15 January, 2010 – 10:53 pm
From a disgruntled under-bidder:
Dear [commanderflatus],
Mr. [flatulence],
I have a question for you relating to your recent sale of a Fugitsu
s510m scanner. I bid on it for almost 24 hours as did at least
one other person in increments of $5. For the last hour or so of
the auction, I was the high bidder at $281. I had entered a max
bid of $300. In the last 5 seconds of the auction, someone bid
$305 and won. I find it exceedingly curious that, even though
eBay's countdown clock showed no other bidding going on,
suddenly in the last seconds someone knew enough to bid not
just one $5 increment above the last bid (mine) but $5 over my
unposted maximum. I am not questioning anyone's ability to bid
at the last second as this person did. What I am wondering about
is how that auction winner knew to bid exactly $5 over my
unposted maximum. Are you aware of any way a person could
hack the site to find out what maximum bids are? Thanks much.
I remain,
a Disappointed tyro-Pat
- tyro_pat
9 January, 2010 – 10:07 am
Plus some editorializing – as a disclaimer, I have no conflicts of interest in any of the below.
I’m only talking about clinical articles with real impact on practice. I’m not covering some new inducible transmembrane gene linked to sonic hedgehog here.
I think Hepatology is easy – and it’s a tie – but I would give it to:
1. Hézode C, Forestier N, Dusheiko G, et al. Telaprevir and peginterferon with or without ribavirin for chronic HCV infection. N. Engl. J. Med. 2009;360(18):1839-1850. Pubmed link here.
2. McHutchison JG, Everson GT, Gordon SC, et al. Telaprevir with peginterferon and ribavirin for chronic HCV genotype 1 infection. N. Engl. J. Med. 2009;360(18):1827-1838. Pubmed link here.
New drugs for Hep C that appear to work well. Could be a game-changer.
Gastroenterology is tough because (in my opinion) nobody hit it out of the park. Additionally I think Gastroenterology is becoming troubled with financial conflicts of interest and what I would call “personality worship” akin to North Korea’s “Great Leader”, we have ours in GI too – the Doug Rexes and Peter Cottons…
But I think this could have serious long-term effects on practice:
1. Shaheen NJ, Sharma P, Overholt BF, et al. Radiofrequency ablation in Barrett’s esophagus with dysplasia. N. Engl. J. Med. 2009;360(22):2277-2288. Pubmed link here.
Unfortunately, if you review the list of authors on the NEJM article – two of the authors – Wang and Sampliner are also authoring guidelines for management of Barrett’s:
1. Wang KK, Sampliner RE. Updated guidelines 2008 for the diagnosis, surveillance and therapy of Barrett’s esophagus. Am. J. Gastroenterol. 2008;103(3):788-797. Pubmed link here.
Do I think it makes the NEJM article crap? No, but I think that we should expect more from scientists.
3 January, 2010 – 8:57 am
…should they change their name back to the Washington Bullets?
This is too easy…
1 January, 2010 – 7:02 pm
man-whore
polydipsia.com and their parent company, polydipsia productions ltd are announcing today that they have officially dropped Tiger Woods as an endorser.
29 December, 2009 – 2:24 pm
A recent article in BMJ (yet again) ponders if Herge isn’t Satan himself, now covering whether or not he correctly depicts mental illness, psychiatry, and substance abuse. It’s laughable on so many levels, but let’s start:
- Societal norms change over time, this is an important lesson for children to learn (in addition to adults apparently)
- Cartoons are not reality
- See Bugs Bunny, Coyote, Muppets, etc.
- If you rely on (or allow) cartoon to formulate your children’s world view you deserve a swift kick in the ass
- Finally, I’m glad that we have this whole healthcare thing so well figured out that this is the most important thing for us to worry about.
I fully realize that the Christmas issue is usually BMJ’s light issue and perhaps that’s the only reason that they published this politically correct garbage, but come on.
