Category: Reviews
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Oral Steroids for Acute Radiculopathy Due to a Herniated Lumbar Disk – JAMA May 19, 2015
I’ve always been perplexed about why doctors would give a not-risk-free drug (steroids) for a problem that is not clearly ‘inflammatory’. Giving steroids for acute radiculopathy – lower extremity nerve pain caused by a herniated disc – is, as far as I know, not recommended by any professional society and there is no evidence to support its use…
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A Perspective on Blockbusters
One of my (many) pet peeves is how every summer, the hot new block buster movie breaks all the old records for how much money they earn. And yet, these aren’t inflation-adjusted dollars, so what does this really tell us? Did Spider Man really bring in more money than The Wizard Oz after you’ve adjusted…
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The Worlds of Connie Willis
I find myself, on this Memorial Day weekend, thinking about how I’m going to spend my upcoming vacation. I mean, I know where I’ll be, but I’m wondering what I’ll do with my time. Mrs. C and I and her family will be doing some stuff, but we’ll have lots of time to just sit…
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How about a book review?
I’ve just decided that I have to put in a plug for Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. It’s a combination of writing styles that I just love and it works really well. First, it’s science fiction, of the alternative universe variety. I won’t tell you exactly how because I think it would spoil the…
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John Snow, Henry Whitehead, and the Broad Street Pump
It’s been a while, hunh? Well here’s a short post on what I’m reading. I’m reading The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, and it concerns the cholera outbreak in the Soho area of London in 1854. If you’re an epidemiologist, you’ve heard of John Snow and you know about the Broad Street pump. This outbreak…
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Dec A&R Roundup – Kind Of
I’m forgoing the A&R Roundup this month. I went through the Dec. issue last weekend, and you know, nothing caught my eye. How many hundred pages, but not one article that grabbed my attention. There were three articles that I flagged for my own reading, and maybe to review, but more because I feel like…
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Here at ACR 2006
I’m now in Washington for the ACR conference (see explanation here). We’re half way through the Clinical Research Conference and I’m jotting some notes in the break. The theme of this part of the conference (actually a pre-conference) is ‘reducing disparities in prevalence and impact of rheumatic diseases’. We’ve heard a nice introductory talk by…
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The Maltese Malcon, part IV
OK, I think my obsession with the The Maltese Falcon has run its course now. I finished the book up last night. What a great novel! Hammett’s characters are very much 3-dimensional beings. Sam Spade is an extraordinarily complex character: good yet bad; greedy yet generous; always cagey; always smart; always looking out for himself.…
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The Maltese Falcon, part III
Satan Met a Lady was surprisingly good. The plot is still noticeably The Maltese Falcon, but it’s undergone major changes. Joel Cairo is now an Englishman, Gutman is now a woman, and Wilmer is now a cat-loving nephew. The names have all been changed of course, and this includes the falcon itself – it’s now…
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Clinton and Wallace and ‘Against All Enemies’
I’m sure many of you saw the Wallace-Clinton interview last week. My initial impression was that Clinton, though justified in his response, might have went a little off the deep end. But he kept saying that all you had to do was read Richard Clarke’s book, and all the things that he did to fight…
Steven Vlad 