Archive for April, 2008
Marathoner Ryan Shay (1979-2007) featured on ESPN
Posted by kemibe in The Running Ape on April 29, 2008
I just watched a segment about Ryan Shay on EPSN’s E:60 program, and rather wish I hadn’t. It was horrible. Yet I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
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Ryan and Alicia (Craig) Shay had only been married for a few months when he died. She was interviewed extensively in this segment, and she could not speak without quavering. She is a broken young woman, a widow at 25 who still desperately misses her husband.
I had to leave the room several times. My roommate doesn’t know running from water polo and she was crying from the start.
In an almost grisly trick of fate that at least carries a nominal opportunity for finding light in all of this, Alicia is compelled to keep doing what she’s good at — running hard. She’s planning to run the 10,000 meters at the Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene in June. I can only hope this morphs into a positive experience whether or not she makes the Olympic team, and she certainly has the talent.
Fortunately, not all the news is bad. The elite running community is small (two of the three men who made the Olympic Marathon team were at Ryan and Alicia’s wedding) and supportive. And rip on global corporations all you like for their alleged faceless indifference, but earlier this week, Saucony Incorporated had Alicia to its Massachusetts headquarters for the opening of the Ryan Shay Product Creation Center and the presentation of the new Saucony Shay XC Shoe.
Ryan — and remembering how quaintly polite and deferential this kid was when I interviewed him, I know his generosity is the real thing — had a genuine drive to help people in need. As a consequence, Alicia Shay, despite her own needs in the wake of losing her husband, established the Ryan Shay Memorial Fund, designed to support Ryan’s vision to help disadvantaged individuals, groups and communities, as well and American distance runners in financial need. Saucony, in providing a forum for the Fund’s official unveiling, made an immediate donation.
Anyone interested in making a tax-deductible donation to the Ryan Shay Memorial Fund can send donations to: Alicia Shay, 780 Ponderosa Parkway, Flagstaff, AZ 86001.
And now for something completely spoken
Posted by kemibe in Self-Indulgent Wankery, The Running Ape on April 29, 2008
This has nothing to do with anything any of you do or should care about, but Running Times contributing editor Scott Douglas and I recorded a podcast on Sunday exploring the story behind the cover story I wrote for the June issue, which just hit subscribers and newsstands over the weekend.
If nothing else you can hear what I sound like and reassure yourself that I can speak without yelling, a proposition that probably strikes a lot of Chimp Refuge regulars and interlopers as unlikely. In a nutshell, Scott asks me what it was like to train and converse with some of the best female distance runners in the country (Erin Donohue was the fastest miler in America last year, while Shannon Rowbury won the 3,000 meters at the U.S. Indoor National Championships in February; both are preparing for the Olympic Track and Field Team Trials in Eugene, Oregon in June).
For reference, back in February I did write a post or two about matters germane to the article and podcast.
Stentor’s Law
Posted by kemibe in Hootworthy on April 28, 2008
Many of you have heard of Godwin’s Law (original 1990 formulation):
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
I propose a sibling, which I’ll call Stentor’s Law in honor of the proximate inspiration for the dictum. Stentor’s Law states that
As comments to a blog post mentioning fat activism in anything other than a categorically positive context accrue, the odds that someone will post a garbled, angry, and uncomprehending comment complaining of bigotry or “fat hate” approaches unity.
You can see evidence of this law in action by reading my post from last night about the incredible vanishing murder suspect. Stentor quite inanely intimated that I was being unfair toward Mr. Laswell by claiming that he should be happy to lose weight by whatever means this could be achieved. As I noted in a comment on his blog, where he posted a similar bleat and accused me of being gleeful about the whole situation, his browser is apparently equipped with a plug-in or maybe some malware that renders blog posts in an entirely different manner from the one in which they are actually written.
I won’t go to the trouble of explaining yet another time what I intended to convey by mentioning the inmate’s less-than-intact faculties. When people are convinced the world is out to get them — and it surely sucks being fat, make no mistake about that — no amount of reasoned argumentation will sway them. All criticism of fat activists is rooted in evil motives; all fat people need to be cut some slack because they suffer so much.
Stentor, at least, is far from hysterical. He just happens to be wrong. Therefore, he retains the right to have a stupid Internet law named after him, something wild-eyed FFA’s themselves long ago ceded.
Smokers at much higher risk for depression?
Posted by kemibe in Health and Society on April 28, 2008
Researchers in Spain, drawing upon the findings of a six-year-long study conducted by associates of two Spanish universities and the Harvard School of Public Health, have concluded that smokers with no known history of depression carry a 41 percent higher risk of developing the disorder than nonsmokers.
The study followed 8,556 people with an average age of 42. 190 smokers were diagnosed with depression during the six-year span, and 65 other smokers admitted to taking antidepressants during this period despite not being diagnosed. (SSRIs and a host of other prescription [in the U.S.] drugs are available over the counter in Spain.)
413-pound inmate loses 105 pounds — and sues the county
Posted by kemibe in We're Doomed on April 27, 2008
A murder suspect being held in the Benton County Jail in Arkansas is suing the county, claiming that his 105-pound weight loss is evidence that he and other inmates are “literally being starved to death.”
Broderick Lloyd Laswell, accused of fatally beating and stabbing a man and then setting his home on fire, reports: “On several occasions I have started to do some exercising and my vision went blurry and I felt like I was going to pass out. About an hour after each meal my stomach starts to hurt and growl. I feel hungry again.”
Once-imposing Christian softens up, extends earthly travels
Posted by kemibe in The Running Ape on April 27, 2008
You can probably count the number of national-class marathoners who started out as competitive bodybuilders on one finger. That digit would be pointed squarely at Dallas dentist Melisa Christian, who in her early twenties was striking oiled-up poses in the glare of buff-babe spotlights around the country but is now among the best marathon runners in the U.S.
A week ago, the 31-year-old Christian placed 27th in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials Marathon with a time of 2:41:18. Her first marathon, in 2001, took her 3 hours, 31 minutes and 20 seconds to complete, and it wasn’t until 2006 that she broke three hours. She only started running in her second year of dental school, which was presumably not long before that 3:31 (when she would have been around 24 years old).
At age 23, Christian upheld an entirely different athletic standard, rating high in amateur bodybuilding competitions. The sequence of pictures below show her at age 23, age 29 (when she first qualified for the Olympic Trials by running 2:46:30 at the 2006 Boston Marathon) and age 31 (at last Sunday’s Olympic Trials). It’s hard to believe that all of these pictures are of the same human being. Obviously the transition from 1998 to 2006 is most striking, but something seems to have happened in the past couple of years as well. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
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Anyway, we’re obviously looking at a serious case of talent combined with willpower here. This is someone who decides that she’s going to literally mold herself into a perfect specimen — be it one who stands still or one who keeps up a six-minute, ten-second-per-mile pace for 26.2 miles — no matter what it takes. Her time at the Olympic Trials was her best by almost a minute, so expect Christian to get even faster before she’s through.
Doctors hesitant to communicate with patients by e-mail
Posted by kemibe in Health and Society on April 26, 2008
Is anyone surprised? This isn’t the kind of industry in which it makes sense for the service providers to interact at any length with the customers over the Internet. If someone in the throes of an emergency and not recognizing it as such fired off an e-mail describing a few symptoms to his physician and in return received a casual “schedule an appointment” response, and then dropped dead, there would be as dozen malpractice attorneys on the scene before you could say “M.I.”
Doctors apparently feel the same way, citing this and similar concerns as reasons for not exchanging e-mails with patients. I’m surprised that the percentage of docs who, according to Manhattan Research, fielded and responded to patient e-mails in 2007 was as high as it was (31). Doctors don’t spend a lot of time in front of computers during the day. When not seeing patients, they are typically rounding at nearby hospitals, completing dictation, or consulting. Not only would e-mailing patients be an unmanageable time sink for most, there’s just no substitute — ethically or realistically — for seeing patients in the office.
Also, truth be told, just as every popular blog gives rise to a few genuinely unhinged commenters who perseverate endlessly at every opportunity, every primary-care practice has a small cadre of patients who never shut up. Give these people remote access to their physicians via e-mail and only four or five of them would be required to bring the entire office to its knees.
I live online, but would neither want nor expect my health needs to be handled by e-mail.
Marley and Me hits the big screen
Posted by kemibe in Hootworthy on April 24, 2008
| When I received the book Marley and Me for Christmas in 2005 from someone who knew I was a yellow Lab owner and fanboy, I never imagined — despite how amusing, moving, and all-around enchanting this beginning-to-end chronicle of a dog’s life and his family was — that Marley and his 13 years on Earth would ultimately become the centerpiece of a bona fide mainstream cultural phenomenon.
I was naive. Not only is Marley and Me being made into a motion picture, but it’s going to be a movie with an A-list cast — Owen Wilson plays author John Grogan and Jennifer Aniston takes on the role of John’s wife Jenny. I’m not sure whether the dog slated to play Marley is famous, but John assures Marley fans that the actor is a dead ringer for his beloved pet. |
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In all seriousness, although a book about a rambunctious Labrador retriever sounds like a “so what?” undertaking, Grogan somehow made the story transcend merely being able to relate to the wacky perils of Lab ownership. It’s not a dry-eye read, and it is a classic.
The Music Genome Project
Posted by kemibe in More Art, Then Science on April 23, 2008
In perusing a few Facebook profiles I noticed something called Pandora. This is an online radio service which lets you look up material by artist or by song and amass channels on that basis, and then, a la Netflix, Amazon, or any number of services featuring similar basic algorithmic “learning” processes, chooses music you might enjoy based on whatever garbage you’ve listened to already.
The difference between Pandora and, say, Netflix is that while Netflix will not brazenly mail you a movie based on its “intuition” (it sticks to suggesting them instead), Pandora will just go ahead and play a song and ask you whether you love it, find it so-so, or loathe it. In this way the program asssembles a sort of random channel to accompany the ones you select that in theory reflects all the songs you would have picked had you known they existed.
Like a lot of applications of its type, you can search through your e-mail address book to find who among your contacts is using Pandora and add them to a friends list. Then you can see what your friends are listening to and what their own “musical learning curves” look like.
How does Pandora decide what music you’re apt to like? Evidently it’s not a matter of simply figuring out which genres your tastes run to, although at the macro level that’s essentially how choices of newly presented music are justified (“This song has elements of funk, bass and trip-hop”). It involves an in-depth analysis of everything contributing to a piece of music — a glimpse into a song’s “genome.”
I tried this and within 20 minutes was jamming on stuff I’d never heard before but immediately really liked. By selecting the Lo-Fidelity Allstars, LCD Soundsystem, and the Stereo MC’s, I was (unbeknownst to me at the time; I thought the site was just a place to find preferred music) inviting Pandora to find me some electronica with a hip-hop element, and that’s exactly what it found.
As you can imagine, these qualities make the application very addictive, but in a good way. I now understand where the name comes from: Once you open the thing up, it’s impossible to slam the lid back down and becoming overwhelmed in a way that feels too damned good is all but inevitable.
DeBakey receives Congressional Gold Medal
Posted by kemibe in Health and Society on April 23, 2008
Michael DeBakey, now 99 years old and perhaps the most famous heart surgeon in history, is in the process of being awarded a Congressional Gold Medal as I write this. CNN has coverage.
The medal is the highest honor bestowed upon civilians.
DeBakey, whose career was largely spent at the Baylor University College of Medicine, helped develop the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital systems, pioneered bypass surgery in 1964, was the mind behind a number of innovative surgical techniques and medical devices, and helped foster America’s veterans system.
Endless Forms Most Beautiful or It Bears Repeating
Posted by in Habitats and Humanity on April 23, 2008
Old folks tend to repeat themselves, so bear with me if this is redundant. A cursory search of Science Blogs turned up a comment in response to Razib’s post in Gene Expression that calls attention to the video of Sean B. Carroll’s 2005 HHMI Holiday Lecture on Charles Darwin and the development of the theory of evolution. Carroll is an excellent speaker. He aims the topic toward high school students in this accessible and enjoyable seminar. The video (below the fold) is ~ 1 hour in duration, but well worth the time.
Sprinter Jenkins hands US Anti-Doping Agency its first loss
LaTasha Jenkins, who won a silver medal in the 200 meters at the 2001 World Indoor Track and Field Championships and a bronze in the same event at that year’s World Outdoors, has spoiled the perfect record of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in charging athletes with doping offenses — on a technicality.
Jenkins, 30, tested positive for the steroid nandrolone in July 2006. USADA, per its duty, leveled a doping offense against the sprinter, who, per its custom, appealed. In December, an arbitration panel ruled that Jenkins’ urine samples were not handled in accordance with World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) protocol, which requires that pee-pee be tested by two different lab technicians.
WADA appealed the panel’s decision in February, but announced the other day that it was dropping its appeal. That in turn dropped the USADA’s record before arbitration panels to 35-1.
65% of women in U.S. have eating disorders
Posted by kemibe in The Medical Tent on April 22, 2008
That is, as long as you trust the source – the hallowed medical journal out of Times Square, SELF Magazine.
The publication surveyed over 4,000 women between the ages of 25 and 45 using this online poll, and concluded that over 6 in 10 U.S. women have, at some point in their lives, experienced “disordered eating.”
Now, note that there’s a big difference between “disordered eating” and the claim I made in the subject line of this post, which I lifted verbatim from News-Medical.net. Read through either article to see what qualifies as “disordered eating.” It could be as simple as dropping your fork on the floor during a meal. (Come to think of it, that would be a dining disorder.)
Woman cyclist convicted of perjury in BALCO case
| Tammy Thomas, banned for life in 2002 after testing positive for a steroid and physically ravaged by the masculinizing drugs she took, was found guilty on Friday of lying to the same grand jury that Barry Bonds faced concerning the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) performance-enhancer distribution fiasco.
Thomas was the first defendant in the BALCO mess to go to trial, making the score a quick 1-0 in favor of the prosecution. |
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The drug she tested positive for, norbolethone, toiled in obscurity for nearly four decades after its 1966 invention, but numerous athletes have submitted urines dirty with the androgen in the new millennium. It is probable that its revival is owed to the presumption that it would be less detectable using modern tests that target more contemporary substances.
As the Chron story notes, Thomas was found by a physician to have undergone many of the classic virilizing changes women steroid users experience, and to a remarkable extent.
Personalized Pharmaceuticals
Posted by in Better Living through Chemistry, Hootworthy, The View from Pharma-dur on April 18, 2008
Friday Flower Porn: More Purple Prose
Posted by docbushwell in Botanical Pornography on April 18, 2008
Now what pollinator could resist this fine beard?
The rest of the flower and a little Darwinism (of the Erasmus variety) follow.
New Reality TV Show – Last Scientist Standing!
Posted by in Hootworthy on April 17, 2008
Lewis Black is my favorite comedian these days, and as such, he has drawn me into the accretion disk of his latest offering on the Comedy Channel: Root of All Evil. My response to its premier was tepid, but as I have kept watching it, the show has grown on me. The format has Black as hilariously dyspeptic judge presiding over a faux trial in which a pair of comedians from Comedy Central’s stable argue for the inherent evil of a pair of the unholy. For example, who is more evil: Paris Hilton or Dick Cheney?
Last night’s episode asked which is more evil: High School or “American Idol?” Comedian Andy Kindler argued that “American Idol” is far more insidious than high school. Kindler demonstrated the absurdity of reality TV by his proposition that professions might be evaluated by stupid reality TV shows. For example, he said, instead of letting scientists test their theories, why not subject their research and hypotheses to a show called “Last Scientist Standing?” A clip of this fine new reality TV show can be viewed by clicking on the Root of All Evil link and then scrolling under the main video window for the show to American Idol vs. High School – Kindler. You’ll be subjected to a commercial (this is running dog capitalist Amerika so we must live with these advert-viruses) but about half-way through Kindler’s shtick, “Last Scientist Standing” appears. Among the contestants are Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance and Science Blogs’ very own Chris Mooney — dressed like a stand-up comic from the 80′s according to Kindler.
My sixteen year old daughter watched the show with me and was amused by my excitement when Carroll and Mooney appeared as contestants. To put my hoots in context, I explained to her that Chris is “the guy who wrote The Republican War on Science and Storm World!” (she’s read the RWonS) and that Carroll — a popular physicist — is married to one of Mom’s very favorite bloggers: Jennifer Ouellette.
Props to Chris and Sean for their appearances in the show! As for “Last Scientist Standing,” hey, I’d watch it!
A Useful Techy Tidbit for Drummers
Posted by jim in Pattern Juggling on April 16, 2008
This is for the faithful drummer-readers of the Refuge (uh, both of you), particularly those of the electronic kit persuasion. For years I’ve had difficulty keeping my electronic hi-hat pedals in one spot. They always seem to skate around the kit carpet no matter what I do. I’ve extended the steel spurs as far as they go. I’ve tried Velcro. The whole “tie a cord around it and attach it to the drum throne” approach is unappealing and presents positioning limitations. Nothing really worked except placing a several-pound block of steel in front of it.
Well, I came across the perfect solution. It’s called number 085 Carpet Anchor. It’s like the hook part of Velcro on steroids. It comes in a strip about an inch wide and features rows of plastic teeth with little T-shaped ends. Cut a couple of strips 6 inches long, glue them to the bottom of the pedal, place on the carpet, and bingo, sticks like glue. Unlike glue, you can rip them up and reposition them with little effort. Brilliant stuff. I highly recommend it. I found a number of places selling it on the inter-tubes but you may have to look around to find it sold by the foot.
Bonking in the Name of Science
Posted by docbushwell in Health and Society, So Much Like Us, Spankin' the Crank on April 4, 2008
Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Spook, has a new book debuting this month: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. To promote her new book, Roach is making the interview rounds. Check out her interview with Katharine Mieszkowski for Salon: Getting it on for science.
An excerpt pertaining to sexual arousal in women follows:
Edited to add a video of Mary Roach discussing Bonk; be sure to check it out, particularly her remarks on Danish swine sex! Thanks to Steve C. from W.W. Norton for providing the clip.
Bonking in the Name of Science
Posted by in Health and Society, So Much Like Us, Spankin' the Crank on April 4, 2008
Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Spook, has a new book debuting this month: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. To promote her new book, Roach is making the interview rounds. Check out her interview with Katharine Mieszkowski for Salon: Getting it on for science.
An excerpt pertaining to sexual arousal in women follows:
Edited to add a video of Mary Roach discussing Bonk; be sure to check it out, particularly her remarks on Danish swine sex! Thanks to Steve C. from W.W. Norton for providing the clip.
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- Doc Bushwell is a biochemist and a medical writer who serves as a slavering minion of the dark lords of Big and Little Pharma; Jim is an engineering professor with a fondness for running shoes and drumsticks; and Kevin Beck is a self-exiled member of the clan who refuses to stay gone.
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