The second to last shuttle launch
And Stefanie Gordon caught it with her Iphone from her window seat on her flight to Florida.
Thinking about the future
During my undergrad, I remember hearing something in passing that stuck with me. When we think about the future we tend to predict important technological changes while imagining little, if any, cultural changes. The prof that said this showed a picture of a futuristic living room where the wife was vacuuming while the husband read [...]
When seeing your baby cry is better than the alternative
I have come across two very similar sentiments regarding how difficult it is for parents to get their children vaccinated. One is from Karen Grepin’s Global Health Blog: Immunizing my son has been one of the hardest things about being a mom as my son cries so much after each and every shot – with [...]
Canada’s international reputation on foreign aid just got worse
We Canadians seem to have a unhealthy (or healthy?) preoccupation with our international reputation. Unfortunately, since the current government took power things seem to be headed downhill–and fast. We lost our bid for a seat on the UN Security Council for the first time in 50 years, our reputation with regards to climate change talks [...]
The depths of stop-motion animation
I love the creativity of this short video:
If it be your will that Hitchens speak no more
As Christopher Hitchens continues to be colonized by cancer, his resolve to document the entire experience seems to grow stronger. In his most recent Vanity Fair piece, he laments being on cusp of losing his voice, possibly forever. In the medical literature, the vocal “cord” is a mere “fold,” a piece of gristle that strives [...]
The vaccine controversy is not based on the facts
Here’s an article I wrote for the Sherbrooke Record in response to someone who had peddled anti-vaccination dogma on its pages. This article, for some reason, was never published, so I’m posting it here. UPDATE: It was published in the end, I think it got pushed back a couple weeks because of the election in [...]
Space relaxing
After an intense week of celebrated killings and politics, I present two non-partisan videos about space. One is beautiful time-lapse of the Milky Way as seen from Earth (watch it full screen) and the other is what our sky would look like if we had rings like Saturn. See you Monday. The Mountain from [...]
Where to read about health research
The most recent episode of CBC’s White Coat Black Art, a show about medicine, covered healthy skepticism. On this blog, I try and remain equally skeptical about both mainstream and alternative medicine, preferring to focus on what works rather what category a treatment might fall into. Overwhelmingly, mainstream medicine outperforms so-called alternative medicine (which is [...]
The science behind motivation
Someone let me know if I’ve already posted this video. It seems right up my alley but I couldn’t find it on the site. I think I’ve talked about a lot of these issues before but this is a great summary in ten minutes. Basically, money is a terrible motivator for work that requires even [...]
