Buried in Baltimore
I’m very pleased with the progress of WelcomeToBaltimoreHon.com. It’s a sort of love note for the city that adopted me almost 30 years ago.
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2008 is Enough
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Biting the hand that reached out to touch me
I received a telemarketing call at 4:22 p.m. on January 13, 2009, in the middle of an ordinary work afternoon. It was one of those annoying recorded messages selling dentures, of all things. Although my home phone number has been on the National Do Not Call Registry nearly since its inception, we still get telemarketing calls once in a while.
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Jesus, Music and Chainsaws
Meet Forthman Murff, the man who nearly cut his own head off with a chainsaw and lived to talk about it.
The most popular clip at my web site is “Strange Cases: The Worst of Current Research,” a piece I wrote for the 10th Anniversary issue of JEMS: The Journal of Emergency Medical Services. This article gets far more hits than any other in my portfolio.
For eight years, I did a monthly column reviewing clinical research papers of interest to EMTs and paramedics. The gig didn’t pay a lot, but it forced me to keep up with a wide swath of the medical literature and was a great experience.
A couple of years into the Current Research column, I decided to liven things up by including a “Strange Case of the Month” based on offbeat but scientifically legitimate papers I encountered, such as a case series of deaths by tipping vending machines and a study of fatalities due to falling coconuts.
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Good Eats
An eyewitness account of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The implications of the Human Genome Project. Heart transplantation, liver transplantation in an HIV-positive person with hemophilia, and surgery to separate conjoined twins (twice!).
Dollhouse scenes of brutal deaths. Growing pharmaceuticals like food crops. Liquid breathing. Cocaine plastic. The secret of color-changing Silly Putty, hugging Patch Adams, and a girl who got pregnant from oral sex.
If I weren’t already familiar with this stuff, I could kill hours here.
Go ahead. You know you want to.
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