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Bulls on Parade:
Rage against the runners. Not for the squeamish (especially the first picture).
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 2:41 PM on July 13, 2007
(46 comments)
Dr. John K. Lattimer died earlier this week.
&nCThe fact that he was the former chairman of the urology department at Columbia University is the
least interesting fact about him. He was an expert in ballstics and became the first private citizen granted access to Kennedy's autopsy photos (he made this
drawing to explain the path of the bullet). He treated survivors of the
Hindenburg explosion and
Nazi defendants at Nuremberg. He was also a collector of some very odd items: a pair of Eva Braun's earrings, the cyanide ampule that Hermann Goring used to
commit suicide [.pdf], the key to Lincoln's presidental box at Ford's Theater. Oh, and he bought
Napoleon's penis in 1977 for $3000. Some think it should finally be allowed to
rest in peace.
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 11:41 AM on May 19, 2007
(9 comments)
What does one wear to Ride the Valkyries?
A silk dress? Something with "richness of the material, width, ruches, flounces, bustles, ribbons ..."? Apparently Richard Wagner, the
neckbearded,
anti-Semetic, hero to
Adolph Hitler may have had a little
skin problem. Or maybe a
fetish. Or both. Either way, he did so like the feel of satin against his skin. Perhaps Wagner should have gone with the
velvet. In any case, this news will make
Fritz Freleng appear even
more brilliant for having cross-dressed
Bugs Bunny in the 1945 cartoon
Herr Meets Hare (where Bugs appears as a Wagnerian heroine dancing with Hermann Goering).
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 7:18 AM on March 1, 2007
(23 comments)
Flame wars as psychopathology.
What's behind those
flaming hot e-mails or UseNet
flame wars or
MetaFilter comments?. Perhaps, as
John Suler suggested, there are
a number of factors, including dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection (altered self-boundaries), dissociative imagination, and minimzation of authority, as he discussed in his fascinating
2004 paper (note: .pdf). Is there, as the NY Times piece asks, "a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world"?
Flaming previously covered by MeFi here, here, here, and of course, here.
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 2:11 AM on February 20, 2007
(39 comments)
TSA Alert: US Bans Vegemite.
Is it because this yeast extract
tastes bad? Do the
Marmite^ people have some sinister influence? Has Australia
offended our government somehow? How is it that a product that has been around for
80 years suddenly becomes forbidden? Who would ban a product that can help prevent
neural tube defects (e.g., spina bifida)?
Blame the FDA, whose has ruled that folate (
folic acid) "should be kept under 1 mg per day ... because higher intake may complicate the diagnosis of
pernicious anemia, one form of vitamin B12 deficiency, which especially affects older people." Of course pernicious anemia is rare (less than 10-20 cases/100,000 people per year in the US), as is the Vegemite market. But when has logic ever dictated policy. The
international fallout has already started:
"I am never going to America", vows Xochiquetal, while a commenter at Geelong blogger Bernie Slattery’s site foresees US regulators going even further down the road to absurdity, "Americans don’t know what they’re missing … they’ll be banning Tim Tams next."
If the government wanted to ban something Australian, the least they could have done is started
here.
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 6:14 AM on October 23, 2006
(47 comments)
[MediFilter] The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
goes to the discoverers of
RNA interference (RNAi) [Note: Links to original 1998 Nature paper .pdf]. The finding that cells have an intricate mechanism for
blocking viral RNA replication quickly spawned a new technology for investigating the role of different genes by allowing scientists to
quickly, (relatively) cheaply and easily "knock down" their expression and measure the effects. When
Kerry Mullis won in 1993 for the discovery of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), there was talk of whether or not the prize had gone to a technical advance and not a fundamental discovery. It will be interesting to see, in this case, which receives more focus: the discovery of a new technology or of a new cellular mechanism.
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 4:16 AM on October 2, 2006
(18 comments)
With nothing to lose
but more of his
own money, former convenience store magnate (kinda), local businessman, and independent candidate Christy Mihos has produced the
'cheekiest' political ad (so far) in the current Massachusetts gubernatorial race.
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 8:45 PM on September 25, 2006
(10 comments)
See one, do one, teach one. This has been the mantra of
medical education on the wards for a
very long time. But is it fair to the patient on the receiving end of that third-year medical student's awkward physical exam? Since their first use over forty years ago at the University of Southern California,
standardized patients (or
simulated patients,
medical actors or
teaching associates) have been employed to help medical students learn how to examine patients.
This internist signed his own mother up and much to his surprise found it helped her as much as her students
[NB: requires registration or BugMeNot; .pdf available here].
A special subset of these teachers, called
gynecologic teacing associates, bravely allow medical students to go where they've often never been before (with a white coat on). One 2nd year medical student found the experience helpful enough to write about it in the
Village Voice [clinically NSFW]. And naturally, as technology marches on, even teaching associates may be
downsized [technically NSFW].
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 12:56 PM on September 24, 2006
(20 comments)
Vernon Ingram, who discovered the molecular cause of sickle cell anemia, has died.
Dr. Ingram, a
professor and
active neuroscientist at MIT, demonstrated that
conversion of glutamic acid to valine at position 6 of the ß-chain of human hemoglobin [Note: .pdf of original paper] was the sole abnormality in sickle hemoglobin. This seminal observation, which was based on an
early version of
2-D protein electrophoresis, demonstrated that a protein abnormality in which a single amino acid is altered can produce a
complex clinical disorder.
Linus Pauling said, in response to Ingram's discovery, "“It is astounding that the difference in structure is so small – only about a dozen atoms out of 10,000 in the molecule are different. On such small atomies man’s fate depends!” Often called "The Father of Molecular Biology," Ingram's discovery is part of a remarkable, fascinating, and
century long scientific endeavour to understand the biology of sickle cell disease.
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 1:09 PM on September 10, 2006
(12 comments)
I promise to try not to smoke, or drink too much, or eat too much, or be lazy. If I fail, you can cut my benefits. Sign here please.
West Virginia recently approved a controversial change to its Medicaid program: a
Member Agreement [NB: links to .pdf] that adds several "personal responsibilities" including attempting to avoid smoking, (illegal) drugs, heavy drinking and
sloth (not
sloths). It also includes clauses on compliance with doctors recommendations, keeping appointments, reading the written materials that doctors provide, and minimizing emergency department visits. Patients who don't uphold their end of the bargain will have some benefits
reduced or eliminated (that'll learn them). Lube up the
slippery slope arguments.
Will it work? Is it fair? Want to hear more? And more (from NPR)?.
(Article .pdfs archived here and here. Interview .mp3 archived here if you can't access them through above links).
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 8:41 AM on August 25, 2006
(87 comments)
[NewsFilter] A partial victory for public health over politics.
Amazingly, the FDA has finally, after 3 years of wrangling, approved over-the-counter sale of Plan B, an emergency contraceptive pill. The victory is partial because you need to be 18 or older to purchase it without a doctor's note. If you're under 18, you need to still have documentation from your physician (or nurse practitioner). The politics behind the approval process were laid bare in this (sincerely)
fascinating GAO report [note: links to .pdf file]. I also hope that OTC approval will
avoid this.
Plan B previously discussed on MeFi here.
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 7:49 AM on August 24, 2006
(65 comments)
God ... to get paid.
Does doubling your church (temple, mosque, buddhist shrine, wiccan house of worship, etc.) attendence really lead to an increase in
your income?
Or someone elses? Let the causation/correlation games continue.
posted to MetaFilter by scblackman
at 2:56 PM on March 30, 2006
(14 comments)
