I'm Back...

It's been a crazy month, but a good one--long hours in the lab, and lots of kerfluffle to take care of.

In the lab, it's been eventful. We've ditched our implantable "Refrig-a-RAT-or" and developed a "Cool Suit" for our hypothermia model. Our focal ischemia model is coming together in preparation for the ISIS-funded investigation of our combination therapy approach.

And...we had another paper accepted! More on this later.

Obama Rocks--World Tour 08

I've been off the blog for a few weeks--a very busy time indeed. I got funded for a project to investigate combination therapy for stroke (yes! at last!), and I'm working with my colleagues to launch it. And I'm busy trying to get a fellowship grant out the door, along with a new animal research protocol. Excuses, excuses, yes I know. But at least you can't say I'm not using my time well.

What to say about Obama's cruise through the Old World? This shot puts him in the CiC chair, next to Petraeus, looking like buddies.

Oh, and while he was doing photo-ops with the troops, Maliki endorsed his withdrawl plan, which led one political operative with ties to the McCain campaign to surmise: "we're fucked."

And this article, which must be giving McCain a bit of dyspepsia right now, just appeared in Time, which means it will be read in dens, kitchens, lavatories and waiting rooms from now to November.

Over at fivethirtyeight, the model has narrowed Obama's lead, although the polls are volatile and the simulation still shows him winning 58% of the time with 292 EVs. But I would look for a bounce after Obama's world tour. If it materializes, Obama can take some assurance that he's gone a long way to clearing the CiC bar for the presidency, which means he can probably walk right into the White House. If no post-world-tour bounce materializes, I think that's big trouble for Barack.

Diarrhea! Diarrhea!

I've just updated my website with my most recent lecture to residents and faculty, and so this seems as good a time as any to tell all the thousands of people who don't read my blog that I have a bunch of teaching materials online. You can find my medicine and science-related materials at sullydog.com, under the heading Quantum Meat. There are three kinds of Quantum Meat at my site: Classic Meat (general science articles and presentations, mostly from my days at Neverworlds), Rat Meat (related to my cerebral resuscitation research) and Medical Meat (emergency medicine teaching materials). The most recent lectures on Medical Meat are about diarrhea. I gave a talk on acute diarrheal illness to the residents and faculty in February, and in the course of that presentation mentioned that the approach to diarrhea in AIDS patients was "a whole other lecture."

Great, said the chief resident. When will give us this whole other lecture?


Emergency Medicine Residents are like bottomless pits. They require constant feeding, attention, supervision, love, teaching, pizza and, in my opinion, regular beatings. Apparently, they thrive on potty humor. And when they ask for another lecture you can't say no. Not if you want them to grow up big and strong.

Anyway, here's Diarrhea Part II. It's a powerpoint file, a few Mb, and can be viewed online in Explorer or in Powerpoint. Enjoy.

First Post

I guess the first thing to say is that this feels vaguely masturbatory.

I am under no illusions. This ain't the Daily Kos. I'll be astonished if anybody bothers to read it at all. But I like to write, and I like to argue, and I like to keep track of what I'm doing, what I'm thinking...and what I'm writing. This isn't so much my blog as it is my Dear Diary.

What will I write about at SullyDogBlog? Stuff that may or may not be of interest to anybody. A lot of it may be completely banal: my garden, my cats, my lunch. Woo hoo. I'll probably do some writing about my work as an emergency physician, especially when it pisses me off, which it does not infrequently. I'll probably write about our progress in the Wayne State University Cerebral Resuscitation Laboratory, which tends to come in fits and starts. I'll write as well about some of my other science interests. And of course what blogger doesn't write about culture, culture wars, the media and politics?

So here goes the blog that might better have been named "Dear Diary Blog," and will probably be kept just as irregularly as I suspect most diaries are. If you're reading this, I can only assume that you are intelligent, discriminating, cosmopolitan, and really, really bored. Welcome.