Two Good Podcasts

The first is an episode of Ockham's Razor: Dental Extraction and Rat Poison,
Sunday 22 January 2006

Dr Max Kamien, Emeritus Professor of General Practice at the University of Western Australia, talks about the history of the blood thinning drug Warfarin and discusses whether dentists should stop a patient's Warfarin therapy prior to dental extractions.

Here's the Transcript of this program, Dental Extraction and Rat Poison.
Here's the mp3 for the audio version. (right click and 'save target as')

The other Podcast is from the Word Nerds. In this episode the authors make a distinction between METAPHOR and METONYMY. Also in the rude word of the week segment, they explore the use of the word asshole.

Ear stapling for weight loss

Just thought I would toss a topic out there. Doing a little moonlighting this weekend, and a topic arose with the nursing staff. One of them recently got the cartillage of both ears stapled with a stainless-steel staple. This is supposed to help with weight loss. Supposedly, this causes appetite suppression via some acupucture stomach point in the ear. I'm not certain if is the cure for obesity, but I am certain that it will add to our CA-MRSA skin infections. Here is one of many links on the topic.

http://www.kfor.com/global/story.asp?s=3384998&nav=6uyaaecd

Here's to mud in your eye!

Sorry the picture is not in focus. It is hard to take a good picture when you have MUD in your eye. The story: duck hunting and my dog, Jack, splashed mud in my eye. Being in the midst of mud and muddy water, I had no way to clear my eye. I remember my bottled water and washed my eye as best I could and hunted the rest of the morning. When I came home and looked in my eye I was suprised to see the muddy meniscus, I removed it with q-tip and had no more problems. I noted that later my eye "worked" to totally clear the rest of the mud. It made me think of all the mud that other people have had in their collective eyes and how the body can remove bad things without our help.

The phrase, "Here's to mud in your eye" has several possible origins. My favorite is that it is a toast prior to a horse race by the owners--wishing that THEY win the race. 

The Word Nerds

Here is an interesting site for anyone who is interested in words and language. More importantly, these guys make a weekly podcast which can be downloaded in several forms from the site. If you are an elderly doctor who has the financial means to purchase the latest technology, but lack the cerebral plasticity required to use it, click here to subscribe and it will automatically be downloaded to your ipod.