Shout Outs

Updated 3/2017-- all links removed as many no longer active and it was easier than checking each one.

 

Dr Edwin Leap is this week's host of Grand Rounds. The theme is “profit in health-care”.  You can read this excellent edition here.

This is the location for Medblogs Grandrounds, January 6, 2008.  Our topic?  The value, or detriment, of financial profit in health-care.  From doctors to pharmaceutical companies, universities to insurers and everything in between; is profit good or bad?

Hat tip to Shrink Rap who links to this article,  "Creature Comforts" (the NY Times) by Rebecca Skloot.  It discusses all forms of comfort and service animals.  Very interesting article.

The first: What qualifies as a service animal? The second: Can any species be eligible?

There are two categories of animals that help people. “Therapy animals” (also known as “comfort animals”) have been used for decades in hospitals and homes for the elderly or disabled. Their job is essentially to be themselves — to let humans pet and play with them, which calms people, lowers their blood pressure and makes them feel better. There are also therapy horses, which people ride to help with balance and muscle building.

These animals are valuable, but they have no special legal rights because they aren’t considered service animals, the second category, which the A.D.A. defines as “any guide dog, signal dog or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, including, but not limited to, guiding individuals with impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a wheelchair or fetching dropped items.”

Hat tip to Helen Jaques  for the link to this nice article on Murphy’s Law 

Among the many fine anniversaries in prospect this year, not the least is the 60th birthday of Murphy's Law, alternatively - though erroneously - known as Sod's Law or, if you're really into this kind of thing, Finagle's Law.

This is the commonly held perception that the world is inherently a perverse place; in other words, if something can go wrong, it will. The proverbial example of the principle is, of course, that if you drop a slice of toast, it will land buttered side down. There are countless others; people have written entire books of them and websites abound (including murphys-laws.com, to which my thanks).

Medical Student Blog has put together a list of folks who twitter and connected to medicine

Below is a list of Doctors, Medical Students and Medicine related tweets. If you know of anyone who’s missing from the list who you think should be included, please e-mail me and I’ll add them. Instead of copying/reproducing the list, please link directly to the post, thank you.

This is not medical, but is praise for a fellow Arkansan, Robert Nunnally,  who, as a hobby, writes music.  He recently wrote a post describing  how he goes about it and how he shares it online.

This weekend became the weekend of "The Seven Virtues". On Friday evening, I conceived the idea of creating songs using only a single audio wave file, an 8 second recording I made while hitting a small Orrefors crystal objet d'art with a tiny wooden mallet.
In order to create the songs from 8 seconds of the 'ping' of mallet upon glass, I used my favorite synthesizer in the whole wide world, a 25 dollar software synthesizer called Sawcutter 2.0.