Terrae Filius: the University Fool

Farewell, Blogger. Hello Tumblr!

2010-07-15T04:22:00.001+05:00

Ramblings, news, and rants now being captured at http://ptrgyd.tumblr.com (otherwise known as http://tumblr.petergayed.com).

You can't be the best at everything, Google! (Though you are frighteningly close...)

The Alex Chadwick Interviews

2009-03-07T19:57:00.003+05:00

NPR's Alex Chadwick sets up a table, a pair of microphones, and offers 50 cents to anyone that will give him an interview. Most of the time, it's just the other person telling a story.

SlateV.com presents his latest installment, presented below. Watch it.

If you liked this, you may also like:

NPR's No Ordinary People [an awesome, but discontinued podcast]
NPR Story Corps [two-person stories]
This American Life [funny-sad stories]
The Moth [funny-weird stories]

Have fun.

Google to take over the world—and I like it.

2009-03-07T17:01:00.003+05:00

Another worthy idea from Google: The Energy Information Project.

Google, the great collator of information, thinks you should know exactly how much energy you're using throughout the day, because, as their home page quotes, "If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it."

Right now the project is in miniature beta testing with Google employees only, but people seem to be pretty happy with it. This Google dude saved 3,000 bucks by monitoring his usage:

By monitoring my energy use, I figured out that the bulk of my electricity was caused by my two 20-year-old fridges, my incandescent lights and my pool pump, which was set to run more than necessary. By replacing the refrigerators with new energy-efficient models, the lights with CFLs and setting the pool pump to only run at specified intervals, I've saved $3,000 in the past year and I am on track to save even more this year!

Very nice! Here's a screenshot of the program.

Google, I bow to you!

And here's a shot of Lord Kelvin, the good man who came up with a standard way for us to measure heat transfer!

Outstanding beard, sir!

Viagra: Better Than Gold

2009-02-12T04:09:00.001+05:00

The New England Journal of Medicine presents a case of 150 non-diabetic patients who were hospitalized for hypoglycemia (very low blood sugars). After a bit of prodding, the patients—all men but one—admitted to using "erection-enhancing" drugs or herbal supplements. Their providers, apparently, were mixing sildenafil citrate (Viagra) and other drugs like it with non-specific herbal fillers and *ding, ding* glyburide, a drug which causes the body to suck up lots of glucose from the blood, leaving very little for the all-important brain.

Interestingly, this isn't the first I've heard of a mad desire for penis fillers. The CIA has secured the cooperation of local Afghan leaders by bribing them with Uncle Sam's favorite little blue pill. Forget gifts of big, expensive, fancy cars. We know what men really want. (And their partners too.)

Remember your Intro to Film course? Relive it here.

2009-01-19T09:28:00.001+05:00

Stanley Fish, literary theorist, formerly Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, selects his top ten American films, many of which will be recalled if you ever enrolled in the "intro to film" course at your college—which everyone did, of course, because you got a grade for watching movies. (What a brilliant concept.)

At the University of Illinois, English 104, as we called it, was not only the class you got to watch movies in, it was also a class of incredible quality and surprising difficulty. The semester playlist, really, was outstanding, and it introduced me to a cosmopolitan kind of cinematography. From American classics like "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944) and "North by Northwest" (1959) to the first Jamaican-produced film "The Harder They Come" (1972) and the intriguing and wildly hilarious Japanese foodie satire "Tampopo" (1985).

Fish's compilation reminds me of the reliably good scores of old films awaiting another viewing. Next time, instead of tiptoeing around the new releases, I'm going right for my English 104 syllabus.

Big ups to Dan Colman over at OpenCulture for his post, which pairs each one of Fish's favorites with a short YouTube movie clip.

I have to say it: Bush is a straight-up gangster

2008-12-18T12:12:00.011+05:00

Regardless of what you think of Mr. Bush, you've got to give it to* him. Drawing on some kind of Spiderman-like premonition, Bush dodges an incoming Arabic shoe. (Let me tell you from experience that Arabs know how to chuck shoes—especially Arab mothers.) The second shoe elicits nothing more than a flinch from the President.

I'm sorry, but I have to say it: Bush is a straight-up gangster.

Now, instead of listening to reporters comment on the shoe-hurling incident itself, check out the original recording where Bush directly responds to an American journalist about what just happened to him:

Well played, Mr. Bush. Well played.

* The word "to" did not appear in the original posting. Many thanks to Meg for informing of the error. It will never, ever happen again. :P

Anna Deavere Smith and the Story

2008-11-25T04:55:00.004+05:00

Pauline Chen, a Yale-trained surgeon and author of Final Exam, wrote about Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman show "Let Me Down Easy" in a recent NYT article.

Smith is an amazing performer, and the phrase "one-woman show" should be used in its loosest sense: Although it's just her up on stage, she introduces the audience to an impressive number of characters, all based on actual people she has interviewed (including Peggy Bia, M.D., the course director for Yale's "pre-clinical clerkship").

The first time I saw Smith was at the NYU School of Medicine Revisit Weekend in 2006. (N.B. to all revisit planning committees: Always choose the talented actress over the quirky associate dean to headline your revisit weekend program. Always.)

At NYU she premiered a small sample of what would become "Let Me Down Easy," which has been described as Smith's attempt to "channel the dramatically different corporeal experiences of her many interview subjects, from survivors of the Rwandan genocide to the head coach of the national champion University of Texas football team."

It was during this time that my interest in narratology, and its relations to medicine, was greatest. (Currently, my greatest interests are in discerning membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis type I from membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis type II. Woot.)

After her performance at NYU, I remember flagging her down on her way out to ask what premedical and medical students could do to begin honoring stories like she did, to begin engendering the same respect and attention for stories that she had.

"Take my theater course," she smiled while jumping into her cab.

In 2008 I saw Smith again, this time at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven. The full production of "Let Me Down Easy" was marked by the same attention and respect for stories that so intrigued me during her short NYU performance. This time, however, I didn't pursue her after the show. Instead, I went home to check when she'd be offering her next course.

Organic chemistry: Useless for med students?

2008-09-20T23:17:00.001+05:00

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal on the utility of organic chemistry for medical students, doctors, etc. The original article features comments from Bob Alpern, the dean at Yale Med.

My own experience with orgo is very different from most med and pre-med students, it seems, but in a very, very good way. I had a unique course taught by an exceptional teacher. I wrote about it in the comments string of the WSJ health blog, which, like most threads on the internet, has devolved into name calling. (But this time it's a back-and-forth spitting contest between physicians and chemistry professors. It's funny and sad at the same time.)

My comments below:

As a second-year medical student at Yale, I can testify that the Diels-Alder reaction has not appeared once in the three thousand or so book pages I have read since entering medical school. And I'm pretty sure that our pathology course, arguably the most important and relevant of the second year, has made no mention of this so-called "carbon atom". Bodies are made of meat, and diseases are made of little bodies that feed upon this meat. Where exactly do Sn1 and Sn2 reactions fit into all of this? Nowhere important, it seems. Funny then that I consider my organic chemistry course, taught by Jeffrey Moore at the University of Illinois, one of the most important in my premedical education.

My opinion has everything to do with how the course was taught. Dr. Moore, who will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this fall, emphasized creativity over memorization. Instead of giving us a question that asked "A + B equals what?" he challenged us with problems that read "A + B equals C. Propose a mechanism."

I consider his course vital to the way I now approach problems. More importantly, he instilled in all his students a certain curiosity, a certain rigor, a certain thoughtfulness that is often lost in the first few years of medical school where memorization is king and understanding a luxury that few can make time for.

Why some people prefer drinking pickle juice

2008-05-18T19:17:00.002+05:00

Some 15-year-old kids like chugging pickle juice. It's true. Diseases that cause the body to waste salts will often be compensated by an intense preference for salty foods and drinks—pickle juice included!

I explain the story in the the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, which just ran an essay/interview of mine that examines and explains some of the impressive work of Richard Lifton, chairman of the genetics department at Yale.

So far Dr. Lifton has identified 10 mutations that lead to hypertension and another 10 that lead to hypotension. Under his guidance, his fleet of graduate students, post-docs, and research techs will begin to explain the subtler genetics differences that make us more or less susceptible to hypertension.

Let's hear it for science!

Ira Glass and the Story

2008-04-08T03:10:00.003+05:00

In a lecture hall of 400 people, Ira Glass somehow speaks to you as if you were sitting opposite him in a restaurant diner booth, working on your third fill of coffee together. It's magical how he shrinks the room.

At the College of Staten Island on Sunday, April 6th, Ira told stories about stories themselves—what they could do, how he tells them, and what role they have in his life.

What is most inspiring is his devotion to stories. It's a devotion that goes beyond an artist's love for his own art. It's more than mere ownership that he feels for the stories he helps to produce, and tell, and broadcast. It's a devotion that hints of his very dependence on stories themselves, in the way that they create him and others, and the relations formed between him and others.

To consistently produce the kind of work that is put out by This American Life would seem to require a love for stories that Ira and his frequent contributors have. If I don't have the heart to make stories like he does, I am glad, at least, to have the ears to listen to them.

Thank you Ira and This American Life. You've made one boy incredibly happy.

A telomerase inhibitor in the works!

2008-03-19T11:37:00.002+05:00

Nature Reviews put out a nice review about a developing telomerase inhibitor known as GRN163L.

Though not all cancers are immortalized by re-expression of telomerase (some use a recombination-based telomere lengthening mechanism), GRN163L may be an exciting new therapeutic for many aggressive cancers.

Recall that normal somatic cells normally die after 60 or 70 divisions (Hayflick's hypothesis, see this awesome RadioLab episode on mortality where Hayflick himself is interviewed). This limit is imposed by the unavoidable shortening of chromosomes with each cell division. When chromosomes get too short, a cell will enter senescence and eventually apoptose. Cancer cells, on the other hand, express telomerase, which re-lengthens the chromosomes after each of the many, many divisions of cancerous cell proliferation. Inhibition of telomerase by GRN163L, which occupies the enzyme's active site, can effectively halt cancerous growth.

The great thing is that most cells of our body do not express telomerase. Use of the inhibitor, then, results in fewer side effects and less toxicity. Down with cancer!

protein synthesis: an interpretive dance

2008-03-19T00:54:00.002+05:00

"Molecular happenings"

Embrace hopelessness?

2007-12-31T05:10:00.000+05:00

Can having hope be worse than being hopeless?

Maybe, says research from Peter Ubel, MD, a UMich physician.

This article from the NYT describes Ubel's work, which shows that patients who hope to get better report a lower quality of life than those who accept a permanently debilitating condition.

Big ups to /ryanblum who tagged the article on del.icio.us, our social bookmarking tool of choice.

More histones in the news

2007-12-18T22:49:00.000+05:00

Whoa. Another team discovers that the presence of nucleosomes (that's a bunch of histones folks) might be a method used by some cancer cells to silence tumor-suppressor genes (subscription to The Cell required).

Some of us might be familiar with the loss of tumor suppressor function by acquired mutation, but this little trick is new to me!

Clever little cancer cells...

Talented histones: they do more than just (w)rap

2007-12-18T22:34:00.000+05:00

A neat little experiment carried out by researchers at Cambridge University shows that methylation of a histone subunit is required for the epigenetic memory of MyoD, an important gene in muscle cell maturation.

Who knew those little balls do more than tightly pack DNA and repress transcription!?

The Zebibah

2007-12-18T06:16:00.000+05:00

An interesting article from the NYT takes the "zebibah" as its focus. As mentioned in the article, "zebibah" is Arabic for raisin and refers to the callous mark that forms during the repetitive bumping of one's head to the ground during Muslim prayer. Michael Slackman, author of the piece, refers to the zebibah as the meeting of "fashion and faith," a physical symbol of one's devotion to prayer and god.

It's a short piece that could have been made more interesting, I think, as an essay that examined and compared the various symbols people sometimes don as a mark of piety or religious belonging. For one thing, I know that it is popular for Egyptian Copts to tattoo an Orthodox cross on their wrists. And Italian Catholics (both in film and in real life) adorn their chests with golden crosses—and sometimes peppers too, which I've been told is a lucky charm of Sicilians.

Reimbursement and biomarkers: using science to cap payment

2007-12-09T06:29:00.000+05:00

Insurance companies are using biomarkers to refuse to pay for meds that are not efficacious. The cost of an ineffective drug must be incurred by the manufacturer.

→ If it don't work we ain't paying for it!

But this philosophy can cause some problems and has its limitations. From Nature Reviews: Drug Discovery:

...there is no biomarker for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors used to treat depression. [Therefore] Physicians have to empirically try one medication after another until they find one that works and rely on the patient to self-report efficacy.

Using biomarkers to help decide whether drugs should be reimbursed is not a new idea. Currently, in the United States, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) reimburse the use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) until a patient achieves a haemoglobin level of 10 g per dl...

Some physicians argue that a hemoglobin level of 10 g per dl isn't necessarily a safe or consistent point at which to discontinue treatment with ESAs:

"The ESA manufacturers are saying that the CMS have overstepped their bounds by linking reimbursement to a specific haemoglobin level. Clinicians agree with the objection arguing that the marker is not stable enough to determine when to initiate or cease therapy," says Moe.

Harvard v. Yale: Who's the better employer?

2007-12-08T03:47:00.001+05:00

An old school article (2003) from the NYT that explains why Harvard beats Yale when it comes to employee satisfaction:

How did a university founded in revolt against old Boston come to practice such lordly rule? Because it can. Unlike Harvard, which must compete with large private employers, other major universities and cultural institutions, Yale is by far the largest employer in New Haven. In 1965, Yale accounted for one out of every 20 jobs in New Haven. Today, because of a combination of Yale's growth and New Haven's decline, Yale employs more than 11,000 workers -- one out of every five jobs in the city.

"Love in the Time of Dementia"

2007-11-21T02:08:00.000+05:00

An article in the Times about Alzheimer's, nursing homes, and loving old.

Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, has a romance with another woman, and the former justice is thrilled — even visits with the new couple while they hold hands on the porch swing — because it is a relief to see her husband of 55 years so content.

Access to the Times is free with registration.

Krebs cycle? Sounds made up. Throw it in the reject pile.

2007-11-20T07:15:00.000+05:00

The rejection letter that Dr. Hans Krebs, of Krebs Cycle fame, received from the editor of Nature in response to the paper in which he proposes his eponymous cycle as a possible metabolic pathway:

June 1937

The editor of NATURE presents his compliments to Dr. H. A. Krebs and regrets that as he has already sufficient letters to fill the correspondence columns of NATURE for seven or eight weeks, it is undesirable to accept further letters at the present time on account of the time delay which must occur in their publication.

If Dr. Krebs does not mind much delay the editor is prepared to keep the letter until the congestion is relieved in the hope of making use of it.

He returns it now, in case Dr. Krebs prefers to submit it for early publication to another periodical.

His paper was subsequently published in the journal Enzymologia. As for the rejection letter, Krebs displayed it proudly in his office until his death in 1981.

Blogging does not have to be a waste of time

2007-07-06T05:26:00.000+05:00

Do you remember when I said that I was going to blog more frequently about my readings so that I could work through the ideas I came across? In part, to develop my thoughts a bit and in part to share them? Well, I think it paid off: my final essay at Oxford was an extension of the conversation I had with Erin Chiou about nationalism and identity. And it ended up being the longest and perhaps most sophisticated essay I composed during my second term. The 3600-word essay was an explication de texte on James Joyce's "Araby," which drew on ideas developed in Nietzsche's History and Said's Orientalism. In it I try to show that Joyce finds the same "emptiness" in Irish culture as he does in what was referred to then as "Oriental culture" (a wash of Arabic, Middle Eastern, and Islamic peoples and culture that is often represented as a single, simplified, and sometimes exoticized "Other" to be studied as a specimen of sorts).

If you want to pick apart the essay you can find it in full here , but the point of this post is to show that blogging can be academically useful and productive, especially when readers consider and respond to the ideas. If it were not for Erin, I wouldn't have scrutinized my thoughts as I did, and I wouldn't have given them the body needed to substantiate a decent argument.

Partly I write this post to thank Erin and partly to justify sometimes writing about obscure and odd (although often important) theoretical topics. But I hope most of all that this example might convince more people to post about the things that pique their interest, academic or otherwise. Do let me know what you come up with.

Books are for Lovers

2007-06-13T07:00:00.000+05:00

click above for bigness.

The People's Republic: Nationalist Myth at Work

2007-06-10T23:10:00.000+05:00

I received the following from a friend in response to this post I made about Edward Said's "epistemology of imperialism":

hey peter,

is the "common subjection to oppression itself" enough to sustain and unite a country under? there's a reason why nationalism, probably second to religion, is historically proven to be the flag under which countries go to war for (although economic factors are probalby more the underlying and pressing reasons).

there's also a reason why, when i asked this chinese student (i'm studying abroad in china right now) if he had no money and a family to support, whether or not he'd trade in his china passport for 1 million US dollars, he said no. and would call anyone a "money worshipper" if he or she would do such a thing.

P.S. I've never felt more American until I went to study abroad. And the more I'm abroad, the more I realize how little US Americans feel any sort of nationalism - especially second generation US Americans - and (it's interesting) how quickly they are to categorize nationalism as something negative and Nazi-like.

Here's my reply:

Hey Erin. Thanks for the response. I am always happy to get comments on stuff like this.

First let me address your initial question by calling to mind a historical phenomenon in which common subjection to oppression is enough to sustain a movement (which may then develop into a new country or state): civil wars. Interestingly, the opposing factions of a civil war were, at one point in time, bound by some form of "nationalism," which is then renounced by one party while the other holds onto it grimly. We might even imagine one party evoking "nationalism and unity" to suppress a revolutionary movement or to counter a coup d'état. They might accuse the revolutionists of radicalism and of undermining the irreproachable principles on which the state was built. They might quell dissatisfaction by crying for unity.

Countries that have been able to obviate civil war or play down political discontent might be using "nationalism" as a ploy to discourage general criticism. By creating imagined communities and a sense of shared culture, those on the top might quiet those trying to upturn the hierarchy. Calling upon the country's superficial similarities, for instance, can be used to avert attention from its disparities and incompetence. I suppose I am relying on a bit of Marx for all of this (no, not "Marxism," just Marx, the writer, the thinker, and his ideas) but nationalism seems to be an expedient way to put socks in a few mouths.

I find it oddly peculiar that you would cite a Chinese student / civilian in a comment about nationalism. The example you give is only more evidence of what a suppressive Chinese government is capable of. China is probably the one state that best propagates a myth of nationalist culture for the sake of preserving "national security interests". By regulating what can and cannot be said about its government, the ironically named People's Republic has also earned the epithet of "black hole" by the Worldwide Press Freedom Index.

In your comment you say "there's a reason why" nationalism is often called to unite a people, but you don't procure the answer. Instead you give examples of nationalism in use. To point at nationalism's prevalence is not a means to justify it. To cite a Chinese student that so obdurately sides by his country only supports the idea that nationalism works. I think we all agree that nationalism works. I'm not arguing its efficacy. What I'm questioning is its validity, and the implications of a primarily nationalist identity.

To only say "there's a reason why" and avoid venturing into that reason—avoid questioning its suppositions—is tantamount to buying nationalist myth. To be honest, I think it's about time you came home.

Arabic guy talks intellectual, Egypt confused

2007-06-08T00:30:00.000+05:00

As my time here in Oxford comes to a close, I've decided to do a bit more fervent blogging about what I'm reading. Partly it's to work through my own ideas and arguments, and partly to share the ideas and arguments that I come across.

Recently, I've retraced some earlier reading I did by Edward Said (pronounced "Sigh-EED"), a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University before his death in 2003. Said was born in Jerusalem, but spent most of his childhood in Cairo. At the age of 16, he came to the United States to finish an already impresive education. He attended Princeton and then went on to do his graduate work at Harvard.

In 1978, he published his most influential and recognized work on "Western culture's false images of the Arab-Islamic world" in a book entitled Orientalism (quote taken from the entry "Said, Edward" in the Oxford American Dictionaries). I want to discuss, however, an essay of his entitled "The Politics of Knowledge," which was reprinted in David Richter's Falling into Theory (a helpful recommendation given to me by Chris Salib). In his essay, Said lays out what he thinks is the necessary attitude or approach for cultural inclusion and tolerance. For Said, questions of political and cultural identity are ineluctably tied to literature; therefore, much of his argument relies upon the literature produced by writers of imperialist and of colonized states, and often how the latter is produced as a response to the first.

His concern with both forms of literature (that is, that written by a member of an imperialist nation, for example, Britain, and that written by a member of a colonized state, for example, India) is that they give rise to an "epistemology of imperialism," which is the idea that everyone can be assigned to a single and immutable race or ethnicity. It seems to me that Said finds imperialist writers and thinkers more guilty of this practice than colonized or "marginalized" writers (why else would he call it an "epistemology of imperialism"?), but I would argue that, if anything, colonized or "anti-imperialist" writers deserve greater culpability than their oppressive counterparts for the simple reason that colonized people—if they are to be successful in their revolt or declaration of separation—must simplify what it means to be a member of the colonized group for the sake of solidarity, for unification.

Said sees this sort of solidarity and unification as necessary for anti-imperialist resistance. He writes,

I see [early cultural resistance to imperialism] essentially as an attempt on the part of oppressed people who had suffered the bondage of slavery, colonialism, and—most important—spiritual dispossession, to reclaim their identity. (192)

But what is this "identity" that he speaks of? I wonder if this "identity" is not simply another defective form and manifestation of the dangerous "epistemology of imperialism"? To assign oneself to a collective identity is to propagate the "supremely stubborn thesis that everyone is principally and irreducibly a member of some race or category," an idea which Said brings up, and is critical of, early on in his essay (192).

It seems clear to me that the only confirmed identity that exists for an oppressed people is the common subjection to oppression itself. To say more by reverting to "ethnic lineage" or "cultural heritage" is to fabricate some unnamed and unfixed biological or racial category.

If a revolutionary group were instead to define itself only by the fact of its oppression, there might be greater allowance within the dissenters for what is often perceived as cultural variation or racial difference. By dismissing a primary and concocted idea of "race" or "culture," a resistant people might embrace and recognize what I will refer to lightly as the "human complexity" of their movement. If the revolt is successful and a new governing body is set in place, the surfacing political structure might be enriched by the memory of its recent oppression rather than by a bloated idea of nationalism.

I would welcome any responses, especially from those of you out there with political science or political theory backgrounds. Greg Meves and David Doyle, I'm talking about you.

You can call me Little Egypt

2007-06-06T00:47:00.000+05:00

Came across this while/whilst reading for my Flaubert essay:

Other possible influences on modern striptease were the dances of the Ghawazee "discovered" and seized upon by French colonists in nineteenth century North Africa and Egypt. The erotic dance of the bee performed by a woman known as Kuchuk Hanem, was witnessed and described by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert. In this dance the performer disrobes as she searches for an imaginary bee trapped within her garments...Middle Eastern belly dance, also known as Oriental Dancing, was popularized in the US after its introduction on the Midway at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago by a dancer known as Little Egypt.

Learning to write

2007-06-05T11:08:00.000+05:00

So I've been doing a bit of writing and reading this last year and I've seen all sorts of styles. There's the stuff which first drew me to literature, stuff which is, in fact, not really "literary" at all:

Every illness is a story, and Annie Page’s began with the kinds of small, unexceptional details that mean nothing until seen in hindsight. Like the fact that, when she was a baby, her father sometimes called her Little Potato Chip, because her skin tasted salty when he kissed her. (Atul Gawande, "The Bell Curve")

There were also those first pieces that told me, yes, physicians do write stories, and they write them well:

His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not have found it with a candle by daylight... (Anton Chekhov, "Misery")

All my excitement about "narrative" then led me to writing that examined the Narrative itself and the process or act of writing. The shift in style was drastic and so far removed from what I read at first. Still, it caught my interest:

The "rationality"—but perhaps that word should be abandoned for reasons that will appear at the end of this sentence—which governs a writing thus enlarged and radicalized, no longer issues from a logos. Further, it inaugurates the destruction, not the demolition but the de-sedimentation, the de-construction, of all the significations that have their source in that of the logos. (Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology)

Turning toward the history of medicine and its place in Renaissance France, I was delightfully entertained by the prose of Michel de Montaigne, the first essayist and a great storyteller:

A patient was asked by his doctor what effects he felt from a medicine he had given him: "I sweated a lot," said the patient. "Good," said the doctor. Another time he asked him how he had fared since then: "I felt extremely cold and shivery," he said. -- "Good." replied the doctor. On a third occasion he again asked him how he felt: "All puffy and swollen up," he said, "as though I had dropsy." -- "Excellent!" said the doctor. Then one of the patient's close friends came to ask how things were with him. "I am dying of good health, my friend," he replied. (Montaigne, "On the resemblance of children to their fathers")

As my addiction to blogs grows steadily, I find yet more styles of writing, though I am far from happy with what I see. Sometimes I actually get mad at what I read. It's true! I actually feel offended. What is it about some of these writers that turns me away? I realized it's the same thing that turns me off when I meet people in person: the unforgivable sin of trying too hard.

It's a sort of eagerness that comes off as pure affectation. It's writing with words you would never use in your own speech. (I swear to God I've used "affectation" in conversation before.) I'm not saying you have to write like you talk, but if your writing is utterly unrecognizable from the way you speak something is wrong.

It's the same with interviewing. For a while, I conducted mock interviews with premedical students, and the absolute worst kids were the ones who decided to speak in the formal tongue.

Me: So what was your favorite non-science course in college?
Kid: Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the Department of Kinesiology's "field activities" course because it allowed me to engage in sport activities that facilitated group cohesion and afforded me the chance to develop leadership skills.
Me: (pause) Yeah, sports are fun.

When it comes to short stories I am most peeved by excessive and flowery description, which seems to be the preferred crutch of writers whose stories have little or no substance. I nicked the following excerpt from a blog which will go unnamed. Here, the author, somewhat paradoxically, tries to work through the troubles she's having with her writing:

If, instead, I could write about the delectable cookies, the way the coaster-sized confections are arranged symmetrically on the glossy black plate, the wisps of grey steam floating from their surfaces, the column of milk standing at attention nearby, the lone candle, with its slender purple stem bursting into a bright yellow-orange blossom of flame, the corner of a cream-colored envelope tucked underneath the plate, the name “[omitted]" ornately written in dark blue ink, with the tail of the "w" arching gracefully towards the top right corner of the envelope, a hastily scribbled heart in red ink above the name—

Yeesh.

Some of you might ask what's so wrong with that? She's careful with detail, you say. She gives a "vivid" description of the scene, you protest. She writes poetically, doesn't she!

She writes in platitudes, I say. She writes without consideration of her reader, I protest. She writes inanely! In fact, her entire gesture is pure and empty display.

What she seems to be doing is painting by number. She imagines her scene, or perhaps she is sitting in front of it, and begins her clockwork. The cookies are "delectable," the black plate is "glossy," the name is written "ornately," the letter 'w' arches "gracefully," the scribbling is done "hastily" (how else does one scribble?). To draw on Strunk and White's Elements of Style (rule #4, to be exact): "Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs." Nouns and verbs cannot always make your writing strong, but relying too much on adjectives and adverbs will always makes it weak.

Another sign of poor writing is an all too conspicuous reliance on color. As soon as you see everything being described in terms of color—"black plate," "grey steam," "purple stem," "yellow-orange blossom," "cream-colored envelope," "dark blue ink," "heart in red"!—put the story down and set the book in front of your four year-old. He might be able to impress his kindergarden teacher next year.

I am no fool. I know that writing is all a matter of taste, but if there is one thing we should agree upon it's brevity.

Someone once bet Hemingway he couldn't compose a story in six words or less. Some people say that he considered his response to be his single, greatest work:

For sale: Baby shoes. Never used.

"Omit needless words," Strunk tells us. Bookshelves already cry out from the weight of too many careless words and unsatisfying stories. I, for one, refuse to contribute to the torture.

Need money fast? Sell meth.

2007-06-05T06:19:00.000+05:00

NewYorkMag.com has done a neat piece on Newyorkonomics, a look into how the City makes its green. They've covered everything from your local diner to your neighborhood drug dealer. 'Nick', a former meth dealer, talks with staff writer Arianne Cohen about the economics of rocking his block:

"It’s like taking a pound of coffee and selling one grain at a time," says Nick. "If you sell by scoops, you'll make a couple thousand dollars, but if you break it down into quarter grams and work for a few days, you'll make tens of thousands."

I'm not sure how well Nick's analogy works, but he's a clever lad nonetheless: his annual revenue is $1.02 million—that's with a fifteen-hour workweek, which comes to an hourly rate of just over $1,300. The downside? Getting 6am calls from addicted friends in need of a quick jump. Oh, and there's also the whole going-to-jail thing.

Nick regulating the scene
with his preferred method of transportation.

Big ups: over!my!med!body!

I'm no Miuccia Prada but...

2007-06-01T15:17:00.000+05:00

Heed my advice, for your own sake and for the sake of those around you: combining the Southern girl's pastel dress—you know, that flowery option that invokes Easter Sunday and springtime church bells—with the Oxford girl's muddy high boots is a glaring fashion faux pas. Faux pas, I say!

Previous outfits of mascot-purple sweaters awkwardly sleeved over disproportionate green shirts have revealed a certain incompetence when it comes to dressing yourself. Attempts have been made, you've given it your best, but the tryout has passed. I'm sorry, the coach says, maybe next year.

I'm only asking for you to be a bit more fastidious, but I know this will be a difficult request: your fashion comes out like your speech, unmistakably loud and in fits of vomit.

How to become an expert on anything

2007-05-29T21:02:00.000+05:00

Okay, so there's really no secret here: the best way to get really, really good at something—plain and simple—is by practicing. Somehow three psychologists managed to turn this truism into an interesting 44-page article, which I ended up reading as a sort of empirically grounded self-help book.

In it, author Anders Ericsson, now a professor of psychology at Florida State University and editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, champions a model of "deliberate practice," that is, focused, instructor-guided training over several years. Most of Ericsson's research defines "performance" in terms of musical performance and athletics because these fields have established and measurable benchmarks of achievement (e.g., being able to play a sophisticated composition or high jumping Olympic distances, et cetera).

Ericsson's research on deliberate practice isn't groundbreaking—people have been saying that "practice makes perfect" as early as 1553 according to the OED—but it does recast some of the ideas we have about "talent" and practice using empirical methods.

The first thing to realize is that it takes about 10 years of focused work to get really good at something. One guy studied the lives 240 scientists and poets and found that most published their first paper or poem at the age of 25; however, their most highly regarded contributions came about a decade later, at the age of 35 (Raskin, 1936).

Ericsson also advocates practice sessions with limited duration. He writes:

A number of training studies in real life have compared the efficiency of practice durations ranging from 1-8 hr per day. These studies show essentially no benefit from durations exceeding 4 hr per day and reduced benefits from practice exceeding 2 hr (Welford, 1968; Woodworth & Schlosberg, 1954).

So if you're trying to get better at something specific, like playing guitar, sharpening your ballroom dance routine, or recognizing tumors in CT scans, you should devote no more than four hours per day to the task and avoid practice sessions that last more than 2 hours.

Interestingly, the best novelists follow this rule as well. Most write for only four hours a day, usually in the morning, leaving the rest of the day to recuperate. I've also heard anecdotally to stop doing something well before you become exhausted with it. When you return to whatever it was you were doing, you won't absolutely dread it.

Ericsson also found that talented violinists studying at a prestigious German school of music took daily naps in the afternoon, usually for 20 to 40 minutes or so.

That being said, I've decide to take the first step toward genius. I'm off to snooze. Peace!

Zoolander revisited

2007-05-29T03:02:00.000+05:00

So, this is what happens in the fashion world when we're not looking, huh?

Wowzers.

this post is dedicated to justin ziemba, whose fashion sense is exceeded only by the impressive cut of his jaw.

Long duck dong ping pong

2007-05-23T16:05:00.000+05:00

GrandOpening is a store.
GrandOpening isn’t afraid to change its face.
GrandOpening will have many “Grand Openings”.
GrandOpening will engage and entertain the community.
GrandOpening could be yours for a month, or two, or three.
GrandOpening might be different the next time you come by.

So two Canadian guys decide to open up a business. They call it GrandOpening, and every few months they reinvent themselves and the small space they own at 139 Norfolk; and when they do they indeed celebrate another grand opening. Currently the place houses a ping pong table and a short stack of bleachers where passersby can gather, have a few drinks, and cheer on the next Zhuang Zedong. Neat-O.

Big ups to the Cool Hunter for another great find.

Who exactly has an abortion?

2007-05-21T06:05:00.000+05:00

As guest editor of the New York Times this month, Atul Gawande wrote a brief opinions piece about abortions. Always the well-informed doctor, Gawande culls the findings of various studies to give us a more accurate picture of abortion. The result: the procedure, whether medical or surgical, is much more commonplace than we might think. He writes, "one in three women under the age of 45 have an abortion during their lifetime. One in three." (Emphasis mine.)

More surprisingly, it's not unruly and recalcitrant teenagers that are electing to have abortions. Oh no, not at all. It's adults:

Abortion is mainly an adult problem. Forty-five percent of abortions occur in adults ages 18 to 24; 48 percent occur after age 25. Most are in women who have already had a child. The kids are all right. We are the issue.

Okay, so teen girls makeup less than 8 percent of people electing abortion. So, if abortions can't be attributed to adolescent licentiousness, what then? It's improper contraceptive use, says Gawande. About half of all pregnancies are unintended, and 60 percent of women who elect abortion say they were using some form of contraception. That's three-fifths of women, ladies and gentlemen. Think about it this way: of all women who elect abortion, the majority were using contraceptives. So, women using contraceptives get unintentionally knocked up more often than women who don't use any form of contraception.

It's not that contraceptives don't work. The evidence points in entirely the other direction: when used properly, oral contraceptives are nearly 100% effective. But a couple needs to be fastidious with the pill. Missing a single dose by even six hours reduces the efficacy of the pill—so much so that experts recommend strict condom use for the rest of the month! And missing two days consecutively will essentially render the pill ineffective.

Moral of the story: when it comes to contraceptives, stay on top of things so you can get on top each other.

Memento mori, scientifically speaking

2007-05-20T01:27:00.001+05:00

A friend of mine used to work in a human liver cell research lab. One thing that is in constant demand in a human liver cell research lab is human liver cells. (It makes sense, right?) So how exactly does someone go about getting human liver cells? Why by subscribing to listservs that send emails like this:

Good Evening,

[Name of Science Company] will be receiving fresh primary human hepatocytes [liver cells] from the following donor:

Age: 17
Sex: F
Race: C
BMI: 14.6
Blood Type: O
Cause of Death: GSW
Reason not transplanted: Recipient ill
Biopsy result: <5%>
Smoking history: None
Drinking history: None
Substance Abuse: Occasional marijuana
Serologies: All negative; CMV pending

Price:

In suspension: $75/million cells
Plated* (6, 12, 24, 48 and 96): $600/plate
* Please indicate if you would like a Matrigel overlay for no additional cost

Shipping:

** Suspensions will be ready for local pickup by [date omitted]. If you are not local, suspensions will be shipped for a Saturday evening or Sunday morning.

"Good Evening,"—it begins like a dark countess welcoming a dinner party of opportunistic vampires, eager witches, and rambling mad scientists with their misshapen assistants. The details are laid out, the price is set, and a swift delivery is guaranteed. What is going on here? Who allows this Black Market? And is this the modern incarnation of 17th Century body snatchers?

No, fortunately, it is not; however, this is the sometimes grim business of science. The people that receive emails like the one above are not heartless scientists, though they are undeniably exchanging body parts for Benjamins. (600 bones per plate!) But do these men and women necessarily value life less because they deal with death daily? Of course not. One might turn the coin and assert that because they have devoted their careers to the deceits of death they value nothing more than life itself!

One thing is certain, however: people who make a living studying death have an acutely different sense of it than people who deal with death only a handful of times in their lives (n.b., minimum number of times a person has to deal with death in his or her lifetime: 1).

In her book Narrative Medicine, it is precisely this acutely different sense of death and dying that Rita Charon, a physician and literary scholar at Columbia University, identifies as one of four major divides that separate patients and doctors. She writes about the "relation to mortality" this way:

Doctors and patients differ fundamentally in their natural understanding of mortality. Doctors who know materially about death, accept an actual, present awareness that we are mortal and we will die; while patients, depending on their own personal experiences with illness and death, usually have not developed such concrete realizations.

This does not mean that doctors and patients have to remain forever stranded on distant islands (the title of Charon's chapter, "Bridging Health Care's Divides," indicates just as much). Still, there is an impassable gulf between a patient's experience of his illness and his doctor's conception of it, even if, let's say, there's the rare occurrence that the doctor herself has suffered from the disease which she now treats. (Let us remind ourselves briefly that 'disease' and 'illness' are not interchangeable: the first refers to a set of signs and symptoms determined by general scientific consensus, the second to the invariably unique effects of, and responses to, the first.)

A friend once told me that physical pain is one of the few things we cannot actually "remember". We can recall the sense of having once experienced it, but to invoke the actual memory of pain would mean to feel it all over again, and this, it seems, our minds are incapable of doing. Perhaps this is one reason we can never truly empathize with someone (empathos, literally 'in feeling'). What we can do with some effort, however, is examine and draw out what Charon calls the "singularity" of illness, the always unique experience of disease.

Citing Gérard Genette, Charon reminds us that "there are no objects except particular ones and no science except of the general." To a certain degree, successful science is dependent upon its generalities, and at times science must speak about people in terms of numbers, lab values, and sweeping biographical categories. But if we strain to look more closely we can decipher a story in the generalities. Indeed, generalities sometimes provide us with a productive ambiguity: a seventeen year-old girl, not unlike a friend or a daughter maybe; an occasional pot smoker, not unlike ourselves once; whose liver could not be transplanted because "recipient ill," which ties yet another loss to this one. When we inquire about the cause of death we find only initials: GSW. But in these three simple letters there is a striking sadness, and a senselessness too. Gun Shot Wound. Perhaps self-inflicted, perhaps not. To science at large the exact details are necessarily irrelevant, but to scientists and physicians they need not be.

Seeking one Simpsons arcade game

2007-05-19T09:01:00.000+05:00

Via an arcade emulator on his Mac, my brother has reacquainted me with the much loved Simpsons video arcade game. Since the whole enterprise of emulators is illegal, I cannot say which emulator he used nor can I mention where he downloaded the Simpson game. Alas, this will have to be one nostalgic pleasure you all must go without.

When I was your age homosexuality was a sickness!

2007-05-18T08:54:00.000+05:00

It was only in 1973, and after bearing the weight of activist resistance and new research findings, did the American Psychiatric Association finally rewrite their definitive entry of 'homosexuality'. Listen to the amazing This American Life story of how being gay was no longer seen as being sick—well, at least for some people.

If you want a bit more history and commentary see Homosexuality and American Psychiatry by Ronald Bayer, a public health historian at Columbia University who had this to say:

The interesting thing in a debate like this is that both sides wrap themselves in the mantle of science, and both sides charge the other as being non-scientific. That's just the nature of these controversies. But the fundamental question, of whether or not homosexuality is a disease, it seems to me, is not a scientific question.
Do we see sexuality as a source of fulfillment or as a sin of our birth? Those are moral questions—and it certainly would feel more secure to say there is a scientific answer to our deepest moral questions, because then we could use the rod of science to beat back those we don't agree with—but I don't think we have that option.

There's also this book from Charles Socarides, a psychiatrist during those tumultuous years of redefinition and controversy. He conducted research which supported the idea that the homosexual orientation was harmful to the person that adopted it.

What do you think: can there be a right or wrong when it comes to sexual preference? Or may it be just that: a preference? And, more interestingly perhaps, think about the role that medicine, psychiatry, and other 'institutions' have in controlling our conceptions of things. What else might we be '(mis)informed' about?

the Pleasure of Eavesdropping

2007-05-15T23:22:00.000+05:00

In a tribute to Overheard in New York, Graham Walker at Over!My!Med!Body! recently posted some overheard dialogue while doing his E.R. clerkship. Overheard is a site that collects and posts the eavesdroppings of New Yorkers, many of whom are traveling innocently on the subway when they overhear these gems. The posts are often crude, but almost always very funny. Check out this one, for example, entitled "Neither of Us Wanted to Change":

Chick: Whoa, you were married? Guy: Yup. Six years. Chick: What happened? Guy: Ummm... We were too different. Chick: Different how? Guy: Well, I'm the kind of person who wanted to pay off all his med school bills and live abroad for a few years. She's the kind of person who wanted to fuck other guys. Chick: [Shocked.] Guy: Hey, you asked.
-- On the F train, York St

Here's another favorite:

Blond Tourist Bimbo: I've never even heard of the G Train. Blond Local Bimbo: Yeah, it's a ghetto train. Blond Tourist Bimbo: Where does it go? Blond Local Bimbo: Nowhere. Black eight-year-old boy: Except my home, bitch. -- G train Hoyt/Schermerhorn station Overheard by: Ian Robertson

Thanks to Graham at over my med body! for introducing me to the gold that is this site.

the Culture of Consumption, postscript

2007-05-15T09:58:00.000+05:00

I've brought all this up because I've recently been considering how much stuff I use and trying to figure out where I can be less wasteful.

I'm starting to make little changes, like bringing re-usable cloth bags to the grocery store and purchasing secondhand products. For some time now, I've even been able to avoid buying stuff brand new. Thanks to the advent of eBay and Amazon.com, almost everything I buy—from clothes, to books, to appliances like coffee makers and blenders—I purchase secondhand. I get a nice discount and contribute less to material consumption.

And now, thanks to Swaptree.com, people can actually begin to barter for goods. That's doubly good! Not only do you avoid consuming new products, but you also get rid of stuff that someone else can put to use! (Think about it: how much stuff have you purchased that now goes unused?)

I think it'd be neat to hear about other methods—besides conventional recycling and 'never letting the water run'—that people put to practice to keep from being wasteful. Anybody got anything really inventive?

the Culture of Consumption, part 2 of 2

2007-05-15T08:44:00.000+05:00

The Oxford City Council seems to be making an effort to reduce its waste production. And several columns in student newspapers here reflect a concern with the alarming number of not-yet-expired goods thrown away by chain grocery stores. (Zoe Jewell of the Oxford Student wrote a really interesting feature about her experiences with dumpster diving, but I can't seem to find an online copy. As a substitute, I found this YouTube video.)

Despite the growing attention given to environmentalism, I am constantly kicking around the urban tumbleweeds that clutter Oxford's streets (perhaps I could just pick them up?), and that made me think about this artist, a guy who gives 'An American Self-Portrait' by way of depicting the waste we produce. Here he digitally recreates 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the U.S. every five seconds:

and now a close-up,

Makes quite an impression, don't it?

the Condemnatory Obituary

2007-05-14T06:42:00.000+05:00

Never let an enemy write your obituary.

For some curious reason, Edgar Allan Poe selected one of his most hated enemies as his literary executor; this same man, Rufus Griswold, wrote the following obituary:

Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltmore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was well known personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England, and in several states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art lost one of its most brilliant, but erratic stars.

Yeesh.

the Culture of Consumption, part 1 of 2

2007-05-13T21:21:00.000+05:00

I ran out of soap the other day, which I only realized after I had gotten into the shower. Fortunately, I live with several wonderful women who constantly stock the bathroom with scrubs, body washes, and fragrant shower gels. I decided to use Allison's Olive Branch shower gel by Lush, which comes highly recommended. Anyway, at dinner Allison remarked about "some bastard that used my shower gel."

"Oh," I said, "that was me."

Ultimately, she forgave me, but it got me thinking about how much our little house of college students actually consumes. Not just in terms of food, but in terms of products in general. We each buy our own soap, our own shampoo, our own milk and fruit, and coffee, etc., and a lot of it spoils or gets thrown away.

The toiletries, for example: we're only going to be in Oxford for five or six more weeks and there is an amounting pile of half-filled bottles on our shower ledge that we cannot possibly finish before leaving for home. Can't we just share what we have and avoid buying new junk, or is it some kind of fashion culture 'no-no' to use the same toiletries and end up carrying the same shower-fresh aroma as your roommates?

Sometimes I wonder if the practice of buying our own stuff instead of just sharing has anything to do with American individualism. I mean, have we come so far as to want unique bathing goods? Would a group of college-aged Americans be willing to share shower gel and shampoo, or would they object because "I have to have my own scent, dammit"?

Think about it: when we were kids it was no big deal to use the same shampoo as your kid brother or sister, but at some point in our adolescence didn't we all become fascinated with different colognes and perfumes? In junior high I remember how our stinks distinguished us: Anthony rocked the Michael Jordan cologne, I sprayed on Clinique Happy, and Davey -- who was the most stylish of us all -- wore Acqua di Gio.

Would any of you be willing to save on cologne and just wear what your roommates wear? And how many of you actually finish a bottle of perfume? Or is it more likely the case that you get tired of the smell and purchase something new or original?

I mean, listen to the very language of aromatics: we ask "what perfume are you wearing?" Like dresses at a party, a scent is a fashion best worn by only one person at a time. To share is to surrender one's individuality, and as Americans this is one thing we have been taught to hold onto.

I'm not saying we purchase our own groceries as a sign of individuality. (Independence and maturity, perhaps, but not individuality.) I am only suggesting that our emphasis on individualism -- which undeniably influences our ideas about fashion -- may also govern the way we go about buying and using things.

More to come…

the Pope v. Liberation theology

2007-05-12T20:12:00.000+05:00

Pope Benedict XVI recently visited Brazil to canonize Friar Galvão, the first native Brazilian to become a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. The pope's arrival in Brazil prompted Larry Rohter of the NYT to write a piece about "liberation theology," a popular 'rival theology' that emerged in the 1960s and has since taken root in Latin American Catholicism.

Liberation theology sees religion as corrective tool for social injustice and poverty, and some Liberation theologians even employ Marxist ideas in their mission to address problems of oppression.

Before he was pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, as he was known, denounced liberation theology and its doctrines as "a fundamental threat to the faith of the [Catholic] church." The late Pope John Paul II disapproved of a Biblical reading which reconceptualized Christ as "a political figure, a revolutionary, [and] as the subversive of Nazareth". The Roman Catholic Church strongly opposes this 'misuse' of Christianity because it focuses on the wordly, and ultimately transient, concerns of mortal life and not the "inner liberty" and salvation necessary for eternal life.

My question to you guys is this: does an emphasis on social justice and activism really corrupt Catholic principle? Would Catholics be led astray and fall short of eternal life if they advocated for the poor and the oppressed using the tenets of Liberation theology? Finally, would God disapprove?

'Clearing the gene pool'?: washing away Down syndrome

2007-05-10T10:51:00.000+05:00

Whoa.

UK retrospective study reports that 92 percent of pregnant women 35 years and older given a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome elect to terminate their pregnancy.

You discuss the ethics of that after watching this video from the New York Times. (Registration and [nearly] full access to the NYT are free. Additionally, anyone with a .edu email account can register for free access to TimesSelect content.)

Big Ceilings = Big Ideas?

2007-05-10T06:41:00.000+05:00

Brainy research scientists at the University of Minnesota say that ceiling height has an effect on how "freely" a person can think. Higher ceilings, they say, promote creativity and big ideas, while lower ceilings improve a worker's ability to focus on the details of their work or products. Based on the results, what do we do? All you math and engineering kids, down to the basement! Immediately! You theorists and abstractionists, stay up here where the air is plentiful and the light shines.

Ben Mauk of LiveScience.com brings up a few interesting points based on the research findings: should retail stores lower their ceilings in hopes of frustrating a consumer's ability to notice product flaws? ("Hey! This Charlotte Hornets Starter Jacket is torn, man!") What about thinking about religion? Were the cathedrals of yesteryear built extravagantly high in praise of God and in order to encourage the "big thinking" needed to contemplate divinity, spirituality, and the meaning of life?

Sounds like a bunch of loose science to me. Sure, we might feel cooped up in our dorm rooms after hours of studying, to the point where we feel that we can't handle another idea, but I'm willing to bet you've felt just as bad at Grainger, with thoughts no more fecund than those you've had at the Chemistry Learning Center or the English Building's CITES Lab.

If this theory makes sense, how do we explain the influential works that were produced in jail cells? MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail [pdf], Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, The Travels of Marco Polo (ironically), and even Hitler's insanely fanatical yet profoundly destructive Mein Kampf. All were written in perhaps the most confining of spaces.

Perhaps these works would have been produced regardless of the author's writing venue. But I seriously doubt they would have been "better" or more robust with increasing breathing room. What's more important, I think, is what the prison cell offers its inhabitant: plenty of time and an uninhibited imagination—enough so for him to express an unrelenting defense of civil disobedience or a malevolent theory of ethnic inferiority.