Guest Post: Painful Lessons

By: | February 11, 2014

abdominal pain

It used to go like this: The nice doctor smiles and checks your heart, ears, and knees, pronounces you healthy, and off you go. Grab a lollipop on your way out! (Doctors used to have candy jars. Dentists used to give out toothbrushes.)  You are not yet 20! Life is good!

Then suddenly you’ve flown past 30. Cried over 40. Crept up on 45. And now, anything can happen.

Like this: I was having pain under my ribs for days. I finally went to the ER. Pancreatitis? Really? I had a follow-up MRI, because pancreatitis is for old alcoholic men; I was a tiny 43-year-old woman who can barely finish a beer. On results day, I perched on the edge of a big rolling chair as the doctor made an invisible circle on the computer screen with his capped pen. Here is your pancreas, he said of one mystery blob. And here—tapping a shadow on the blob—is the mass on your pancreas.

A mass on my pancreas. Continue reading →

Polio and a Father’s Certainty

By: | February 10, 2014

Salk_headlinesA couple of weeks ago, I was researching the history of polio vaccination, and I stumbled across a photo that stopped me cold. There was Jonas Salk, the researcher who developed the polio vaccine we use in the US today, giving his son a shot. The caption reads: “Peter Salk receiving the inactivated poliovirus vaccine from his father, Jonas Salk. Salk also injected himself, his wife, and his two other sons. The vaccine was still experimental at this point.” And it wasn’t just Salk. Julius Youngner, who worked in the lab with Salk, told the Daily News in 1980, that he had given it to his children as well, and that all the lab members had been vaccinated. “You can’t ask other people to take it if you don’t give it to your own children,” he told the reporter. “People offered their children as volunteers.” Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | February 8, 2014

einstein-l3 – 7 February

This week, Richard visits a museum that starts with a ship and ends at the universe.

It’s not rocket science: Roberta explains again why, no, seriously, you need to put your phone away while you’re driving (you too, cyclists).

Ann recounts the horrors of living in New Madrid, Missouri, a town on an ancient rift being torn in an ancient continental plate.

Have you ever tossed and turned at night, wondering which incarnation of Sherlock Holmes you most resemble? Sleep easy thanks to Michelle.

Surveying the parched California landscape, Cameron considers the reserves — both beneath the ground and within ourselves — that will bring things back to the way they were.

On Tap, Special Reserve

By: | February 7, 2014

California_Drought_Dry_Riverbed_2009If you were a kid in the eighties in California, you might have done things like this: Save the bathwater and flush the toilets with it. Turn off the shower when you soaped up. Let it mellow. You might have even had a Rube Goldberg-like contraption like the one my dad made to use water from the washing machine for the plants. Maybe, like me, you got embarrassed when you saw the signs that read “Save Water. Shower with a friend!” We were all drought experts then. In my freshman dorm, my roommate even policed other people’s sinks while they brushed their teeth.

Only then the drought was over. And it’s been so easy to forget. Continue reading →

Why I’ve Become a Distracted Driving Bore

By: | February 5, 2014

shutterstock_152529914Lately, I’ve become a nag. I reprimanded my husband for fiddling with the navigation on his smartphone while he was driving. I chastised a friend who said she talked on her speakerphone on the road and another who admitted to texting while “only going 30 miles an hour.” Last weekend, I looked up a bunch of research and statistics on distracted driving and emailed the information to a few friends with the enticing preface “So I think you have all heard me get on my soapbox at some point about cell phone use while driving. I am going to get on it again…”

I’m not sure why distracted driving ticks me off so much. Maybe it’s my distaste for a device-obsessed culture in which people can’t stand to miss even one call, or annoyance at hearing too many loud cell phone conversations in public places. But I think what bugs me is that almost everyone does it, even though most people know on some level that it’s not okay. It’s become a normal, accepted part of coping with our busy lives.

Continue reading →

Much As I Loved It, I’m Not Going Back

By: | February 4, 2014

4270804633_27cf58d924Behind science news stories, which are facts or predictions of facts, is a reality which gives them their context and sometimes their meaning.

Science magazine, January 23, 2014: “A new analysis . . . indicates that modern-day rumblings in the New Madrid Seismic Zone are not echoes of the 1811 to 1812 quakes, however. Instead, they are signs the seismic zone is still alive and kicking.”

Like New Madrid, Missouri, my home in Baltimore, Maryland is in the stable center of the stable North American plate.  Earthquakes don’t happen here, except when they do.  July 22, 2010, a little magnitude 3.6 earthquake rumbled through my bedroom and back out again, I woke up, thought “Oh, earthquake,” and went back to sleep.  August 23, 2011, a much bigger magnitude 5.8 earthquake rumbled into my office building, stuck around for a bit, left, then came back and rumbled around some more.  The four-story 19th century brick factory building shimmied, it shuddered, and I was viscerally afraid.  Like when I was a kid in the cellar because the radio was saying a tornado was coming and the air was thick, the sky was dark, the winds in the clouds going crazy and tearing apart the black clouds to show their green insides.  Whatever is happening, it’s big.  And I’m small, soft, and easily smashed, and I’m afraid. I’m so afraid.

Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | February 1, 2014

171056011_14ee2afd51January 27 – 31

This week, Jessa explained who you can trust and who you can’t.

Guest poster Ivan Amato showed us the refrigerator in Maryland that houses the biggest collection of frog skin secretions in the world.

Helen found that a clean desk changes your behaviour.

Thanks to Pete Seeger, Michelle says, a river that was dirty is now clean. What’s wrong is being righted. What’s impossible is possible.

Erik says his surfers can beat up your linebackers.

 

We Are All Both Ant and Grasshopper

By: | January 31, 2014

shutterstock trustWhen we deposit our money at the bank, when we drop our kids off at school, when we prepay for a future service, we are exercising the trust that has been encouraged in human nature by thousands of years of fruitful cooperation. But not every human we encounter will be trustworthy.

According to The Truth About Trust, a new book by social psychologist David deSteno, the motivations that pull us between self-interest and loyalty to others are highly volatile, strongly reacting to emotions like gratitude and pride. De Steno runs a lab that investigates the impact of emotions on moral behavior.

If trustworthiness seems like a stable trait, discernable through reputation, that’s only because we assume a stable situation as well. The truth is in the incentives. “The question should not be ‘Is he trustworthy?’” argues the author. “It should be: ‘Is he trustworthy right now?’” Continue reading →