I got a writing gig at and my first article was posted today: http://www.myhousecallmd.com/
I am also working on a swimming blog that averages about 45 visits a day found here: http://swimscience.blogspot.com/
I hope no one tells these people I got a C+ in english 106 at Purdue, haha
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Football Players and Head Trauma
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/HeadTrauma/17156
I don't know what to think about all the concussions in football. One side, it is a contact sport and injuries do happen, they are grown men and can make their own decisions. However, being pressured to put your life at risk and potentially obtaining Parkinson's like symptoms at the age of 50...maybe stricter regulations should be mandated.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Interesting radical view on thanksgiving
I heard this on the radio last night. I may use some of the arguments in upcoming debate rounds :)
http://www.airp.uci.edu/blog/2009/11/1123-aia-reciprocity-by-confounding.html
http://www.airp.uci.edu/blog/2009/11/1123-aia-reciprocity-by-confounding.html
New Mammogram Guidelines
http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act.pdf
New guidelines suggest holding off mammograms women are 50 years of age (pg. 17). Cost efficient or cruel?
Good skin Bacteria?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091122161742.htm
A nice article about exposure to certain bacteria is essential for healthy protection from pathogens and prevention of inflammation.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Technology is stranger than Fiction
Best-selling writer Cory Doctorow on change and its discontents.
When Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" in the early 1800s, the issue was not corpses brought back to life. The novel captured anxiety about then-emerging technologies such as the steam engine, as people began to ask whether we know what we're doing with what we invent. We've been asking ever since, with science fiction a handy way to track our comfort level with technology.
By this measure, we're still anxious but getting more optimistic that we'll be able to cope even with today's accelerated pace of change.
Consider the world of "Makers," the latest by best-selling writer Cory Doctorow. This novel is set in a not-too distant future, when the creative destruction of technological change has created an economy so efficient, with profit margins so thin, that traditional companies can hardly stay in business.
The inventor-heroes of "Makers" take technology to its conclusion: They figure out a way to use three-dimensional printers to produce copies of machines and most anything else at close to no cost. This sparks "New Work," with geeky investment bankers scouring the country to fund promising artisans who use the technology to build things cheaply. The heroes also run a series of entertainment rides across the country in abandoned Wal-Marts, until Disney unleashes its lawyers on them.
Mr. Doctorow, a Canadian living in London, has a keen eye for the pressures on contemporary business. In the novel, an M.B.A. brought in to work with the inventors explains, "The system makes it hard to sell anything above the marginal cost of goods, unless you have a really innovative idea, which can't stay innovative for long, so you need continuous invention and reinvention, too."
This theme captures current anxieties. Technology lets low-cost providers take market share away from established companies, as Detroit auto makers and Paris fashion house designers have seen. Even high-tech companies have a hard time building sustainable businesses now that good ideas are copied so quickly that they become commodities.
"Every industry that required a factory yesterday only needs a garage today," the fictional business manager explains. "Here's what I think the point of a good market is. In a good market, you invent something and you charge all the market will bear for it." Then someone figures out a way to do it more cheaply or accepts a lower profit margin, "until eventually you get down to a kind of firmament, a baseline that you can't go lower than, the cheapest you can produce a product and stay in business. That's why straight pins, machine screws, and a ream of paper all cost basically nothing, and make damned little profit for their manufacturers."
In the world of "Makers," and perhaps in our own world, "we're approaching a kind of pure and perfect state now, with competition and invention getting easier and easier—it's producing a kind of superabundance."
Mr. Doctorow paints a bleak picture of the process of getting there, even if many of us take a more benign view of increasingly efficient capitalism. "Makers" features widespread unemployment, with 20% of workers relocating to look for jobs. Even with scientific advances—obesity is solved, for example—life is brutal. There are squatter neighborhoods alongside abandoned strip malls.
Mr. Doctorow's science fiction also includes the too-true prospect of venture capital firms deciding that the next big thing in technology is financing litigation over copyright and other intellectual property. There are also amusing comments on business. One character describes trying to make change at large companies as being "like turning around a battleship by tapping it on the nose with a toothpick."
Mr. Doctorow practices what he preaches about new economics. He was the first, in 2003, to publish a novel released at the same time under a Creative Commons license in a free e-reader edition. "Makers" sells in hardback, but chapters are available for free downloads—a reminder that the convenience of the printed book is worth the $24.99 purchase price to some readers.
He plans to sell his next book, a collection of short stories, in various price ranges, which he thinks will maximize his revenues. There will be a free download or audiobook, an inexpensive paperback, a pricier hardback, plus one book for $10,000 that lets the buyer commission a short story.
In an online essay for the literary magazine Tin House, Mr. Doctorow wrote that "science fiction writers don't predict the future (except accidentally), but if they're very good, they may manage to predict the present."
In a time of great change, fiction can sometimes provide better understanding than facts alone. "As the pace of technological change accelerates, the job of the science fiction writer becomes not harder, but easier—and more necessary," he writes. "After all, the more confused we are by our contemporary technology, the more opportunities there are to tell stories that lessen that confusion."
When Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" in the early 1800s, the issue was not corpses brought back to life. The novel captured anxiety about then-emerging technologies such as the steam engine, as people began to ask whether we know what we're doing with what we invent. We've been asking ever since, with science fiction a handy way to track our comfort level with technology.
By this measure, we're still anxious but getting more optimistic that we'll be able to cope even with today's accelerated pace of change.
Consider the world of "Makers," the latest by best-selling writer Cory Doctorow. This novel is set in a not-too distant future, when the creative destruction of technological change has created an economy so efficient, with profit margins so thin, that traditional companies can hardly stay in business.
The inventor-heroes of "Makers" take technology to its conclusion: They figure out a way to use three-dimensional printers to produce copies of machines and most anything else at close to no cost. This sparks "New Work," with geeky investment bankers scouring the country to fund promising artisans who use the technology to build things cheaply. The heroes also run a series of entertainment rides across the country in abandoned Wal-Marts, until Disney unleashes its lawyers on them.
Mr. Doctorow, a Canadian living in London, has a keen eye for the pressures on contemporary business. In the novel, an M.B.A. brought in to work with the inventors explains, "The system makes it hard to sell anything above the marginal cost of goods, unless you have a really innovative idea, which can't stay innovative for long, so you need continuous invention and reinvention, too."
This theme captures current anxieties. Technology lets low-cost providers take market share away from established companies, as Detroit auto makers and Paris fashion house designers have seen. Even high-tech companies have a hard time building sustainable businesses now that good ideas are copied so quickly that they become commodities.
"Every industry that required a factory yesterday only needs a garage today," the fictional business manager explains. "Here's what I think the point of a good market is. In a good market, you invent something and you charge all the market will bear for it." Then someone figures out a way to do it more cheaply or accepts a lower profit margin, "until eventually you get down to a kind of firmament, a baseline that you can't go lower than, the cheapest you can produce a product and stay in business. That's why straight pins, machine screws, and a ream of paper all cost basically nothing, and make damned little profit for their manufacturers."
In the world of "Makers," and perhaps in our own world, "we're approaching a kind of pure and perfect state now, with competition and invention getting easier and easier—it's producing a kind of superabundance."
Mr. Doctorow paints a bleak picture of the process of getting there, even if many of us take a more benign view of increasingly efficient capitalism. "Makers" features widespread unemployment, with 20% of workers relocating to look for jobs. Even with scientific advances—obesity is solved, for example—life is brutal. There are squatter neighborhoods alongside abandoned strip malls.
Mr. Doctorow's science fiction also includes the too-true prospect of venture capital firms deciding that the next big thing in technology is financing litigation over copyright and other intellectual property. There are also amusing comments on business. One character describes trying to make change at large companies as being "like turning around a battleship by tapping it on the nose with a toothpick."
Mr. Doctorow practices what he preaches about new economics. He was the first, in 2003, to publish a novel released at the same time under a Creative Commons license in a free e-reader edition. "Makers" sells in hardback, but chapters are available for free downloads—a reminder that the convenience of the printed book is worth the $24.99 purchase price to some readers.
He plans to sell his next book, a collection of short stories, in various price ranges, which he thinks will maximize his revenues. There will be a free download or audiobook, an inexpensive paperback, a pricier hardback, plus one book for $10,000 that lets the buyer commission a short story.
In an online essay for the literary magazine Tin House, Mr. Doctorow wrote that "science fiction writers don't predict the future (except accidentally), but if they're very good, they may manage to predict the present."
In a time of great change, fiction can sometimes provide better understanding than facts alone. "As the pace of technological change accelerates, the job of the science fiction writer becomes not harder, but easier—and more necessary," he writes. "After all, the more confused we are by our contemporary technology, the more opportunities there are to tell stories that lessen that confusion."
Bing Eating a Psychiatric Disorder?
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-binge23-2009nov23,0,2869829.story
There appears to be debate surrounding binge eating and the mentality behind this disorder. I do think it is a psychiatric disorder, because these people not only consume huge amounts of foods, but they act similarly to drug addicts by lying about the food they eat and only eating when no one is around. Other than the mass consumption, these people also think about food constantly, diminishing their productivity. Negatively if this pathology is sanctioned, it will increase the medication umbrella on health care and society.
What do you think?
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