What's Wrong?

If you couldn't tell from my post yesterday, I approve of the president's impending action to lift funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cells. While, I've not had the time to post much about this issue, I have been reading others' takes. The Washington Post has a nice blog/column about religion and gives good time to science and religion bits. A piece likening stem cell ethics to organ transplantation caught my eye, because I've thought about this connection before and wanted to read what an 'expert' would say about it. I'd recommend you check out the article by Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, and the counterpoint by Thomas J. Reese, but what I did a doubletake on was this image:
This type of tube is commonly used to store frozen cells, including stem cells. The tube is thawed, because the red media is clearly not a chunk of ice. I'm thinking the photographer wanted an illusion of pipetting into the vial. But in the picture, the scientist is actually pipetting into the cap. There is a good chance that the diagonal tube is a forceps (tweezers), but with the cinematic techniques used so often on CSI and other science-enriched TV shows, I'm still putting my money on the theory that we're supposed to think there's pipet action going on.

Which is all to say, LOL.

Access to Care

The five or six readers who have stuck with me these last few months and haven't banished me from their readers will know that the claim to health care is one of my personal, ethical and political interests. Which reminds me that I need to read up about Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius. But one of the reasons I've not been able to do my homework on her, or write in this blog is the Ethics in the ER course I'm teaching this quarter. I've been using a blog to move the discussion beyond the classroom. I think it's been working. The students who post comments have shown great insight and offered poignant reflections.

Anyway, while researching this week's topic, I ran across a couple of media clips that could be interesting to folks who think health care reimbursement needs to be reformed. Remember Harry and Louise? They were the middle class couple in the mid '90s who didn't take very kindly to the Clinton health care plan. Last year, a consortium of lobbying groups turned that technique on its head. I think they even found the same actors. It's worth heating over to the Ethics in the ER blog to check them out side by side!

5 x 10^6 Firefox Downloads!

It's time you thought about updating your browser. Version 3 of the free open-access Firefox web browser is live! What? You don't surf using the best web browser? Only 18% of all browsing is done on the Firefox platform? (Microsoft's Explorer carries 75%.) You better get busy and download
now!




If you can see it (some people block pesky ads), click on this button to download Firefox with the especially useful Google toolbar. If you do it today, you'll contribute to the world record goal of 5 million downloads in one day. And I think I get a dollar for referring you. Need any more rea$on to jump on the bandwagon?

And Speaking of Artificial Hearts...

Those Lipitor (atorvistatin) ads featuring Robert Jarvik make me puke. (Only recently could I fully appreciate the connection with Pfizer's commercials and emesis.) Of all the drug company commercials, this is the most non-sequitur. The basic premise is:

• I'm a doctor.
• I invented an artificial heart.
• I take Lipitor.
• I feel great.
• You should take Lipitor.
• You'll feel great.
• You'll be a doctor.
• You'll invent an artificial heart.

Why did this bother me? Maybe it's because I know Jarvik never has seen patients, he's no cardiologist, and he hasn't done much since crafting together a mechanical artificial heart that was only implanted in a small number of patients because it turned out to cause lots of strokes. Maybe I am jealous of his success. Maybe I just really despise drug company commercials. Maybe it's because simvastatin (the generic form of Zocor) is way cheaper and has the same effect as Lipitor. Maybe it's because Jarvik looks like Randall from Monsters, Inc.

Okay, maybe not that last one.

It turns out that some other people think the Jarvik Lipitor relationship is fishy. There's a big splash in the NYTimes today about how Jarvik misrepresents his physical activity level in the commercial where he is rowing in a scull across Washington State's Lake Crescent.

Someone did dome pretty good digging on this one.

Adsense Payday

Last week, I received my first Google AdSense payment. The electronic statement reads:

10/29/07 REVENUE SHGOOGLE ADSENSE 1454684 $105.81

For those of you not familiar with how having ads on your web site makes money, here's the scoop: Google mines the text of my blog and picks out ads that it thinks might interest you, the reader; then, anytime you click on an ad, the site owner earns 10 to 50 cents. Sometimes the surfer has to sign up for something or buys a product for the blogger/webmaster to get the payment- those ads usually bring in more money. For example, if you do not have the awesome Firefox browser, you can sign up for it on this site through the ad a couple of frames down at the bottom of the light blue banner to the right. If after clicking on the ad, you install the software (with Google toolbar), I get a fat $1.00.

But I don't see the cash right away. Anyone who has AdSense ads embedded into his or her blog or website knows that the paycheck is not cut until the website's total revenue exceeds $100. For me, that took about seven months. I get about 1500 readers on my blog a month, most of whom find me by Google searches. I would bet that about half of my revenue comes from those folks, and half comes from people that are more regular readers. Many of my ads (if your browser does not block them entirely) are intriguing; they hawk stem cell banks, evangelical sites, abortion (pro- and anti-) related organizations, and lately, medical equipment companies. I invite you to click on them if they look interesting to you. Is inviting you to click on my ads working the system? All of this information can be found in the AdSense informational pages. Furthermore, Google has built-in algorithms to determine whether I click on my own ads. Though Google prohibits this activity, sometimes I am just too curious about these offshore stem cell companies to resist the lure. Because of Google's anti-fraud software, those clicks never have counted toward my revenue; I tend to post from the same 3 or 4 ISP addresses. When it comes down to it, most people (>99%) just overlook my content-driven ads. It's just as well.

In the end, $100 once or twice a year for only a little time up front seems like an okay thing to me It almost covers the cost of the ComCash cable internet I am using right now. Is this selling out? I think not - first and last write to better myself and society. (I can really only measure the former.) Those three or four ads in the sidebar: do they scare you away? I hope not. Let me know if they do. I value readers and comments more than candy money. Anyway, if you want to try your hand at AdSense, click on the sign-up button at the very bottom of my blog.

(If it's after November 2007, chances are good you found this through a Google search, anyway, and want information about signing up for AdSense!)

Helium.com Ads

If you do not block banner ads with your browser, you will occasionally see a GoogleAds link for a website called Helium.com on my banner at right. A few weeks ago, I modified my review of the Arctic Tale movie for listing over there. I wanted to see what would come of it. Today, I got an email from the Helium company indicating that my review is on their front page. Now, I don't know whether this is a privilege or a ploy, but sure enough, in the center of the page, under Movie Reviews, there's my article. (Currently right next to a piece about asthma.) Helium's Google ad claims that writers get paid, but I am still not sure how that works. Visitors to my review probably need to click on ads or something. Head on over there to check it out. I am not sure how long it will be on the front page; after it cycles through, you can read the Arctic Tale review here or there.

Messin' With Me!

A couple of months ago, Qiagen took some liberties in representing the peer-review process in order to sell PCR kits, but a recent ad from Promega makes an offer that's tough to pass on!
It really is too bad that I've already purified all of the DNA I need for my dissertation... I may just have been convinced to buy this thing-a-ma-bob.

In Big Bold Letters

Those of you out there who have published scientific papers, have you ever seen this?

By 'this,' I mean a big red stamp on a returned manuscript alerting the expectant scientist that his or her paper has passed muster in the peer review process. Wouldn't it be great if we had such hard evidence of personal success? These days, notice of acceptance arrives by email.

This is an ad from Qiagen. They are a company that produces all kinds of kits to purify DNA and RNA.

Look at the woman in the ad showing her colleague the outcome of her clearly successful experiment. The accepted figure is a nice sigmoidal curve, but does anyone actually publish QPCR cycle data? Usually those graphs have to be analyzed, and boiled down into a couple of numbers.

Anyway, I thought this was funny. Maybe some of you out there appreciate this, too.