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Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea Season 4

I’ve been going through the Season 4 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea DVDs. The first half of this season has some memorable episodes, although the second half degenerates into typical “monster of the week” episodes before the show’s final oblivion at the end of this season. Watching the shows again brings me back… Continue reading Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea Season 4

HPL And I

I have a new friend on Facebook who I think is an HP Lovecraft fan, so I’ll take this occasion to post my thoughts on the old gentleman from Providence. I first became curious about Lovecraft while in High School, when I read a favorable description of his work in the New York Times Review… Continue reading HPL And I

Weathering The Storm

Sometimes the stars are aligned a certain way and good things happen. Sometimes they line up another way and #@$% happens. I seem to be in the latter phase right now. Among the bad things that have happened, a low point was my Monday this week. After being on call over the weekend, I assisted… Continue reading Weathering The Storm

Who Should Get An MRI-Compatible Pacemaker?

The Medtronic Revo MRI SureScan™ pacemaker is out, and the natural question arises: who should get it? Up until now, pacemakers have not coexisted well with MRI scanners. Problems including inductive heating of the leads, spurious reprogramming, and various malfunctions have been reported. Up until now, patients getting pacemakers have been told that they could… Continue reading Who Should Get An MRI-Compatible Pacemaker?

Startling New Guideline Conflict of Interest Revelations!

Fast on the heels of a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine this week showing that over 50% of cardiologists who write clinical practice guidelines have potential conflicts of interests with drug or device companies, comes an even more startling revelation. A new study published today reveals that an astounding 100% of those… Continue reading Startling New Guideline Conflict of Interest Revelations!

Return To Gormenghast?

It seems that Amazon.com can now officially read my mind, as it pops up uncannily accurate book suggestions for me whenever I visit the site. I was really surprised to see this title staring back at me tonight when I was looking up a book. I originally bought Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy back in the… Continue reading Return To Gormenghast?

Cut Us Some Slack, JCAHO!

The Joint Commission (aka JCAHO, universally pronounced “Jayco” and thusly spelled in this post) is a group of fuddy-duddies who, since they apparently can’t get real jobs in health care, go around inspecting hospitals and making up increasingly onerous and byzantine rules in order to punish legitimate health care workers. For years this rogue agency… Continue reading Cut Us Some Slack, JCAHO!

Most Popular Post and Goodbye to a Goddess

I installed WordPress Jetpack recently. Among other features, it tracks traffic to individual blog posts. It’s interesting that of all the topics I’ve blogged about, this is the most popular post. There is not doubt that the special effects of that old series, especially the surface shots, hold up very well even by today’s standards. … Continue reading Most Popular Post and Goodbye to a Goddess

Goodbye Borders

It’s sad to see that the downtown Borders bookstore here in Louisville is closing, having fallen victim to the bankruptcy of the parent company. I’ve previously written about the shrinkage of bookstores, but the end appears to be coming sooner than I expected. Of course the root causes are easy to identify: alternative forms of… Continue reading Goodbye Borders

Backup Solutions, 2011 Style

Over the years I struggled to find reliable and realistic backup solutions for my computer data. Originally (back in the early 90s) I used a tape drive, which took forever to back anything up. Right from the start of my backup attempts vexing questions arose. Should I do full backups or incremental backups? Incremental backups… Continue reading Backup Solutions, 2011 Style