Category Archives: Health

Even high jumpers get the yips

The yips plague athletes in many sports, and even musicians. Hopefully sports psychologists can find a cure. Golfers know all about “the yips.” If they’ve never experienced it themselves, they’ve probably played with someone who has. And they certainly know the stories of famous golfers whose careers were challenged, if not devastated by the phenomenon. This list includes Tommy Armour, who

Read more

How to drink without getting drunk: does the yeast method work? (Food & Drink Week)

Esquire blog discusses a famous brewer’s secret for staying (relatively) sober. We test it out. You may have seen Aaron Goldfarb’s recent Esquire blog entitled “How to Drink All Night Without Getting Drunk.” Great headline, and how cool would that be, right? I was skeptical, for obvious reasons, but it turns out that what is proposed is an idea developed

Read more

Tuesday Morning RAW: WTF is WWE Creative thinking?

Sometimes I have no clue what the WWE Creative team is doing. Which is appropriate, because I don’t think they do, either. Case #1: Recently the WWE made a token donation to Chris Nowinski’s organization, which is dedicated to studying and preventing Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The gift is being made to the Sports Legacy Institute, a Boston non-profit with a mission

Read more

Komen Foundation circling the drain? Good riddance, and good news for cancer research

The Susan Komen Foundation announced this past week that it’s slashing the number of cancer walks it stages in half. In a decision “not made lightly,” the Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure announced Wednesday that it was canceling seven of its signature three-day fundraising walks next year. The decision comes about 18 months after the organization stoked considerable

Read more

Black Friday: America’s new high holy day

Black Friday is under way – has been since midnight, in fact. In many places around the country, retailers started kicking off the festivities at yesterday: over a quarter of Americans said they planned to go shopping on Thanksgiving. Or, as it will soon come to be known, Black Friday Eve. Or Black Thursday, maybe. Want to hear some fun statistics?

Read more

The most important lesson we should all learn from the 2012 election

“You idiot! Get back in there at once and sell, sell!” As we set about the process of compiling and canonizing the 2012 election post-mortem, one thing we keep hearing over and over is how utterly stunned the Romney camp was at their loss. Republicans across the board apparently expected victory – the conservative punditry seemed certain of it – and

Read more

Elections are educational! 14 things we wouldn’t have known without Campaign 2012

Everybody seems to be so negative about campaign season. They hate the ads, they hate the mudslinging, they hate the lying, they hate the candidates. Not me – I LOVE campaign season. Why? Because it’s an opportunity to learn stuff that not only didn’t I know before, but that I’d never learn any other way.

Read more

Q: Was the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare a victory or a defeat? A: Yes, it was.

Depending on your perspective, Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the “Obamacare” program was either a thumping victory for progressives everywhere or a clever corporatist / conservative flanking maneuver that makes it even less likely American citizens will ever enjoy the kind of basic access to healthcare that the rest of the developed world takes for granted. I’ve been harshly critical

Read more

Nature publishes instructions on how to make a Frankenstein monster

My doctoral dissertation addressed what I called the “Frankenstein Complex.” So guess why this story bothers me. Today, a scientific journal published a study that some people thought might never be made public at all. The paper describes experiments that suggest just a few genetic changes could potentially make a bird flu virus capable of becoming contagious in humans, and

Read more

When doctors follow the rules, are they violating the Hippocratic Oath?

– I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone. I went to my doctor a few weeks ago for the first time in months. During the course of conversation about my health and how I was doing, etc., we stumbled onto the question of why I hadn’t been in

Read more

Denver EMS takes 24 minutes to respond to call in downtown; Mayor Hancock, this is NOT acceptable

Earlier this afternoon, while watching the Chelsea/Barcelona Champions League match at the British Bulldog in downtown Denver, a young woman collapsed. It was unclear what happened, but my best guess from what those closer to her were telling me was that it was an epileptic seizure and she may have hit her head on the concrete floor. I immediately dialed

Read more

Another heart attack on the pitch: RIP Piermario Morosini

A few weeks back Bolton Wanderers’ Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the field during the team’s FA Cup quarterfinal match against Tottenham Hotspur. He was attended to by emergency staff on the pitch and eventually stretchered off and rushed to a hospital. Despite being “in effect, dead” for 78 minutes Muamba survived and is now recovering. Today, another elite footballer had

Read more

Komen hires the wrong PR firm, missing the boat once again (and some thoughts on PR Daily’s coverage of the story)

So, the Susan Komen Foundation has hired a big-hitter PR firm. And not just any PR firm, either. Now, Komen is assessing the damage, and it’s using a consulting firm founded by two former Democratic strategists. Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), the firm Komen hired to help determine how badly the crisis hurt its reputation, is founded by former Democratic strategists

Read more
« Older Entries Recent Entries »