhere write on a common theme (we call it "The Session"). I think it's a unique thing in the blogger world, and love being a…
terrasig | January 4, 2008I'm very excited to announce to Terra Sig readers the kickoff of a new group blog called Science Based Medicine. Yes, it may sound odd that one would need to preface "Medicine" with the qualifier, "Science-Based," but therein lies the goal of this new resource from its mission statement:
Safe and effective health care is critical to to everyone's quality of life; so much so that it is generally considered a basic human right. The best method for determining which interventions and health products are safe and effective is, without question, good science. Therefore it is in everyone's best…
terrasig | December 15, 2007On this day in 2005 we first signed on to the blogosphere on the original Terra Sigillata at Blogger. I had spent over six months reading the blogs of other in the areas of medicine and science and wondered if there was any need for yet another blog from another frustrated scientist. But I'm an academician stuck in a position where I don't teach full-time. I really used to enjoy beginning my pharmacology lectures with little vignettes about the latest drug news or some information about an herb or dietary supplement. I've also been fortunate to have a lot of clinical colleagues who would…
terrasig | December 14, 2007I learned via Kevin, MD, of a great new BlogTalkRadio show by Ohio physician, Doctor Anonymous. BlogTalkRadio is pretty neat in that you get video of the host, audio of the interview, and a chat window on which listeners can post a running commentary and discussion of the show. I got to "meet" Sid Schwab and Dr. Val, two frequent commenters as well as those whose blogs I read.
Last night, Dr. A interviewed Mexico Med Student, Enrico, who is currently a 3rd year med student at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara (UAG) School of Medicine in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Dr. Val was supposed to be…
terrasig | December 10, 2007Yes! "A Call for a Presidential Debate on Science & Technology."
Imagine a presidential debate focused solely on issues of science and technology as they relate to medicine, international competitiveness, terrorism, public health, embryonic stem cell research, bioethics of genotyping and other molecular diagnostics, research policy/funding and job creation, or minimization of health disparities, among others.
Science Debate 2008 is a grassroots initiative spearheaded by a growing number of scientists and other concerned citizens. The signatories to our "Call for a Presidential Debate on…
terrasig | November 30, 2007There's a great interview up at the website of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center's BT Catalyst with Dr Chris Brodie, associate editor of American Scientist magazine, a publication of the Sigma Xi scientific research society. Chris recently helped to organize a new organization called Science Communicators of North Carolina (SCONC) and speaks with terrific clarity on the changing world for scientists wishing to be involved in public discourse:
In the culture of academic science, the first priority is to secure grants, followed by publishing scientific papers, teaching, administration…
terrasig | November 28, 2007...and we thank you.
If you look down yonder left, you'll see that my SiteMeter counter passed 100,000 visits earlier today.
To be precise, a visitor from the University of Edinburgh's Moray House Institute of Education dialed into ScienceBlogs' 'Last 24 Hours' channel at 2037 GMT and clicked on my post about yesterday's death of Dr Robert Cade, the renal physiologist who formulated Gatorade. (So that readers don't get nervous, SiteMeter doesn't track in any greater detail than that.).
So, a great many thanks to my Scottish reader for being #100,000. If I knew who you were and could be…