So you read a book about global warming. What are you, a liberal?

Actually, I'm a scientist. And like a scientist, I draw conclusions by collecting the available data and figuring out what it means. Data have nothing to do with politics, no matter what the politoidiots say.

So I guess… Read full post »

Today I finished the last part of my Internal Medicine recertification. I can't say I was pleased by the process. Although I understand the need for some kind of certification process to guarantee physician competency, I think the American Board of Internal Medicine is going about this in all the wro… Read full post »

Why did you read this book?

Not because of the HBO series, which I have never seen. I pay the cable company a king's ransom every month. There's no way I'm paying extra for a movie channel. No, what first pricketh my interest in this medieval fantasy novel was a story… Read full post »

In instances like this, yes, there is a federal role. Yes, we're going to find the money. We're just going to need to make sure that there are savings elsewhere to continue to do so.

-- US Rep. Eric Cantor, August 29, 2011

Setting: The Cantor family home, near Richmond, VA.… Read full post »

Now that the pseudo-crisis of the debt limit is over, the real crisis begins. The stock market continues to stumble, faster since the so-called resolution was passed on Monday. It was hardly a resolution. it was a joke. And the stock market is proving what we all knew to be true/… Read full post »

I am horrified to find that it has been 9 months since my last post. I can give the usual excuse, that I have been busy, but as a teacher of mine was always fond of saying, "Busy people always have time."

In other words, the people who make excuses for… Read full post »

Five years after Hurricane Katrina, I see no point in revisiting the misery of that week for me and my family, for venting outrage over the government response, or weeping over the wound New Orleans suffered. Instead, a  list of a few things I lost in the storm, and miss still.… Read full post »

First off, I want to say that I am a big fan of Book TV. I love that there is at least one channel on cable that devotes serious time to books. We've got Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's 6 minute interview segments that are often devoted to a book, but… Read full post »

Congratulations, Nick Saban. No one thought, after taking Alabama to the BCS Championship in college football, that you could top yourself so soon. But boy, you pulled it off. The biggest hypocrite in the United States for the month of July. Great job, champ.

Here's Nick at an SEC press conference… Read full post »

Saturday, June 12th is Loving Day, a great American holiday. I have written about it before, but feel so strongly about it that I write about it again.

Loving Day is the annual celebration of Loving v. the Commonwealth of Virginia, a 1967 Supreme Court Decision decision tha… Read full post »

Today I open C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity once again, because I need it. I first read Mere Christianity about a decade ago during a crisis in faith. It was and has been one of the most consoling books I have ever read. And I don’t think books are worth much if… Read full post »

As Super Bowl Sunday approaches, we're seeing more and more of the human angle stories about players, fans, and the cities the two contenders come from. Stories about several Haitians playing in the game, about Katrina and the Saints, about Peyton Manning's connections with New Orleans, about… Read full post »

You know all those jokes about Mississippi and indoor plumbing? Well, this past week, they were all true.

The recent cold weather that blanketed the entire country struck Jackson, Mississippi, too. We had roughly 60 consecutive hours below freezing, which is very unusual for the deep South. The resul… Read full post »

Grand Rounds is up.

It's been almost 2 years since I've participated, and I am glad to be back.

For the last few days, I’ve been browsing the reactions to Brit Hume’s comments on “Fox News Sunday,” when he said Tiger Woods could use a change of religion to extricate himself from his scandals. "He is said to be a Buddhist,” Hume said. “I don't think that faith… Read full post »

When I was a kid, Christmas morning ended with several piles of unwrapped gifts, one pile per kid-owner; a living room cluttered with torn wrapping paper, loose bows, and discarded packaging; and one or two lonely unwrapped presents under the tree. The unwrapped gifts usually belonged to an ou… Read full post »

For some time, I have wanted to vent my opinion about health care reform. However, at this time, we don't know what health care reform will look like, or even if there is going to be a public option, so all I can do is offer a few general arguments in… Read full post »

When I heard President Obama was delivering a speech to all American school children, I did what I usually do under such circumstances — I turned on Fox News and waited for further instructions. Authorities recommended keeping my children home for their own safety, so that’s what I… Read full post »

It has been four years since Hurricane Katrina, and I find myself grasping for words. Many good things have happened since the hurricane struck the Gulf Coast — and many not so good. If you were to go back to New Orleans now, you could travel quite a bit around town… Read full post »

Rule number one in business: Don’t insult your customers. (Spoiler alert: More vulgar version of this rule below.)

When Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that American citizens do not have “any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter . . . . [… Read full post »

Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care providers to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on . . . end of life treatments, and may place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign . . . .

[T]his

… Read full post »

This week, the New York Times reports that between 1998 and 2005 the drug company Wyeth paid private companies to ghostwrite 26 scientific papers extolling the benefits of its hormone drugs Premarin and Prempro. The papers were then signed by doctors and medical researchers and published in medical j… Read full post »

Any health care reform that aims for universal coverage has to include a publicly funded insurance plan -- the so-called public option.

Since Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, the majority of Americans have been insured through private health care plans, most often through their employers. H… Read full post »

A friend of mine was walking the streets of Washington, DC, and accidentally came across the below document in the bottom of a dumpster beneath four hundred empty bottles of scotch, a couple dozen boxes labeled "Torture Memo -- Classified," and a long narrow coffin with the words "Remains of Osama… Read full post »

Though I am no pop culture analyst, the death of Michael Jackson has been on my mind for the last week. Just a few scattered observations. Jackson isn’t the kind who inspires coherence anyway.

______

Some commentators have tried to put Jackson up against the Beatles and Elvis. In terms of… Read full post »