Comics, Medicine

I'm not the sort to squee, but I can certainly appreciate some high class geekery and damn does Polite Dissent bring it.

I came across the site whilst wikipedia-ing House and delighted in reading reviews of the actual medicine. Then, as I continued clicking, I was thrilled to realize the site was primarily devoted to a critique of the depiction of medicine in comics. This goes way beyond the 10th grader in physics asking, "Where does the hulk's extra mass come from?" It's easy to dismiss this all as overreading fantasy fiction, but when Bendis has a scientist explain the human genome as "It's what makes us... us" then all suspension of disbelief flies out the window.

Of course, special attention is paid to the golden age hero, The Black Terror, super-pharmacist. I'd also recommend the Best and Worst Comic Book Science of 2008 Awards.

xkcd, I salute you

This is a truly noble endeavor. Get this comic into the hands of everyone who understands the value of the metric system enough to want to use it, but isn't a scientist and hasn't worked in a laboratory and thus has never actually gotten beyond thinking "a yard is like a meter."