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My Reading Adventure

I owe my love of reading to Scrooge McDuck, Tom Swift Jr., Lord Greystoke and John Carter of Virginia, Holmes and Watson, Kimball Kinnison, Podkayne Fries, Mithrandir, Steerpike and Fuschia, Conan the Barbarian, Cthulhu, Paul Janus Finnegan, Clark Savage Jr., and a host of other characters. Or, more properly, to Carl Barks, the Stratemeyer Syndicate,… Continue reading My Reading Adventure

Ebooks for Learning a Foreign Language

I prefer reading real books. I love their feel, their heft, even their smell–musty and old, or inky and new. Some books have beautiful bindings, dust-covers with wonderful artwork, high-quality paper and lovely fonts. They are a pleasure to read. Even the lowly paperback with its fragile binding and quickly deteriorating paper can spark joy.… Continue reading Ebooks for Learning a Foreign Language

A New Look

It was about time. The EP Studios website was soooo 2013. An overhaul was long overdue. As you may have noticed, the site looks different now. I upgraded to the WordPress Twenty Twenty theme, nicely mobile-friendly. I flattened out the menu–no more submenus. I eliminated some outdated pages. I upgraded the remaining pages with new… Continue reading A New Look

The Bittersweet Life of Clara Bow

For some reason I became fascinated by the actress Clara Bow. Like so many of the tangents I go off on, this one started with some clips on YouTube. Delving more deeply, I purchased some DVDs and read David Senn’s biography of Clara: Clara Bow, Runnin’ Wild. Clara’s life is both inspiring and sad—a glimpse… Continue reading The Bittersweet Life of Clara Bow

Hacking the QTc

The QT interval—a measure of the duration of the overlapping action potentials from two billion ventricular muscle cells—has fascinated physiologists since the dawn of electocardiography. Too long or too short, it can be a harbinger of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden death. Sensitive to electrolytes, drugs, and autonomic tone, susceptible to congenital ionic channel mutations, difficult to… Continue reading Hacking the QTc

Cruises, Then and Now

[Author’s Note: This post got completely garbled when I tried to transmit it to the server using the terrible shipboard internet service in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. If you tried to read it before and gave up, convinced I had downed a few too many Bloody Marys, you might want to give it… Continue reading Cruises, Then and Now

Cutting Down on Coffee

This morning as I write this, there is on my desk a steaming hot cup of fake coffee. The ingredients are roasted barley, roasted malt barley, roasted chicory, and roasted rye. This is the sort of stuff people drank as a coffee substitute during wartime rationing. It smells odd. It is hot and black and… Continue reading Cutting Down on Coffee

The Death of Dr. Shock

The call came from one of my attendings at night during my cardiology fellowship. It had a touch of the black humor that medical persons don’t like to admit bubbles up to the surface from time to time. “You know Dr. Shock, the guy on TV? He’s being transferred. He’s having a big infarct and… Continue reading The Death of Dr. Shock

The End of Cardiostim

A few days ago I received an announcement by email that the Cardiostim meeting for 2018 has been cancelled. The Cardiostim website confirms this, and it looks like the meeting is gone for good. Back in June, 2000, while still an academic electrophysiologist at the University of Colorado, I attended my first Cardiostim meeting in… Continue reading The End of Cardiostim

Tips for using your cellphone

Congratulations on your purchase of a new cellphone! While this tiny rectangle of metal and glass may not look like much, you will soon find yourself drawn into its world — inexorably. So as not to become one of those zombie cellphone users you see around you, crashing their cars, walking off cliffs, and ruining… Continue reading Tips for using your cellphone