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terrasig | March 9, 2007On this day in 1957,
A magnitude 9.1 earthquake shook the Andreanof Islands in Alaska, the second strongest quake in U.S. history (although Alaska would not become the 49th state until more than a year later), generating a tsunami that hit the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat (Day-O) was number 6 on the Cashbox Top 50 music charts.
Faith Daniels, former news anchor (CBS-TV), and Jon Engen Oslo Norway, US biathlete (Olympics-1994) were born.
And, sharing the birthdate with them is our own PZ Myers of Pharyngula and the University of Minnesota at Morris.
Happy 50th…
terrasig | January 31, 2007Pharmaceutical chemist, Derek Lowe, at Corante's In the Pipeline notes that yesterday was the end of his employment at the Wonder Drug Factory due to a site closure. I've admired Dr Lowe since I began reading blogs because he puts a human face on the travails of a bench-level pharmaceutical industry researcher. His thoughtful discussions of chemistry, the industry, and careers for young scientists has put Derek at the top of my reading list most mornings.
Despite the missteps often attributed to pharma execs or marketers, Derek shows that the average pharma scientist is just like the rest…
terrasig | January 22, 2007The 2007 NC Science Blogging Conference came off as a great success thanks to the vision, passion, and general butt-busting of Anton Zuiker, Bora, Brian, and Paul and the sharing of wisdom by all the speakers. A fellow health professional-turned-journalist remarked to me that professional meeting planners couldn't have done a better job. Organization, advertising, facilities, securing sponsor support, and publishing a blog anthology would have been overwhelming to a group five times the size. Thank you all!
A comprehensive list of posts surrounding the entire conference was put together by…
terrasig | December 20, 2006Hearty congratulations go out to fellow ScienceBloggers Orac (Respectful Insolence) and PZ Myers (Pharyngula, like I needed to tell you) for their respective wins in the categories of Best Medical/Health Issues Blog and Best Science Blog, respectively, of The 2006 Weblog Awards. Also nominated in the science category, and all with a nice showing, were Mixing Memory, Deltoid, and Good Math, Bad Math and The Cheerful Oncologist in the med/health category.
Since we would fall in the category that Orac led, I wanted to draw the attention of Terra Sig readers to an excellent recent example of the…
terrasig | December 15, 2006I specifically launched Terra Sigillata on my sister's birthday last year so that my aging brain wouldn't have to remember (or forget) yet another important date.
The original post and ad hoc mission statement holds up pretty well after a year. I've also moved my second post, "Why Terra Sigillata?," over here so that folks can appreciate why a name most commonly encountered by ceramics craftspersons is a perfect metaphor for medicines from the Earth.
For those who don't know my background or never read the About section, I'm a displaced pharmacy and pharmacology professor working in an odd…
terrasig | December 8, 2006In an amazing show of solidarity, the Honolulu Marathon will be run twice this Sunday: once in Hawaii and once in...Iraq. Fellow ScienceBlogger, Mike Dunford, tells us that a number of soldiers serving in Iraq (including his wife) will run the Honolulu Marathon at a base near Tikrit:
Yes, you read that right. The Honolulu Marathon is providing them with the timing equipment, the marathon in Iraq will take place at the same time as the one in Honolulu, and the runners will be registered for and considered to be running in the Honolulu Marathon. The only difference is that the course in Iraq…
terrasig | November 10, 2006While sitting at Chez Pharmboi tonight preparing the belated Friday Fermentable, I picked up our Nov 2006 issue of National Geographic. Therein, is a superbly-written, photographically-dense article by SciBling colleague, Carl Zimmer, entitled, "A Fin is a Limb is a Wing: How Evolution Fashioned Its Masterworks."
The web link provides the text and photo gallery, taken by Rosamond Purcell, but the print edition is worth the price of admission. The story on the complexity of eye development and the conservation of Antennapedia from Drosophila to Hox c6 in vertebrates comes to life in the…
terrasig | November 8, 2006Natural products is an interesting field of science since various parts of it appeal greatly to different segments of the general public.
Hence, we are very excited and honored to be recognized by the culinary functional foods and nutraceuticals blog, Eating Fabulous, written by Ruth Schaffer at b5media.
Interestingly, we were recognized for our general content on dietary supplements. I must certainly make Ms. Schaffer aware of the intermittent weekly installments of The Friday Fermentable, especially with the more culinary contributions of my more learned oenology and cancer research…
terrasig | November 2, 2006Many thanks to my oncology colleague and ScienceBlogs.com SciBling, Orac, for his repeated referrals to my posts as of late. He's been one of my blogging mentors from the genesis of my blogosphere presence and generally ranks #1 or #2 as the source of my referral traffic.
So, in return, let me direct Terra Sig readers to two of Orac's best posts this past week, one of which I consider among his best of the year.
First, is Orac's discussion of Institutional Review Boards, or IRBs, the entities convened to ensure human subjects protection in clinical research trials. Orac points our that, as…
terrasig | November 1, 2006Chris Mooney has left the stadium.
NC Triangle bloggers and medical professionals had a great three days visiting with Seed correspondent, ScienceBlogger, and author of The Republican War on Science. Chris' book continues to pay dividends to the point that even James Carville recently invoked his message on Larry King Live.
But back to our visit:
Left to right is Dave Munger, Coturnix/Bora Zivkovic, and the guest of honor, at a Triangle blogger meet-up this past Sunday before Chris' talk at The Regulator bookstore in Durham. In keeping with my pseudonymity, the only trace of the Pharmboy…
terrasig | October 30, 2006I've been delinquent in reading other blogs as of late, so I missed last week's arrival of Rick and Patty's new baby, Catherine, at Science, Shrimp and Grits.
Rick is a great chemistry teacher in South Carolina who always has spot-on insights on the state of science education, together with personal insights on student performance and, always, great experiments. As a Clemson alum, he's also quite fond of documenting his Southern culinary adventures and I often find myself salivating over my keyboard with some of his posts.
This time, it's all about the proud daddy, his new baby girl, and the…
terrasig | October 27, 2006As Bora has posted, the NC Triangle area is about to be paid a visit by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, Seed Magazine Washington correspondent, and ScienceBlogger at The Intersection.
The book signing and lecture events are below but I wanted to invite local folks to a meet-up to talk with Chris on Sunday afternoon at 1 pm at Tyler's Taproom in Durham's American Tobacco Historic District. We'll be milling around the bar area until we have a good enough group to be seated (I couldn't afford the $100/hour to reserve their side room). I suspect that we'll be there until…
terrasig | October 19, 2006Are you a North Carolina blogger of any sort? Have you ever lived in North Carolina? C'mon, I know many, many science folks who at one time did their training in the Old North State.
Well, after hosting Tar Heel Tavern at my old blog in the Spring, I thought it would be a good idea to help out Erin and Bora and host THT #87 right here in my relatively new digs.
I have no theme - the only requirement is that you write from or about North Carolina. As I said above, expats are welcome (Derek Lowe, I'm talking to you!)
THT is a loosely launched weekend thing, so it would help me if you would…
terrasig | September 24, 2006I completely missed it: a rather momentous occasion in the life of this blog.
The ScienceBlogs.com version of Terra Sigillata just passed the traffic volume of the old site on Wednesday, 20 Sept at 9:14 pm EDT with a visitor from Arlington, MA, USA.
Visitor 13,986 must be a regular reader because they came directly here, not even through the ScienceBlogs frontpage from which I derive almost 20% of my traffic.
So, while it took just over nine months to reach almost 14,000 visitors at the old blog (although I haven't had a new post there since June), we got to 14,000 here in the new digs in…
terrasig | September 22, 2006The other day, Coturnix alluded to Simon Owens of Bloggasm and his survey of blogosphere diversity. I neglected to note that I was one of the respondents. Simon's questions were:
1. What niche does your blog fall into (Examples: Political, gadget, movie, etc...If more than one, please list)?
2. What are the genders of all the bloggers who write for your site?
3. What are the races for all the bloggers who write for your site (if there are any that you're not sure about, just indicate that you don't know)?
4. What do you think of the diversity of the blogosphere, both in your niche and as a…
terrasig | September 12, 2006Writing under this masthead for the past three months has been a great privilege, interacting with some really outstanding thinkers and writers in science, medicine, and society. We've got real journalists, scientists, physicians, students here, each of whom bring a unique and thoughtful eye to the issues of the day.
The 9/11 posts were no exception and everyone had something outstanding to contribute. (btw, I'm not fond of the term "9/11," mostly because I find it somewhat disrespectful to those in the 80 or so other countries who consider that they lost family members in the 11/9…
terrasig | August 24, 2006I've been terribly remiss in not welcoming the trickle of additions to the ScienceBlogs.com stable, especially Molecule of the Day, the new blog most allied with my subject matter.
However, I was not going to miss the Sb launch of one of my faves and long-time members of my very short and poorly-updated blogroll, Thus Spake Zuska.
Thus Spake Zuska is not for the faint of heart. It is, however, for anyone who believes that you shouldn't have to possess white skin and a penis to obtain a passport to Science-and-Engineering Land.
Although in possession of both white skin and a penis, I offer…
terrasig | August 22, 2006A Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, New Jersey, writes in and says,
Dear Roseanne Roseannadanna,
I just read of some bizarre Southern ritual whereby Durham-Chapel Hill-RTP bloggers are meeting this coming Friday for a barbecue.
What have Triangle bloggers done to anyone such that they should be barbecued?? The ones here at ScienceBlogs.com seem nice enough, but even getting past the horror of the thought, that Coturnix would need a little more meat on his bones to be considered even remotely tasty.
Sincerely,
Richard Feder
Ft. Lee, NJ
Well, Mr. Feder, you've got it all wrong. It seems that…
terrasig | August 14, 2006She could've joined the lab of a Nobel laureate at Yale.
She picked me instead.
This is my thank you.
Regular readers may recall my post earlier last month about the tragic, heart-wrenching loss of the brother of my former student, Jen, a Morehead Scholar and sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her brother Jon was a 23-year-old Carnegie-Mellon University graduate student and crew team coach. After completing the Chicago Marathon last fall, some nagging persistent pain in his femur turned out to be the bone cancer, osteosarcoma.
After months of hospitalization…
terrasig | August 11, 2006Welcome feminist bloggers and commentors from Coturnix's guest post at Echidne of the Snakes.
Howdy, folks. Let me introduce myself. I'm the guy who got this discussion started at Terra Sigillata, where Coturnix's home blog is hosted by ScienceBlogs.com.
Short story is that I asked a rhetorical question about a single Hooters establishment (on the San Antonio, TX, Riverwalk) that sits within two blocks of the world's largest international breast cancer research conference held every December, the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).
My wife is a medical oncologist specializing in…