Thanks to all who wished me a Happy Birthday on Monday via email, Facebook, telephone and telepathy. I really appreciate it. In the future, though, if any of you want to band together to get me a gift basket–not just limited to my birthday–the picture below is a nice example of a proper “man’s gift basket” that will sure to be received with much cheer and joy. I’m just sayin’… 
The 1975 JC Penney’s Catalog. I definitely don’t remember this one, but my childhood was full of dreaming of getting things from phonebook-sized catalogs, like the Sears Wishbook, to smaller-sized but no less desirable merchants, such as Radio Shack. Given that I was 3-4 at the time this came out, my entire formative years would have been immersed in imagery such as this in everyday life. I’m going to need more therapy than I thought… 
Something worthy of mention: Brooke Shields is actually one of the models in the girl’s clothing picture! And for those of you who think (correctly) that the fashion industry nowadays sends the wrong message to girls to be unreasonably thin, check out that same picture which advertises “also chubby sizes.” (!!!) That’s one step away from me regressing to a 10-year-old being bought Sears Toughskins “husky” sized jeans. AAAH!!! Not the “X” stitched on the back pocket! Nooooo!!!
There’s also another page of PG-13 items, like “water pipes.” (Hash sold separately)
(via BoingBoing)
While searching results on something at Google today, I wound up back at the home page, and saw this:
What’s wrong with this? There’s no cool Independence Day graphic! I was at the real google.com, not google.com.mx, where I’d see this:
(by the way, this is hilarious because the button for “I’m feeling lucky” has been translated to “Voy a tener suerte,” which literally says, “I will have luck,” or as one would colloquially read it, “I’m gonna get lucky.” I don’t think Google has that much control over everyone quite yet…hehe)
Then I thought, “I wonder if I’m not seeing it because it knows my IP is in Mexico?” I then VPN into UH (becoming a local node on the campus network via a secure connection, so although physically here, I’m virtually “in Houston”), and voila:
How’s about them apples? Google intentionally doesn’t display the cool art for anything other than people in the USA, even if they go to the USA Google address. Party poopers.
(More on the background of Google’s artwork here)
Here’s a small clinical vignette for you:
A 43-year-old man with no significant medical history presents to his primary care provider (PCP) complaining of a “wound that won’t get better” on the left side of his neck. He states that the wound has been slowly growing over the past 2 years after it first appeared as a small pimple. In his efforts to heal the wound, he has used a variety of over-the-counter topical remedies such as hydrogen peroxide and triple antibiotic ointment; however, the wound has continued to spread and worsen. He was finally encouraged to visit his PCP when his brother noticed the now several-centimeters-long lesion (Images to follow). The patient denies having weight loss, fevers, or chills. He has not traveled during the past 5 years.
On physical examination, the patient is somewhat overweight. His vital signs are normal except for a blood pressure of 165/93 mm Hg. The patient has a 10-cm ulcer at the collar line on the left side of his neck. A homemade dressing that the patient had placed on this lesion contains a small amount of serosanguineous fluid. No lymphadenopathy and no masses are noted around the neck or in the armpits.The rest of the physical examination findings are unremarkable, except for numerous small hyperpigmented macules on the patient’s chest and back.
What is the most likely diagnosis, and what is the diagnostic test of choice?
Now go here to see the images and the dx (warning: wound images for the non-medical readers).
His brother says, “Dude, I think you need to see a doctor about that.” Gee, ya think?!? How can this guy go two years with that thing on his neck? Remember, this thing started as a “small pimple.” At what point, packing it with 4×4s, does one finally say, “You know, this pimple might not just go away.”??? You’d think the 75L of hydrogen peroxide he’d bought over two years would have at least kept it from getting, you know, “icky.” At least the triple antibiotic ointment kept the granulated tissue nice and moist.
These are the kind of patients that walk out of the room saying stupid shit like, “You see?! That’s why I don’t go to doctors; they don’t give you nuthin’ but bad news. They just want your money. Plastic surgeon, my ass! Although a boob lift might make me look younger…hmmmm…”
Or so says personaldna.com:
I think 90% of what my personalized report says is very much on the mark. I don’t post all the little web quizzes you see everywhere because most of them are trash, but this one was very innovative using graphical response techniques, so I thought it should get special mention. It allows for a literal sliding scale to the answers, making the response process more natural and intuitive, which in the end, makes the test more reliable because the person taking it has less of a chance to “overthink” the answer.
Check it out!
This is true–although their existence has been known for some time now, the data is finally confirmed that these two entities are indeed black holes, the most powerful physical phenomenon in the known universe. The gravitational force exerted by a black hole is so massive, that not even light traveling at velocity of over 186,000 miles per second can escape. The two entities are currently named MySpace and YouTube. If light can’t even escape, imagine the crushing power exerted on one’s time!
But seriously, I have enjoyed YouTube ever since it came out, but like most people, only to watch little ditties people forward me and get a good laugh. I had no idea that there were soap operas and all sorts of things broadcast via people’s webcams–like I care about the dating life of some chick who’s known only as “T1f4nny.” Please. However, I discovered a phenomenal thing that has been sucking up all my time recently–vintage classical music videos and other rare performances. (yes, this is where you guffaw mercilessly at my geekiness) I’m talking rare footage from the 50s or 60s of Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, or David Oistrakh not previously seen outside the (then) Soviet Union or, on the other side of the spectrum, pristine (as much as YouTube can handle) footage from a live concert in Japan last year of Arcadi Volodos from someone’s camcorder. 99% of you have no idea who these people are, and that’s OK–trust me when I tell you that these are giants of their respective instruments (and yes, they are all Russian, but that’s usually the way I roll, musically).
To see what I mean, go here to watch a clip of Volodos from somebody’s frickin’ living room for crying out loud, playing Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” from A Midsummer Nights’ Dream (arranged by Vladimir Horowitz and Volodos). All those words will mean nothing once you hear the first few notes, but please keep watching at least past 1:20 because that’s when the fireworks start. Now what kind of chance would I ever have had to see Arcadi Volodos in the first place much less be privvy to a private performance?! Thank you Internet, thank you YouTube.
As for MySpace, up until a few weeks ago, all I knew of it was “where the kids hang out online” and that it was always associated with various pedophile scandals since, obviously, that’s where the “kids” hang out. After hearing enough comments from some people in class about what they read, I finally logged in expecting to see nothing but teenage crap. Oh. My. God. 1/4 of the planet has a profile on MySpace, and now I do too (which is pretty irrelevant considering I never go there, but you need to create one to see much of anything). I think perhaps HALF of my medical school class actively maintain their MySpace profile, and within a week of signing up, I got a random email from a person who went to my high school asking if I remembered him (I didn’t). I had no idea so many “older” folks actively frequent MySpace. I have enough problems keeping up with blogging and emailing, so I’ll leave the MySpace to others, but from what time I did spend on there, it was obvious it had complete “black hole” status, following so-and-so’s friends, comments, etc. It’s similar to blogging in a kind of LiveJournal or Blogger way in it is a pre-built community, but SOOO much deeper and bigger. And far more hideous. I swear people’s MySpace profiles look like a scary glimpse into a schizophrenic mind.
As much as finding/following profiles of pathetic pop star wannabes on MySpace is loads of fun, I’ll stick with YouTube.
From the Bling h2O website (written with ‘h’ because the apparently the Hollywood elite don’t know that there are no lowercase letters in the periodic table):
Bling H2O [note the inconsistency of the logotype presentation] is the inspiration of Kevin G. Boyd, Hollywood writer-producer. While working on various studio lots where image is of the utmost importance he noticed that you could tell a lot about a person by the bottled water they carried. [I suppose my Kirkland H2O would label be as a janitor.]
[Bling's] mission was to offer a product with an exquisite face to match exquisite taste. The product is strategically positioned to target the expanding super-luxury consumer market. Initially introduced to hand-selected athletes and actors, Bling H2O is now excitedly expanding it’s availability… Bling h2O is pop-culture in a bottle. But it’s not for everyone, just those that Bling.
Bling H2O comes in Limited Edition, corked, 750ml, recyclable frosted glass bottles, exquisitely handcrafted with Swarovski Crystals.
This stuff costs $35 a bottle, $420 for a case of 12 (no savings for you!). For water. The same stuff that falls freely from the sky.
I am imagining the genius of Mr. Boyd, as his little minimum wage army armed with glue guns, dab cheap-ass Swarovski knock-off crystals onto these frosted bottles before filling them with water from the hose outside his LA house. Apparently Paris Hilton uses these to give to her dog, Tinkerbell. That’s about all you need to know.
You see, this kind of ridiculous excess is why people from impoverished, oppresed 3rd-world nations see the United States and hate us so much. But it’s ok: we have good will messengers like Madonna, who will adopt/steal their children one at a time.
(what does this have to do with medicine and/or Mexico? absof-inglutely nothing. I’m just procrastinating studying for a pharmacology exam. )
I don’t know why I didn’t see this sooner, but Dr. Nick Genes (of Grand Rounds fame) wrote an original piece on Medscape about the value of blogging during medical school. To quote a portion:
But perhaps even more important is that medical student blogs are useful for students themselves. It’s therapeutic to record your feelings, to vent frustrations, and to register difficult experiences. This is the kind of activity that makes for a sensitive and caring doctor — probably the kind of doctor that most beginning students expect to be but forget about somewhere along the line. Blogging can help students remember. It’s also instructive because it allows us to chart our progress through the years. On those bleak days of surgery clerkship, it may be encouraging to look back and see how far you’ve come since the first squeamish posts about anatomy lab.
Finally, blogging can create opportunities and open up frontiers. Beyond the simple scenarios that have helped me — such as getting the inside scoop on hospitals during residency interview season — getting involved with the nascent medical blogosphere can help you sift through the Web’s educational resources (such as a collection of clinical cases and archived school lectures). It also can inspire student activism or show you what life is like in foreign med schools. Blogging might even open up doors into research.
That “foreign med schools” pseudo-link you see there would have had you arrive here, but it’s live on the real article, so thanks Dr. Nick for the link! Also, thanks for a great article. The “therapeutic” value of blogging is pretty obvious, especially for med students, professionals, or anyone else in a demanding, stressful field, but the more insightful commentary is about the connections one makes. Speaking personally, I have joined a community of medbloggers that I truly feel give far more to me than I give to them, and through them I learn about so many things every day. As students, it’s important to put down the textbooks for a while and soak in knowledge and experience directly at face value, not as merely the sum of a collection of finite, discrete processes. The sum of the parts is sometimes less than the whole. Every blogger represented in my sidebar and many others I have yet to discover has his/her own unique story to tell, and through them, I am enriched beyond my own experiences.
A Sunday school teacher of 54 years is dismissed by a Rev. Timothy LaBouf, who also is a city councilman in Watertown NY. The reason? She is a woman and, as a woman, has no business teaching men in spiritual matters. Don’t believe me? Read the article:
The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on August 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.
The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”
In a rare show of egalitarian sensitivity, Rev. LaBouf did concede that a woman can fulfill whatever responsibility she desires, but “outside the church.” Perhaps he said these things because, irony of ironies, the good reverend’s boss in the city government is a woman.
Every city council meeting, Rev. Neanderthal must be wishing he could say things like “Fie thee, Whore of Babylon! Speak not with thy forked tongue, lest the wrath of the Almighty smite thee asunder!” but he probably slinks back in his chair like the sad, cowardly man that he is when he’s not behind the pulpit.
I knew it!! I knew there had to be a connection between birth and depression in fathers as well, and a new study confirms this. Of course, what dad goes through doesn’t hold a candle to the hormonal and physical changes in the mother, but the alteration of lifestyle, sleep, shifts in priority, etc. can take its toll if the father is already dysthymic or otherwise borderline for a major depressive episode. (this assumes, of course, that the father gives a damn, which is unfortunately not always a given)
However, I found this odd:
In general, the study found, mothers who scored above this threshold reported less interaction with their babies — reading to them or playing games less often than non-depressed mothers did. [...] Depressed fathers reported less play with their infants as well. And women whose husbands were depressed read to their baby less often than other mothers did — pointing to the potential effects a spouse’s depression can have on the other parent.
Ok, I’m convinced my child’s mental capacity will exceed mine; she’s already showing certain development well outpacing where she should be on paper at the moment. But even my daughter’s preparation for world domination does not include the ability to comprehend or otherwise benefit from story reading at 11 weeks. I play and talk to her all the time, but break out a children’s book and read? I think that’s a bit much, but then again, what do I know…peds sure isn’t my area.