My Virtual Reading Room

Health and Medicine:

These 'Zebra' Cases Were Cracked by People Other Than Doctors, from Medscape

— Popular Reddit thread captures rare diagnoses made by patients, lab techs, first responders

This 70-year-old retiree just graduated med school. He has this advice for others, from CNN

Women who are blind play a critical role in identifying possible breast cancers, from NPR


Reading, Writing, and Life:


Sometimes I don't know why I bother!, by Charlie Stross

"The trouble with writing fiction is that, as a famous novelist once said, reality is under no compulsion to make sense or be plausible. Those of us who make stuff up are constantly under threat of having our best fictional creations one-upped by the implausibility of real events. I'm pretty much resigned to this happening, especially with the Laundry Files stories: at least space opera and fantasy aren't as prone to being derailed as fiction set in the near-present.

But there's a subtle corollary to the impossibility of story-telling keeping up with reality, and that's the point that it is also pretty much impossible to invent protagonists who can keep up with reality. [...]"


And two from John Scalzi:

Please Don’t Idolize Me (or Anyone, Really)

Reader Request Week 2014 #6: Enjoying Problematic Things