A moment of silence to dream of bacon… that smoky flavor and the soft parts that melt on your tongue… with those little crunchy bits that make it sing while you chew.
Is there any meal that cannot be improved simply by adding bacon?
So today, a friend sent me this ad that pretty much says it all:
I have a pound of thick sliced peppered bacon in the fridge, awaiting my skillet. Maybe Saturday morning with some honey-wheat pancakes…
Top image courtesy of PhotoXpress.
We have a problem.
No life endangered, no major economic threats. Nothing that will alter the course of history. Just something awkward.
See, back in the old days of 2009, you became a fan of pages on facebook. You set up a page for a business or an organization, and you could say “become a fan.”
Now, when you want to show your support for such a page, you click on a link that says you “like” this page.
In some ways this makes sense. You are showing your approval for a business or organization or other entity, giving it the old “thumbs up.”
It’s the language that gets clunky.
See, you need 25 people to “like” your page so you can get a “vanity” facebook address. Instead of a string of letters and numbers following the facebook url, you can then be www.facebook.com/ASNKidneyNews, for example (yes, we made the count yesterday). While trying to make that hurdle, I had a dilemma. What should we call these people? Fans? Gee, facebook went to all that trouble to change the process name… Should we really tweet that we only need one more fan? Perhaps they should be called “likers?” Although that sounds really, really weird. And, it is only 1 small typo away from lickers, which could get even weirder.
How do you recruit these people? Some say “follow us on twitter (@KidneyNews) and facebook (www.facebook.com/ASNKidneyNews), although my own preference is to use the verb “follow” specifically for twitter. Yes, saying “fan us on facebook” sounded wrong, but so does “like us on facebook.” Nothing is quite as good as “become a fan.”
And saying “we need one more person to like us on facebook to meet this goal” sounds pitiful. Won’t someone like me, please?
I have no wise Solomon-like solution. But I am feeling awkward. And I am open to suggestions.
On August 6, the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage, was certified.
Now, 90 years after gaining the right to vote, women have achieved much; however, there are still gaps in our status in this country. Men still earn more for comparable work. Men dominate board rooms. Men dominate politics. Men dominate academic medicine and science, my own field.
Vision 2020 calls for a decade of discussion and action about these ongoing inequalities:
Vision 2020 is a national project focused on advancing gender equality by energizing the dialogue about women and leadership. Its first public event takes place on Oct. 21-22, 2010, when a congress of national delegates, representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia, will meet at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to launch an action agenda to move America toward equality by 2020, the centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment.
“What is Equality?” Vision 2020’s Anthem poses some provocative questions. Watch, think and engage by clicking here.
My favorite description of Vision 2020:
Vision 2020 will develop and launch its decade-long action agenda to move America toward equality by inspiring and engaging new generations of women and men to finish the work of the suffragists
[Emphasis mine]
I am delighted to represent the state of Nebraska in this important endeavor. All of the delegates can be found, by state, here. We represent every field of human (not just feminine) endeavor, with a wide range of backgrounds and goals.
Vision 2020 may will be one of the coolest things I get to do.
I hope we can advance the work of the suffragists. I hope we can work toward a country where a woman will be elected president. I hope our conversations and actions can drive pay equity. After all, I have a daughter.
Equality: Are we there yet? No. That is why we must keep driving forward.
Last week my husband and I travelled together. On the final day, we
My scarf must be placed in a bin and xrayed as we go through security.
What I do not understand is why his necktie can be adequately screened while still on his body.
This may just be one of those mysteries we never understand. I would love to understand the rationale. If you know anyone from TSA, have them wander by and explain this policy to me.
In the meantime, I guess scarves are one more thing I will try to avoid on travel days.
Pretty soon I will be avoiding so many items that I may end up flying naked.
Images courtesy of PhotoXpress.
Having Rand Paul as a candidate won’t be boring. You would think by now everyone would be over stuff like the Civil Rights Act (passed during my childhood) and Women’s Suffrage (before my time), but Paul seems to believe that federal laws protecting the rights of all Americans somehow trample on the rights of someone or something else (I’m sort of fuzzy on exactly what he is thinking; Pal over at White Coat Underground has a better handle on the views).
I must admit there are times when I feel out-of-sorts with “others.” Usually this happens when I am in clinic and I have multiple Spanish-speaking parents and too few translators. Or I am trying to schedule a meeting and I have to work around a whole bunch of religious holidays. I curse those who are not like me, although I do feel bad about it later.
It would never occur to me to insist that those who are different from me cannot learn, eat, work, or seek medical assistance alongside me. Like those on Avenue Q, I misjudge some people based on external factors. When push comes to shove, we are ALL in this together.
Rand Paul’s views go beyond the “little bit” standard. His legal viewpoint could return us to “separate but equal.” Should a private restaurant really not be required to adhere to the Civil Rights Act?
Now that would be a little bit stupid.
Last week DrugMonkey posted that the NIH ain’t doin’ it right if a certain portion of grants do not fail. In a time of tight paylines, a back-the-sure-thing, nobody-ever-got-fired-for-choosing-Microsoft mentality prevails, and science gets more of the same. Big labs get more grants to grind out lots of incremental papers (“so productive”), while smaller labs get less, thus assuring inadequate productivity for at least another funding cycle (hey, bitter is the new black, so don’t judge me).
In my experience on study sections, reductionist proposals receive the most enthusiasm. Drilling down into a specific cell/pathway/molecule appeals more than looking at the whole animal or tissue level. Apparently, “mechanism” can only be truly delineated at the cellular level. Never mind that no one in my clinic exists as an isolated packet of cells.
I am not saying that such very basic, mechanism-of-life work is unimportant; this type of science has driven a whole world of biomedical advances in the last few decades, and we need to keep funding it. We just should not lose sight of the bigger picture and the need to keep our minds open.
I just got back in town, and I need to catch up on things. This blog post did not top my To-Do List. I was delighted to see this when I logged on this morning, and just had to write:
The motto of science should be “expect the unexpected,” yet reviewers of grants want “the sure thing.”
OK, you should have enough preliminary data to show that you can perform any new or unusual technique (this generally does not include anything in a kit). You should have data to show that you are facing west, so to speak. Not necessarily a peer-reviewed paper, but something supportive (although at least one peer-reviewed paper supporting your idea is generally necessary for an R01 in the present funding climate).
Just don’t forget to look east occasionally, because that might be even more interesting than the sunset. And reviewers, please do not kill a proposal for looking east as well as west.
The next big advance in any field will be completely unexpected – or we would have found it already.
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