Blog

Spending a quiet Sunday morning plowing through my pile of stacked up mail and periodicals (the great, amorphous pile, my wife calls it), I scanned through a small stack of the most recent issues of the New York Observer, the peach colored, edgy, irreverent New York weekly. I can’t bear to throw these papers away…

I was stunned when I read Bob Greene’s Op/Ed piece Was It Real for You, Too in the New York Times this morning. He describes a Southwest Airlines flight midway between Chicago and its destination Columbus, Ohio during which the captain tersely informed the passengers that the plane was turning back to Chicago. Apparently the…

Now that China has allowed its currency, the Yuan, to float (sort of) against the dollar, it will be interesting to see how the future as predicted by this article written in TCS a month ago will turn out. It will take a while for things to completely shake out because the Chinese aren’t actually…

Another column very much worth reading in its entirety by John Tierney on why doctors are reluctant to prescribe pain medicines. The current zeal for sending doctors to jail for writing painkiller prescriptions may seem baffling, especially to the patients who relied on the doctors for pain relief. But if you consider it from the…

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read this. A while back the House proposed that we (the USA) extend daylight-saving time for two months—starting a month earlier and ending a month later. I was all for it because I hate it when it gets dark at 5 PM. So is most everyone else—at least…

Another new study showing the benefits of a protein-enriched diet, with the protein source being red meat no less, appeared as an advanced online publication from the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Each of these studies is another drop all of which will ultimately gather into a deluge washing away all the low-fat nonsense that…

A couple of days ago a friend of mine sent me the draft of a medical paper he is submitting for publication. He wanted me to review it and get back to him with any criticisms before he sent the paper off, which I did. While going through the references at the end of the…

And you though CIA screwed up when they were caught unawares on 9/11 and when they overestimated Saddam’s WMD status… CIA’s Office of Reports and Estimates stated categorically on December 15, 1947 that it is doubtful that the Russians can produce a bomb before 1953 and almost certain they cannot produce one before 1951. A…

An informative article appeared in the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The gist of the paper is that many so-called “proven” prognosticators are much less reliable than the experts would have us believe thanks to reporting bias. Check out the write up on MedicineNet.com. The problem is not that the…

I was at a business lunch a few days ago and noticed something I’ve seen often: a woman ordered a large salad with no meat, no cheese, and with fat-free dressing. The salad came as this monster bowl of lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, radishes, and beans. The lady dribbled no-fat dressing sparingly and began…