The state of the seedlings in my raised beds, nearly three weeks after the seeds were sown:
Category Archives: Personal
ScienceBlogs survey, and an invitation to introduce yourself.
First, from the Seed Overlords:
You may have noticed some pretty yellow banner ads around the site this week. They’re advertising a huge reader survey that we’re conducting right now. Anyone (excepting Seed employees) who fills it out can enter to win an iPod and MacBook Air.
The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. Here’s the survey page:
http://www.erdossurvey.com/sb/survey/
Then, following the lead of Ed, Bora, DrugMonkey, and Alice, I’d like to invite the readers of this blog, from regular commenters to committed lurkers, to check in.
Tell us who you are, what brings you here, and what brings you back. What do you like reading about here? What topics would you like to see more of?
I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
NYC bloggers/readers meet-up: venue changed!
A quick update on the details for the meet-up in Manhattan this coming Saturday:
Owing to the number of people who say they’ll be coming (large) and the weather forecast (chance of thundershowers), we will not be meeting at the Arthur Ross Terrace at the American Museum of Natural History.
We’ll be meeting somewhere else. Once that somewhere else is known to me, I will post details (including information on how to get there by subway).
UPDATE: The location is now known!
We’ll be at: Social, 795 8th Ave (close to 48th St.), New York, NY 10019.
Google maps it thusly. It appears to be close to subway stations serviced by C, E, 1, 2, and 3 trains.
Seed will be buying the first round of pitchers (of real beer and of non-alcoholic beer alternatives).
I’m really looking forward to meeting a bunch of you on Saturday, August 9, 2-4 PM.
Details for NYC bloggers/readers meet-up.
For those of you who expressed an interest (even telepathically) in the meet-up of ScienceBlogs bloggers and readers in the three-dimensional world (specifically, Manhattan) next Saturday, I now have much more precise details:
Garden update: day 8.
For those of you following the chronicle of my raised garden beds, here’s the first update.
Update on NYC bloggers/readers meet-up.
I have a little bit more (tentative) information on the upcoming meet-up in Manhattan on Saturday, August 9 (which is only two weeks away):
- The time looks like it will fall in the 2:00-4:00 PM time slot.
- The location is looking like it will be in or near Central Park.
I know that a meet-up in Central Park undercuts the initial promise of air conditioning. Nonetheless, I am convinced it will still be a fun time, and that no one will melt into a puddle of dissatisfaction. I say this as a former denizen of the East Coast who lost her ability to hold up under humidity within 8 months of moving to the San Francisco Bay Area — I will gladly brave the heat and humidity to meet y’all, and I’m guessing the selection of bloggers to meet (and the swag) will make it worthwhile for those of you better acclimated to the muggy than I am.
Now, it has come to my attention that Ed Brayton is spreading rumors about me. Here’s how he describes the bloggers who have publicly announced their intentions to be at the bloggers/readers meet-up:
Shameful songs in my music library.
PhysioProf tagged me using his Feministe guest blogger bully-pulpit. The idea is to identify the five most embarrassing tracks on your iPod. (Since I use the iTunes library on my iBook more than my iPod, that’s what I used.)
This was harder than it might have been. It turns out, when it comes to my musical tastes, I have very little shame.
The pros and cons of screening mammography: reading my ‘patient instructions’.
Connected to my last post (and anticipated by my razor-sharp commenters), in this post I want to look at the pros and cons of routine screening mammography in women under age 50, drawing on the discussion of this subject in the multi-page “patient instructions” document I received from my primary care physician.
The aim of screening mammography is to get information about what’s going on in the breast tissue, detecting changes that are not apparent to the eye or to the touch. If some of these changes are the starts of cancer, the thought is that finding them sooner can only be better, allowing more time for treatments that remove the cancer or that slow its grown and arrest its spread to other parts of the body.
Having more information earlier, you’d figure, is bound to save lives. (Whether this conclusion is supported by the data is harder to discern, as Orac makes clear in this discussion of relevant research.)
But the information comes at a cost. Not only do mammograms require fancy (and expensive) equipment to capture the images, well-trained technicians to work with the patient to get the images, and well-trained physicians to interpret the images, but they expose the patient whose breasts are being imaged to low dose X-rays. Exposure to this sort of ionizing radiation can increase your risk of cancer.
So, right off the bat, it makes sense to have a screening policy that gets you the most useful information for the least risk and cost. Here’s how the patient information I was given lays out the thinking behind the risk/benefit balance my medical group favors:
Blogging my mammogram.
At the urging of my colleague Abel, who liveblogged his own vasectomy, I’m documenting my first mammogram. Given that I had pretty much no idea what to expect going into this, I’m hopeful that this post will demystify the experience a little for those who know they probably should get mammograms but have been putting it off.
Let me preface this by saying that there was no special reason that my primary care physician ordered a mammogram for me aside from my being 40. As such, there’s no special cause to be worried for my health as I wait for the results.
Want to hang out in Manhattan on August 9?
Longtime readers may remember that last August saw a semi-spontaneous confluence of ScienceBlogs bloggers in New York City.
Apparently, we are nothing if not creatures of habit. This August, we are as salmon swimming upstream to return to our spawning grounds. (Well, except that most of us are not planning on spawning, and all of us plan on surviving the weekend.)
Anyway, this time around, Seed is planning on hosting a bloggers and readers meet-up, Saturday August 9, probably around 3:00 PM, in a location to be announced (but one that is likely to have air conditioning). In addition to the opportunity to meet some of your favorite bloggers in real life, this gathering also promises swag and snacks.
In order to make sure there’s enough room/food/swag, the folks at Seed are trying to get a rough guess as to how many of you all might turn up for such an event. If you think there’s a non-zero probability that you’d attend, please leave a comment (with your estimated probability of joining us).
I’ll be there, and I’d be thrilled to meet some of you all in three dimensions.