personal
jstemwedel | July 23, 2008Connected to my last post (and anticipated by my razor-sharp commenters), in this post I want to look at the pros and cons of routine screening mammography in women under age 50, drawing on the discussion of this subject in the multi-page "patient instructions" document I received from my primary care physician.
The aim of screening mammography is to get information about what's going on in the breast tissue, detecting changes that are not apparent to the eye or to the touch. If some of these changes are the starts of cancer, the thought is that finding them sooner can only be better,…
edyong | July 23, 2008Soooo....
When I started this blog, the intention was to try and use well-written articles on cool discoveries to get people who wouldn't normally read science blogs to be interested in science. I've now been writing for almost two years and while traffic has grown, it strikes me that I still don't know a lot about my readership, or the ratio of non-scientists/scientists who come to these pages.
So with that in mind, you can help me out by taking up these two challenges:
1) Tell me about you. Who are you? Do you have a background in science? If so, what draws you here as opposed to meatier…
jstemwedel | July 22, 2008At the urging of my colleague Abel, who liveblogged his own vasectomy, I'm documenting my first mammogram. Given that I had pretty much no idea what to expect going into this, I'm hopeful that this post will demystify the experience a little for those who know they probably should get mammograms but have been putting it off.
Let me preface this by saying that there was no special reason that my primary care physician ordered a mammogram for me aside from my being 40. As such, there's no special cause to be worried for my health as I wait for the results.
Beginning of the month
Had my first…
drorzel | July 22, 2008I finally manage to get my pants buttoned on the fourth try. I've had to dig out a pair from before I lost weight, because the splint on my left hand won't let me grip the fabric enough to button pants that fit properly. Even with the extra slack, it's difficult.
"God damn it, I hate this," I say out loud.
"Yeah, cry me a river, monkey boy."
I turn around, and the dog is lying in the hall outside the door, looking faintly reproachful. "I beg your pardon?"
"Boo, hoo, hoo," she says. "Your thumb doesn't work. Welcome to my world."
"Well excuse me for complaining, but it's kind of hard for me…
jstemwedel | July 21, 2008Longtime readers may remember that last August saw a semi-spontaneous confluence of ScienceBlogs bloggers in New York City.
Apparently, we are nothing if not creatures of habit. This August, we are as salmon swimming upstream to return to our spawning grounds. (Well, except that most of us are not planning on spawning, and all of us plan on surviving the weekend.)
Anyway, this time around, Seed is planning on hosting a bloggers and readers meet-up, Saturday August 9, probably around 3:00 PM, in a location to be announced (but one that is likely to have air conditioning). In addition to the…
pharyngula | July 21, 2008It's been a high-stress week — not because of anything on the blog, I assure you, since that's all been chaos over trivialities — but because all my recent travel has put me far behind on a lot of work, with missed deadlines and heaps of writing that had to be done right now. A significant chunk of all that has been polished off now, so I get to relax for a little bit. Now I just have to figure out how — I think I've forgotten.
I may blow up a few things in Warcraft, or I may go hide away and read a book. Movies are out — all that's playing in Morris right now is Wall-E. At any rate, I think…
jstemwedel | July 20, 2008... sometimes require hard work, at least when the experimental digs are raised garden beds. Seriously, when was the last time you moved 14.5 cubic yards of topsoil and compost? (Not that I did it all myself, of course. My better half did quite a bit of it, and the Free-Ride offspring even pitched in.)
Pictures of the end result of 4 days of dirt-moving labor:
23 inch deep beds are nice for root development. But that's a lot of dirt.
It's a lot of dirt especially when there are five beds to fill. (Plus, mixing the topsoil and the compost in the beds is strenuous exercise.)
That piece…
drorzel | July 16, 2008
The comically large cast/splint thing is the result of dislocating my thumb playing hoops at lunch today. Let me just note that looking down to see one of my major joints bending in the wrong place was not what you would call a highlight. And once was enough, thankyewverymuch, at least for this lifetime.
I popped it back in, but the PA in the emergency room was concerned about possible ligament damage, hence the cartoon-character hand wrap. I have a referral appointment with a local orthopedic practice tomorrow, where I hope to get something less unwieldy, because damn...
I'm sure you'll be…
drorzel | July 16, 2008Back when we bought the house, Kate's parents were having miserable problems with their cable Internet service-- at peak times, the real bit rate went down so far that it was impossible to get anywhere-- so we opted for DSL service. Five years later, we still have DSL, and even the same modem.
When we had the garage remodeled, we had the contractor install a phone jack near the front windows, with the idea being to move my computer downstairs to free up a bedroom to become a nursery for FutureBaby. The contractor put in the jack, and we dragged the computer downstairs, hooked everything up,…
terrasig | July 16, 2008While I threaten to come back to real blogging, let me direct you to Orac's recent post on the loss of their family dog, Echo - the dog who ate corn off the cob (YouTube evidence therein).
Orac is a great writer but a lot of you know him mostly from his expertise in cancer medicine and in decrying all kids of pseudoscience. He may also seem on the surface to be a tough, unflappable medical professional, as one might expect from any high-powered academic surgeon.
However, I've had the pleasure of getting to know Orac personally and will divulge that he is really a sweetheart of a guy. And as…
jstemwedel | July 15, 2008I'm on sabbatical for academic year 2008-2009. This being summer, you'd think I'd consider the sabbatical officially begun.
Not quite. But I'm getting closer. All that remains:
Grading the papers from the graduate seminar that I was persuaded to team-teach.
Calculating final grades for the students in the aforementioned graduate seminar and filing those final grades by Friday.
Helping my advisees usher two masters theses into final form.
Helping a student from last fall complete an "incomplete".
One last committee meeting.
There's also some desk cleaning and family vacation taking. But…
oracknows | July 14, 2008Prelude: Sunday, June 22, 2008
Only three weeks ago. All seems well.
Prelude II: Thursday, July 3, 2008
We learn that all is not well.
Saturday, July 12, 2008, 6:30 AM
He spoke through tears of 15 years how his dog and him
traveled about
The dog up and died, he up and died
And after 20 years he still grieves.
(From Mr. Bojangles by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, 1970)
It is early Saturday morning, and I can no longer sleep. Preternaturally quiet, a shroud of silence blankets the house, oppressive, dark, and hateful. There aren't even any birds chirping, and puzzlingly I have yet to hear the…
terrasig | July 14, 2008A convergence of personal and professional issues have left me little or no time for blogging the last week or so. But many thanks to you for checking in here and even e-mailing to say hi. I actually have a couple of good science topics in the hopper but haven't been able to execute them fully. But as Arnold once said, I'll be back.
Let me also express my gratitude to my research and wine mentor, and stealth co-blogger, Erleichda, for his great Friday Fermentable column about wines of the Northern Italy Lake Country.
In the meantime, check out the DrugMonkey-recommended post from…
clock | July 13, 2008You know I love and often eat at Town Hall Grill in Southern Village. This is where we had our Friday Night Dinner during the last Science Blogging Conference (photographic evidence here, here, here and here) and more recently a little local meetup (see also Lenore's review of the evening, and note she was nearby recently again).
Anyway, Town Hall Grill now has a new website (with a new URL), and the chef, Chris Burgess recently completely redesigned the menu: my old favourites (lamb kebab, chopped salad, chicken-under-the-brick, filet mignon and NY strip) are still on the menu, but there…
clock | July 13, 2008Here are some old photos of the Ashkenazi synagogue that my grandfather designed and built some time between the two World Wars. This is just one of the many buildings he built in Sarajevo at that time, including the first skyscraper in the Balkans. This is the first time I see these pictures and I will try to find more information about the building later:
Update: Apparently some or all of the information above is erroneous. While my grandfather built a lot of buildings in and around Sarajevo, the synagogue was not one of them - perhaps another building in these pictures? The person who…
pharyngula | July 12, 2008Whoa. We had a long evening of it here at the Atlanta Pharyngufest — we closed the place down at almost 2am, and these ferocious Southern skeptics were still arguing philosophy and religion as I was staggering away (thanks to Pradeep Satyaprakash for the ride home!). They win. Here's a quick pan of the crowd early on — it got up to almost a hundred people later in the evening.
The attendees made a commemorative card for the event that was huge. Here's one bit of it — a portrait of yours truly. It's an amazingly exact likeness.
Now…unconsciousness awaits. They wore me out!
From Pradeep,…
pharyngula | July 12, 2008I have arrived at the airport to discover that my flight to Atlanta has been cancelled, and I've been rescheduled to a later flight. No big deal, except that now I'm stuck in an airport for five hours, and I'm now scheduled to arrive in Atlanta at 5pm. This means I will almost certainly be late for the Pharyngufest…but I'm sure y'all can start the party without me. I'll get there as soon as I can!
pharyngula | July 11, 2008I'm expecting a busy, busy day tomorrow — I have to get up painfully early to drive to Minneapolis and fly off to Atlanta. Y'all remember we've got a Pharyngufest at Manuel's at 6, and I expect everyone to come on down and say hello.
I am not looking forward to another run through TSA. There may also be a hatchet job in the Washington Times tomorrow morning — watch for it. I think I'll be reading some science papers on my flight, and do not want to hear another word from loons for a while. Skeptics! GECCO! Science! Excelsior!
clock | July 11, 2008I guess it is unlikely you have not already heard about the big brouhaha that erupted when Bill Donohue targeted PZ Myers for showing disrespect towards a belief that made some religious nuts go crazy and violent against a child (yes, Eucharist is just a cracker, sorry, but that is just a factual statement about the world). If not, the entire story, and it is still evolving, can be found on PZ's blog so check out the numerous comments here, here,
here, here, here, here and here.
Also see what Greg Laden and Tristero say. [Update: see also John Wilkins and Mike Dunford for some good clear…
revere | July 11, 2008Melanie Mattson was one of the founding Editors of the FluWiki, its initial "public face," the official publisher, and our colleague. More importantly she was our friend. We are grieved to announce her unexpected death.
On her blog, Just a Bump in the Beltway, Melanie was among the first on the internet to understand and write about the significance of reported human cases of avian influenza as a potential harbinger of a pandemic. She joined forces with us to start the FluWiki in June 2005 where she was a dedicated and innovative practitioner of a new medium, collective information generation…