This slim 1956 novel by Mark Harris, oddly elegant in its tenderness and guyish language, resonates today.
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For the weekend - A tweet led me to a fantastically inventive kind of music. The Radioactive Orchestra comprises 3175 radioisotopes. From the website: “Melodies are created by simulating what happens in the atomic nucleus when it decays from its excited nuclear state…Every isotope has a unique set of possible excited states and decay patterns…” image from the Radioactive Orchestra project The project, sponsored by a Swedish nuclear safety organization, KSU, encourages visitors to select among the graphed isotopes, listen and learn. You can try composing music on your own, or you can check out a production by DJ Alex Boman on YouTube: Super-cool. h/t: Maria Popova, @brainpicker, who picked up on this last August at Brainpickings. And to @JohnNosta, who sent yesterday’s tweet. —- Related Posts:The Music of H.I.V.On Genetics, News, Cancer, and Educating DoctorsReading and Hearing ‘Bang the Drum Slowly’A Note on ‘Trial by Twitter’ and See more New Music from an Orchestra of Radioactive Isotopes 
I feel compelled to write at least a short note on Amy Winehouse, a young woman who was found dead in her London apartment a few days ago. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but the truth is I was never a big fan of her music. I wasn’t fond of her highly-stylized hair or her weirdly-curved eyebrows. Once, when I was 17, a friend told me he always tries to see the good in people, no matter how much they behaved disagreeably. Ever since he said that, it’s stuck. Today his words come through, in contemplating Amy Winehouse’s personality and short life. I like her for her willfulness, even though it was so destructive. Amy Winehouse, in ‘Rehab’ Video Not a good medical lesson, for sure – or the message most people are telling their kids upon this “teaching moment,” but not everything I care 
This weekend I learned that Gregg Allman, of the Allman Brothers, has hepatitis C. Not just that; he underwent a liver transplant last year for treatment of liver cancer. This information came my way via CNN, in a clip narrated by Dr. Sanjay Gupta. The cable TV crew filmed the old rocker in Macon, Georgia, at the band’s Big House. Gregg Allman, performing in 2010 (Wikimedia Commons) “He’s taping a public service announcement for the drug company Merck, about hepatitis C,” Gupta says 40 seconds or so into the clip (italics added, ES). Hepatitis C stays silent in many carriers, meaning that most people with the virus are unaware of their infected state. The liver-infecting virus spreads most often by contaminated needles, sexual relations or transfusion of infected blood. Over time, the virus tends to cause liver damage and blood problems including anemia and, rarely, a condition called mixed See more Gregg Allman Stars in Hepatitis C Awareness Campaign, with Merck 
Today Scientific American shared this bit from its 50-year archive, by the mathematician Sherman K. Stein, recounting an interview with the composer George Perle on a theory of rhythm developed in India over 1000 years ago: While reading about this theory,’ he said, ‘I learned my one and only Sanskrit word: yamátárájabhánasalagám.’ I asked him what it meant. ‘It’s just a nonsense word invented as a memory aid for Indian drummers.… As you pronounce the word you sweep out all possible triplets of short and long beats.’ Sounds like onomatopoeia, or something similar in ancient Indian music parlance. But I’m no drummer, and I don’t know Sanskrit. It’s got me wondering about the thousands of ancient, hard-to-spell-or-say terms, not rooted in Greek or Latin, for complex medical conditions doctors use today, about which we have so little knowledge. — Related Posts:Reading and Hearing ‘Bang the Drum Slowly’How Much Do You Want Your Doctors To Say About Risks of Treatment?I Hope My Doctors Aren’t Blogging Too MuchDo Adults Need Physicians to Tell Them to Exercise?Cyberchondria Rising – What is the Term’s Meaning and History? 
We learned this week that singer Aretha Franklin has pancreatic cancer. The 68 year old, Memphis-born Queen of Soul was hospitalized and underwent surgery last week, according to several reports. It’s sad news, in a week that was already sufficient in that dimension. According to the American Cancer Society, there are 43,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer per year in the U.S. Pancreatic cancer tends to occur in the elderly and is slightly more common in men than in women. Cigarette smoking is one of the few certain disposing factors; the causes are largely unknown. There’s a cardinal triad* I once learned for this disease: weight loss, abdominal pain and jaundice. These symptoms arise due to local effects of having a mass in the pancreas, which rests in the upper, back part of the abdominal cavity. The pancreas sits roughly between, and slightly behind, the stomach and liver, near See more Listening to Aretha 
“If it’s chafed, put some lotion on it.” — some practical advice, offered by the character portraying Andrew Jackson, speaking toward the audience in the last scene of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a play written and directed by Alex Timbers See more No Quick Fix Pajak, a graduate student at the University of Georgia, merges art and science in a novel way: she composed a new work, the Sounds of HIV, based on the virus’s genetic sequence. See more The Music of H.I.V. |
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