This is off-topic, but it’s been bugging me for a couple days. You know how covers are almost never as good as the original song? Like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door“, by Bob Dylan; Guns ‘N’ Roses’ cover is an iconic recording, but so overblown that it loses the punch of the original. Axl Rose doesn’t [...]
Tue, June 16 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
Grand Rounds is up at ACP Internist. Thanks to Ryan for hosting and putting it together.
Tue, June 16 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
If you read Glenn Greenwald, among others, you often see statements like this: …”Bumiller followed the most common method of modern establishment reporting: she mindlessly repeated what her government sources told her to say.” From which you might infer that this practice of uncritical regurgitation is somehow a new development in recent journalism – a [...]
Tue, June 9 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
I have threatened to start a patient-focused blog carnival, and now I’m going to do it. I’d like to put the first issue out next week – maybe on the 8th. So, if you are a blogger, and write about issues that would interest patients, please consider submitting a post to the carnival. The only [...]
Wed, June 3 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
I have never had much use for Susan Sontag, but I recently learned that she wrote a book called Illness as Metaphor (McGraw-Hill, 1978). Books about illness – or rather, books about thinking about illness – are my thing, so I read it. It’s a good book, but Sontag does not go far enough. It’s [...]
Tue, June 2 2009 » Uncategorized » 2 Comments
Newsweek has a good article on Oprah and the many health experts that come on to her show. Turns out, many of them are not so expert after all, and the claims they make range from modestly helpful to pernicious lies. The worst of these, in my view, was The Secret,which claims we ‘attract’ whatever [...]
Mon, June 1 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
Sun, May 31 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Mon, May 25 2009 » Uncategorized » 1 Comment
I mentioned that many doctors think Scrubs is the most realistic medical show on television. According to ER Drama, the least realistic – no surprise – is House, MD: Watching House, MD though, things have been taken to an even higher level of unrealism… So why does this matter? It matters because there are a [...]
Mon, May 18 2009 » Uncategorized » 3 Comments
I am glad to report some progress in the fight against FLyPS: Stripes the cat seems to be doing better. Last weekend we noticed she was running away from her food; she would take a bite, which hurt, thus scaring her, so she hid. From her food. It was almost hilarious, except that it was [...]
Thu, May 14 2009 » Uncategorized » No Comments
A novel crime against decency by Duncan Cross
