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Protected: Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases: A Public Health Challenge
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Anti-Bloomberg Bill in the Soda Wars: Two Wrongs do not Make a Right!
Since posting my rant on the now age old debate about paternalism (or as the people over in USA are calling it: Nanny State) versus public health, I have been reading a lot more about the Soda wars and it emerges that now it is way more hotly debated than ever before. Following in the […]
The Family Physician: A Dying Romantic Idea
I have been known to lament the loss of the prestige of the basic medical degree (MBBS) in India. While you may or may not agree with it, the truth remains that nobody who is doing (or has recently done) an MBBS course wants to stay out at that level. Everyone wants to go and […]
USMLE 2013 and IMGs: All That Glitters is NOT Gold
I have pretty much been declared the official (Indian) USMLE rumor-monger by one of the most famous USMLE coaching institutes that held introductory classes to tell the masses what USMLE was all about. Thank you sir, you made my day. Now, again, another disclaimer. The last time I wrote about the USMLE match (this one: […]
Guest Post #1: India – One of the Fastest Growing Economies
This is a guest post written by Ms. Deepali Kaul. I have made slight grammatical and syntactical edits and otherwise, left it untouched. This article and its opinions and contents are not due to me, but to Ms. Kaul. Any links are not endorsements and are meant for informational purposes only. If you want to […]
New York Soda Rule: Raising the Debate on Paternalism in Public Health
Paternalistic attitude in unilateral implementation of public health policies, especially with respect to banning of (harmful) substances, has been one of the issues that I have been debating not only with my colleagues, but also with my own self, for a while now. Aside from the obvious stake in the matter as a student of […]
Another Start-up Bites the Dust: Elsevier Buys Mendeley
When TechCrunch reported that there were talks going on between Elsevier and Mendeley this January, I did not want to believe it. Being an ardent user and advocate of the platform, I wanted it to stay out of the clutches of Big Pub. But it is now official, Mendeley has been acqui-hired by Elsevier for […]
Aaron Swartz’s Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Largely credited to Aaron Swartz, this has also found an in depth criticism in Peter Suber’s now archived, Earlham.edu blog on Open Access. I am reproducing it, in memory of the deceased Swartz, as a reminder of the duty that befalls us all. Guerilla Open Access Manifesto Information is power. But like all power, there […]
#Anonymous Hack MIT Sites: In Memoriam, Aaron Swartz
The online vigilante justice group, anonymous, has hit out at the MIT for the role they purportedly played in bringing about the demise of Aaron Swartz. They took down the Cogeneration Project page and another page which seems to not be loading now. They apologized for taking the Cogen project page down and launched the […]
Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide: The Dark Knight Falls
From Aaron’s last blog post: Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide. A year younger to me, and yet, he’s achieved ore than I could imagine achieving in my whole life, and at the untimely age of 26 years, he has gone […]
The USA Dream for IMGs: Coming to an end? Analysing the 2012 Match
My attention was drawn to an article in the JAMA today (1) by one of my friends who is actively pursuing the USMLE route. And after reading this, I guess I have to admit that one now has to make haste in order to prevent waste. Now I have long been wanting to write about […]
Keeping it light
Reblogged from The Science Bit: I had the privilege of visiting India the other week. Seriously, no kidding, I totally did. To an outsider India is a highly complex and puzzling place, a complete assault on the senses, and so thought-provoking as to leave your brain sore. On the one hand, there’s all the entrepreneurship, the innovation, the […]
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: 19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 87,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that […]
#TheekHai: The King’s Speech. NOT!
Merry Christmas, dear readers. Unfortunately, this season of festivities, which has turned secular in India and is celebrated by Christians and non-Christians (like me) alike, has been jarred by a series of unfortunate events, one of which is an exhibition of insipid, uninspiring leadership by the world’s largest democracy. I am not a political person. […]
A Lexicon for Public Health Students: The Design Effect
Reblogged from my previous post on the Community Medicine Education Blog, as a part of the new series where I go about de-mystifying stuff that confuses… mainly me! Of late, in all our Journal Clubs, design effect seems to get a lot of attention, so much so, that there has been talks of having a […]
Social Peer Review: The IJMI Breaks New Ground
With an innovative move to have open peer review of submissions to the IJMI on the G+ community (closed and available only to the members of the group, who are invited by the Moderator/Editor of the Group), they have broken new ground. Now open peer review is nothing new. The BMJ has, amongst many other […]
A Lexicon for Public Health Students: Hobson’s Choice
This is a new series of posts in which I intend to de-mystify some concepts that are largely confusing (to me) and try to come up with some simple, sticks-to-memory explanation for the same. I may make mistakes in unearthing these concepts since I a myself learning more about these, so do be kind in […]
Google Kills Free Google Apps: I am worried!
In an announcement in the Official Google Enterprise Blog, it was revealed that the Google Apps free version is no no longer available. While I always thought that this was a possibility, I never really thought that Google would kill the whole program! I use Google apps for a number of domains, like, http://pranab.in, http://scepticemia.com, […]
Social Exclusion and Inclusion: A Primer
This was a write-up I did for an assignment as part of my Residency training. We have such “informally formal” assignments which are assigned to us in course of the intra-departmental seminars. Now there may well be a lot of mistakes in this (it is supposed to be a primer for me actually!) so please […]
Brown Bag Sessions: Food for Thought
We have been contemplating the concept of having a Brown Bag session once in two weeks in our department for quite a while now, and we set the ball rolling today with an attendance much healthier than I personally would have foretold. In the US, brown bag sessions are a common affair where, usually, over […]
PeerJ Calls for Papers: Disruptive Innovation in Open Access
I have been very excited about PeerJ ever since Peter Binfield took up the challenge of bringing down the costs of publication in an online, open access environment a few months ago. I wrote about it, expressed my skepticism at the “starting at 99$” tag, but nonetheless, was fascinated by the audacious claim of bringing […]
World Toilet Day: Give A Shit
Happy World Toilet day. As a dear friend reminded me today, it is the day the World Toilet Organization has earmarked for spreading awareness about the lack of proper sanitation and potable water which is killing a large number of people (someone on a poster contended the number was 1600!) everyday the world over. The […]
Banning Gutkha: Paternalism in Public Health or Pro-Active Advocacy?
I have been meaning to write about this matter for a few days now, just never managed to make time for it. There has been a huge hue and cry over the banning of gutkha in certain states of India. While the public health professionals have more or less welcomed the move, the smokeless tobacco […]
Literature Search Workshop at UCMS: Extra-Curricular Academics at the MEU
The Medical Education Unit at the University College of Medical Sciences, where I am now doing my residency, is a small, but super-active group of people, and they presented today a workshop on Literature Searching and Reference Management. Although the target audience was mainly the Residents, there was some spill-over as well. There were students […]
Communicating Correctly: A Community Based Communication Exercise
The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans […]
Deoghar Diaries: Panchami and Shasthi
Our family has an annual ritual – during the Durga Pujas, the whole family comes down to Deoghar, a “pilgrims’ city” in the state of Jharkhand – to escape from the frenzy of the hustle and bustle of city life. The journey is in itself great fun, since the whole of the Chatterjee clan comes […]
William Gosset: A True Student
Today I attended a Basic Epidemiology class meant for the undergraduate students as I thought it would be good to brush up on my basic knowledge. The topics for the day were Hypothesis Testing and An Introduction to Randomized Controlled Trials, both pretty important ones, no matter which level you are studying at. What struck […]
eThesis: A Continuous Narrative Experience
Our thesis protocols were submitted today and most of us had a bit of running around in circles to do before the closing bells chimed at 1 PM. I was especially peeved at the amount of paper that goes into the making of such a protocol. And given the fact that we had to submit […]
Side Effect of Narela: Missing PoTF and Friends
Note: The photos do not belong to me. They are the work of Animesh Ray. Do check his site out for some fabulous photographs. It is 2 AM in the morning, and I cannot go to sleep. As one PoTF favorite after another rolls off my laptop, I feel an myself retreating into a cocoon […]
