Broca’s Area, 1865

Broca, P. “On the site of the faculty of the articulated speech” The meeting of the Anthropological Society, 1865. Broca is a name known universally amongst neuroscientists, med students, linguists, and really almost anyone who’s ever had an interest in language and the brain. Broca lends his name to Broca’s area, an area of the [...]

Whoops, I wasn’t looking

So I apparently got tagged by a blog carnival!  Yay!  I’m always in favor of that.  This one is Medicine 2.0, a blog carnival focused on integration of the web and the practice of medicine.  Check it out!  It’s got lots of technology links and posts about privacy issues.

Humanities v Science: let’s rename it Humanities & Science

Following a post by Dr. Orzel on the divide between the humanities and the sciences, there was a flurry of stuff over at Science Blogs, including stuff from Dr. Free Ride (who, by the way, is my life guru, blogger AND tenured prof in philosophy of science, her posts are always reasoned and thoughtful and interesting…sigh…someday I’ll [...]

Musings of the Week

1) Having seen this article in the NY Times, “R U really reading?” on internet reading, as well as reading some opinions on it from Prof. Orzel, and I was reminded of a conversation I had recently on the evolution of language.  Forget the phrase “R U really reading?”  R U really writing?  Or talking?  The advent of [...]

This Friday’s Weird Science: Foot-binding

When I look for Friday Weird Science topics, I often end up with stuff that sex-related.  Why?  Because sex sells, and weird sex stuff sells even better.  And isn’t it crazy that people STUDY this stuff? So here it is: McGeoch, P. “Does cortical reorganization explain the enduring popularity of foot-binding in medieval China?”  Medical [...]

Homeopathy

I feel kind of weird doing a post on homeopathy.  First of all, it’s a really charged issue, and I tend to try and stay away from those.  I don’t want to draw the haters.  Second, I really hate to ruin what, for many people, may be a really beneficial placebo effect.  But it drives [...]

Worthless grant review comments

We’ve all had that R21 or R03 come back with completely useless comments. Months and months of work, hours or weeks spent in the lab collecting that preliminary data (which is supposedly unnecessary for those R21s). More time spent waiting and waiting. Revisions. Resubmissions. The same useless comments back to you. Come on. We all [...]

My first 5K

Normally I don’t run for any sort of competitive purpose. Ok, so I’ve never run for any sort of competitive purpose. I took the opportunity this time, though, so that I’d have other runners to help me push my pace. I’m pretty out of shape right now but I can still do a 7:30 minute [...]

Podcast Day!

Perhaps some of my fellow scientists out there have it better than me (I doubt it), but I spend a lot of time with my data.  The analysis and graphing takes FOREVER, and it’s also mind-numbing and tedious.  I used to listen to all my music until I got sick of it, but then I [...]

For my first trick, I’m going to make Jack Nicholson… disappear!!!

BATMAN IS FREAKIN’ AWESOME.