Mr.Samsa wrote:

natselrox wrote:It might be interesting to do a work on the efficiency or lack thereof regarding antidepressants. But that might not be the type of thing you're looking for. AIDS/Condom-Vatican, umm... No. Damn! Medicine is so boring!

Medicine has quite a few misconceptions I think: people only use 10% of their brains, acupuncture works, chiropractic is a valid treatment, AIDS denialism, etc. Or if you wanted to stray away from the wooey stuff, you could discuss the lack of statistical knowledge in a lot of the medical field, what evidence based medicine is, or perhaps discuss some recent breakthroughs that explain some common beliefs about disorders: for example, broken heart syndrome is caused by a ballooning of the heart as a result of external stress and can be successfully treated, and it's not just an inevitable death because your loved one died.

I'm sure you could write something interesting!

Something I've become more interested in of late regarding medicine/philosophy(?) is the concept of "death". The history of being "declared dead"; when exactly (or not) does death occur?; what boundaries does one think medicine will push in the future regarding the point of death. Something like that.

rEvolutionist wrote:
Something I've become more interested in of late regarding medicine/philosophy(?) is the concept of "death". The history of being "declared dead"; when exactly (or not) does death occur?; what boundaries does one think medicine will push in the future regarding the point of death. Something like that.

That would be interesting. It would be good to look at the pewter poisoning cases from centuries ago that would induce a state of death in the whiskey drinkers of the town. After discovering claw marks on the inside of numerous coffins during a shifting of the local cemetery, they started putting people on the "graveyard shift" to dig up any graves where the bell would ring (attached by string to the "dead" person's toe) but most would end up as "dead ringers".

I like finding the origin of sayings

Mr.Samsa wrote:

rEvolutionist wrote:
Something I've become more interested in of late regarding medicine/philosophy(?) is the concept of "death". The history of being "declared dead"; when exactly (or not) does death occur?; what boundaries does one think medicine will push in the future regarding the point of death. Something like that.

That would be interesting. It would be good to look at the pewter poisoning cases from centuries ago that would induce a state of death in the whiskey drinkers of the town. After discovering claw marks on the inside of numerous coffins during a shifting of the local cemetery, they started putting people on the "graveyard shift" to dig up any graves where the bell would ring (attached by string to the "dead" person's toe) but most would end up as "dead ringers".

I like finding the origin of sayings

Ha! That's interesting to know where those sayings come from.

I just had a nice involve post on the subject of death and why it interests me, but then we had a quick blackout, and I lost it.

Anyway, the short version is that in the past I kind of unthinkingly had this view of death as a distinct moment in time. But I have come to realise that it is a fluid moment. As medical technology has increased, so has the time allowed before declaring someone dead. How far will this trend go in the future? Will we be able to freeze our bodies and hope to be woken up hundreds (or thousands?) of years in the future? Interesting stuff. And particularly relevant to atheistic thinking in that when you remove the concept of a soul from human existance, there is no reason to believe that death must occur at any particular time after unconsciousness.

I'd be quite interested in writing something. I've wanted to write an article about the fallacy of genetic determinism for a while, but have never really had the incentive to. Alternatively I could do something about the anti-vaccination brigade and Andrew Wakefield.

What about 'nature vs. nuture'?

rEvolutionist wrote:What about 'nature vs. nuture'?

That's right, you had better hide under that chair! I'm tempted to remove your post just so nobody gets any ideas...

rEvolutionist wrote:What about 'nature vs. nuture'?

Oh don't... do you realise how many times I've been tempted to choke the shit out of people for being such absolutionists on the subject.

"It's all nature"... "no it's all nurture"... "is not"... "is"... "is not"... "you only think that because of your environment"... "you only think I think that because of my environment because of your inherent nature"

Makes my fucking eyeballs bleed

mattwilson wrote:

rEvolutionist wrote:What about 'nature vs. nuture'?

Oh don't... do you realise how many times I've been tempted to choke the shit out of people for being such absolutionists on the subject.

"It's all nature"... "no it's all nurture"... "is not"... "is"... "is not"... "you only think that because of your environment"... "you only think I think that because of my environment because of your inherent nature"

Makes my fucking eyeballs bleed

By the way, I changed my smiley from the chair to 'leaving', so as not to leave any lingering doubts that I might have actually been serious.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Medicine has quite a few misconceptions I think: people only use 10% of their brains, acupuncture works, chiropractic is a valid treatment, AIDS denialism, etc.

Yes, yes and yes!

I'd be interested in addressing/assisting with the acupuncture one. I spent a lot of time devoted to studying it and related topics, back in the day.

Just updated the list of interested to the following

natselrox "something on medicine"
mattwilson
Nora_Leonard "Fertile Minds"
Goldenmane "acupuncture"
Durro
Darwinsbulldog
MedGen

If you can please tell me the first article you'd write so I can build around it

I`d like to see how everyone else writes their article before I accept.

LIFE wrote:Just updated the list of interested to the following

natselrox "something on medicine"
mattwilson
Nora_Leonard "Fertile Minds"
rEvolutionist "concept of death"
Goldenmane "acupuncture"
Durro
Darwinsbulldog
MedGen

If you can please tell me the first article you'd write so I can build around it

Oi! I never said I was going to write that article. I was making suggestions to natselrox. I'm really not qualified in any sense to write that article (as well as having little time at the moment). Sorry.

EDIT: I've just reread what I wrote, and I see it isn't really clear that I was meaning it as a suggestion for natselrox. Sorry for the confusion.

Well my article is called "Fertile Minds", but perhaps it could be subtitled "Fertile Minds: 'vision' and creativity"?

Not sure if that is the information you need, Bernhard?

rEvolutionist wrote:

LIFE wrote:Just updated the list of interested to the following

natselrox "something on medicine"
mattwilson
Nora_Leonard "Fertile Minds"
rEvolutionist "concept of death"
Goldenmane "acupuncture"
Durro
Darwinsbulldog
MedGen

If you can please tell me the first article you'd write so I can build around it

Oi! I never said I was going to write that article. I was making suggestions to natselrox. I'm really not qualified in any sense to write that article (as well as having little time at the moment). Sorry.

EDIT: I've just reread what I wrote, and I see it isn't really clear that I was meaning it as a suggestion for natselrox. Sorry for the confusion.

Aye, I'll kick you from the list in a sec

Nora_Leonard wrote:Well my article is called "Fertile Minds", but perhaps it could be subtitled "Fertile Minds: 'vision' and creativity"?

Not sure if that is the information you need, Bernhard?

Well for now it's just to be a pointer so I'll know who is writing what... doesn't have to be final or anything, just some keyword here and there.

LIFE wrote:

Nora_Leonard wrote:Well my article is called "Fertile Minds", but perhaps it could be subtitled "Fertile Minds: 'vision' and creativity"?

Not sure if that is the information you need, Bernhard?

Well for now it's just to be a pointer so I'll know who is writing what... doesn't have to be final or anything, just some keyword here and there.

Okay, but by 'vision' I meant more in the sense of 'visionary' rather than how the eyeball works. (Just so you know...Not that I intend to go all woo on you. )

Perhaps we should write a short story about "why I should get the parachute."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc5QvjGHOjw[/youtube]

I wondered-- is there somewhere on the internet where layman-friendly entry-level (e.g. grade 8 level writing) scientific resources (videos, articles) are gathered in a kind of annotated index in order to help people who have no idea what they are even looking for can get access to very basic terms and information so they can begin their journey?

I guess Wikipedia, but Wikipedia can get VERY complicated and advanced.

I don't want to assert that there isn't such a thing, but I'm not familiar with such a place-- or it has slipped my mind.