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Orac is recharging

Getting back to Orac's roots.

This is a public service announcement—with skepticism. Orac needs a recharge:

Some of you might have seen it alluded to in the comments that I am on vacation this week. It is true, although it’s not entirely a vacation. Basically, I was invited by a collaborator to give a talk at a two-day conference at Imperial College London, and my wife and I decided to make a vacation of it. What this means is that, depending upon my mood and the amount of time I have, there might or might not be new material this week. Worst case scenario, there will be reruns. Of course, if you’re relatively new to the blog, chances are that you haven’t read them before and they’ll be new to you. Even if they aren’t, hopefully they’ll be entertaining the second time around.

As an aside, though. If you happen to be in London, I will be popping by tonight’s Skeptics in the Pub event with the London Skeptics at The Monarch Bar at 7:30 PM. I’m not giving a talk (I am on vacation after all and wouldn’t) but will be listening to what sounds as though it will be an interesting talk about—of all things—bats. By then, hopefully, I’ll have taken care of some of the sleep deprivation I suffered from yesterday after a redeye to get here.

And, fear not. Recharged (I hope) I’ll be back to regular blogging next week, although next week will be rather crazy as I pay for my time off.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

15 replies on “Orac is recharging”

“Cricket bats?”

It would be an abomination to cross breed an insect with a mammal. This is the stuff of which bad horror films are made.

Thought this was interesting and relevant to some of Orac’s recent posts. Paper out of MIT arguing that the FDA’s standards for approving drugs should be based on the survival rate of the disease the drug is to treat. Not quite the “right to try” stuff Orac’s talked about before and even argues the FDA should tighten standards on drugs for some serious but less deadly (or currently treatable) conditions. Curious what Orac thinks when he gets back.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2641547

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-fda-could-change-the-way-it-approves-drugs/

For a skeptics forum my first guess would be cluebats veering off into examples of guano crazy, but they probably mean real bats.

As a box of blinkly lights do you fly with the checked luggage? Hope you enjoy your vacation!

Not a Troll@7
Those videos gave me diabetes.

capnkrunch,

Haha! There is a lot of fruit being served, but at least the bats are cute. If they were vampire bats lapping blood that would’ve sent me over the edge.

Come to think of it, you scientific/medical types probably wouldn’t be bothered by it in the least. Not sure if that should scare me or reassure me.

Blake’s Seven always struck me as being a bit more tongue in cheek. A bit melodramatic, but that was part of it’s charm.
Happy Travels, O Box of blinking lights !

Oh… Vacations are nice. I like to spend mine vaccinating recreationally. A little recreational autism never hurt anyone.

My vacation was highlighted by a visit to the Solvang Motorcycle Museum (we popped in for the benefit of our co-traveling friend, who had never seen it), where the curator woman went off of the deep end with startling rapidity. I took a cell phone pic to post to Facebook, and tucked the cell phone back in my jersey pocket. She warned me that I shouldn’t keep the cell phone next to my skin, because it causes cancer, and cell phone towers cause clusters of brain cancer when they go up, and how she had breast cancer and her surgeon was just a hack who pulled out her lymph nodes and caused her chronic pain and edema, and how her acupuncturist was just so wonderful and ‘knew all of her meridians,’ and had I tried essential oils…?

I still have bruises from where my better half was pinching me and stepping on my toes to keep me from going off.

All I could think was, her poor surgeon. Saved a woman from what I assume was cancer that had spread to the nodes, and she blows him off and gives all the credit to an acupuncturist – who was doing zero for her pain and edema (my friend was having period cramps and asked her for ibuprofen, and all she had to offer was various Percocet/Norco, which somewhat implies that her pain isn’t all that well controlled).

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