MeDiCaLeSe Reading Room

Joey Green's Supermarket Spa: Hundreds of Easy Ways to Pamper Yourself Using Brand-Name Products You've Already Got Around the House. With Supermarket Spa, you can:

Condition your hair with Aunt Jemima Syrup
Give yourself a facial with Pepto-Bismol
Condition your hair with Cool Whip
Give yourself a moisturizing facial with Phillips' Milk of Magnesia
Clean dry skin with Mott's Applesauce
Soothe tired feet with French's Mustard
Shave your legs with Cheez-Whiz

Trade paper, sale price $4.98.

Green Living by the editors of E Magazine. Experts suggest that up to 40% of Americans buy organic, yet a large majority have only a limited knowledge of how to make informed choices. This book offers a thorough, step-by-step plan for every aspect of life, from the laundry room to the kitchen, planet-
friendly cosmetics to home-based renewable energy. Trade paper, $17.00 list, now $7.98 on sale.

Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty. Kids love stuff that's gross. From the liquids, solids, and gases -- especially the gases! -- or their own bodies to the creepy, crawly, slimy, slithery, fetid, and feculent phenomena in the world at large, kids with a curious bent just can't get enough. Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty brings together, in one book, all the good things about some of the baddest things on Earth. Trade paper, $14.95.

Scrubs: Season 2 DVD. Make an appointment with Scrubs. Nominated for two Emmy Awards in its second year, the hilarious sitcom is "irreverent and widely inventive," raves TV Guide. Will J.D. get together with Elliot, and will Carla finally accept Turk's wedding proposal? The wacky staff of Sacred Heart Hospital is back for a booster shot of laughs. Enjoy all 22 episodes of the Scrubs sensational second season -- with the original, unedited music. Overflowing with great bonus features, outtakes, and deleted scenes, this spectacular DVD box set offers the best kind of contagious comedy. $35.74, free shipping.

Old-Time Halloween Illustrations with CDROM (Dover Electronic Clip Art). A nostalgic look back at All Hallows Eve, 178 old-fashioned images will lend spellbinding charm to a cauldron-
full of Halloween projects! Delight in full-color holiday scenes starring spooky pumpkins, black cats, trick-or-treaters, flying bats, watchful owls, and other illustrations touched with an enchanting, antique air. Book with CD, $19.95.

The Pursuit of Happyness DVD. Will Smith stars in this moving tale inspired by the true story of Chris Gardner, a San Francisco salesman struggling to build a future for himself and his 5-year-old son Christopher (Jaden Smith). When his girlfriend Linda walks out, Chris is left to raise Christopher on his own. Chris' determination finally pays off when he lands an unpaid internship in a brutally competitive stockbroker-training program, where only one in 20 interns will make the cut. But without a salary, Chris and his son are evicted from their apartment and are forced to sleep on the streets, in homeless shelters, and even behind the locked doors of a metro station bathroom. With self-confidence and the love and trust of his son, Chris Gardner rises above his obstacles to become a Wall Street legend. $25.91, free shipping.

Books and DVDs:

2007 Banned Books Week: Ahoy! Treasure Your Freedom to Read and Get Hooked on a Banned Book

Banned Books Week runs from September 29 through October 6, 2007. Treasure your freedom to read and get hooked on a banned book!

We love these books and DVDs, and we hope you will, too. Kick back for a while with a good book or DVD.

Articles by me and others:

A close to final version of my article on TeX and medicine, which was published in Volume 28, Number 1, the Proceedings issue of TUGboat, is here. The article is in .pdf format. I presented this paper at the Practical TeX 2006 conference at Rutgers University on August 1, 2006.

The article contains a great deal of highly technical information on the computer typesetting language TeX and how I used it to produce MeDiCaLeSe 2005.

These next two articles were reformatted for printing on October 17, 2004. One screen page = one printed page in IE6 only. Each page must be printed individually.

Cicero Teaches Dictation: Lessons From Ancient Rome . page 2 . page 3 . page 4 . soundalikes

MT.Con: The Cockroach Problem In Medical Transcription . page 2 . page 3 . page 4 . page 5 . page 6 . page 7.

Please read this article by Kelly Champ for another viewpoint on these issues.

House: Seasons 1 and 2 DVDs. Go deeper into the medical mysteries of House, TV's most compelling new drama, as all 22 Season One episodes, 24 Season Two episodes, and exclusive bonus features come to DVD! Hugh Laurie stars as the brilliant but sarcastic Dr. Gregory House, a maverick physician who is devoid of bedside manner. While his behavior can border on antisocial, Dr. House thrives on the challenge of solving the medical puzzles that other doctors give up on. List $69.98, Powell's price $61.58 with free shipping.

1,000 Turn-Of-The-Century Houses: With Illustrations and Floor Plans. This early 20th century showcase of homes features a wide range of designs from a Midwest master. Reproduced from a rare edition, the work features a splendid array of dwellings, from cottages and bungalows to sprawling mansions. Each house is meticulously illustrated and accompanied by complete floor plans. Trade paper, $18.95.

Meg Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. She claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract," which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time. Meg's father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father? A Wrinkle In Time was one of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990 - 2000. Trade paper, $6.99.

MeDiCaLeSe 2007 is the third book to evolve from this website, and the only one on this page which is not sold through Powell's. MeDiCaLeSe 2007 was released on September 25 as an ebook. A 30-page excerpt is available. $31.00.

Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening. Twice a year America's rose lovers cut the prettiest blossoms off their best plants and travel to the national rose show, where they lovingly groom their precious blooms for hours in a frigid hall in order to contend for the highest honor: the Queen of Show. Doctors. Teachers. Sheet metal mechanics. Lawyers. Truck drivers. Men and women. These are type A gardeners, and for them this is a blood sport. They grow tender roses in the frigid North and disease prone roses in the humid South simply for the challenge. They decorate otherwise lovely yards with paper bags and panty hose to isolate their choice specimens. They traipse through overgrown fields in the worst weather to save antique roses from extinction. Hardcover, new, $22.95.

The Night Before Christmas: A Magical Cut-Paper Edition. "The Night Before Christmas" is the most enduring and memorable of all holiday poems. Kittens and dogs curl up everywhere in the old-fashioned home; stockings hang by the fireplace; and a group of irresistibly adorable children nestle next to cakes, cookies, and candy canes on a bed of soft dreamy clouds. Young readers and adults alike will be mesmerized. Delicate cut-paper illustrations let readers peek ahead to the next scene in this elegant edition of a classic poem evoking the anticipation of Christmas Eve. Hardcover, list price $16.99, sale price $13.50.

On an occasional basis I wrote the Morbid Curiosities column on medicine and pathology at the Mystery and Suspense Writers Community, which is now closed, at iUniverse. The column for November 2002 was a guided tour of the morgue and observation of an autopsy, and was called The Place Where Death Rejoices. The December 2002 column was called Murder by Natural Causes. The column for March 2003 was All About Twins. The April 2003 column was Bioterrorism 101, and was unfortunately both frightening and very timely. One week after I wrote it, two hospitals in China were placed on quarantine because of SARS. The column for June 2003 was Bipolar Disorder.

The Gift of Creativity