Superheroes have always permeated into the lives of children with their charismatic personalities, amazing super powers, and pure awesomeness. What started as a historical catalyst of inspiration for generations of people has quickly turned into an integrated facet in our American culture. As we examine superheroes in this context of the American culture, some examples [...]

I grew up in an era of video game cartridges – large, plastic, square holders for prized video game technology chips. They were great as a result of their additive effect to the overall experience of trying to operate and play an early console such as Nintendo or Super Nintendo (among others). I’m sure that [...]

Diabetes is a serious health problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2011 it was projected that 25.8 million people in the United States suffered from diabetes (equating to about 8.3% of the US population) with 18.8 million people diagnosed with diabetes and a projected 7.0 million people who were [...]

As a blogger for Nerdcore Learning and through its vision and spirit, I try to keep my posts revolved around merging a “nerdy” idea (usually involving video games, comics, and the likes) with an aspect of medicine (which I suppose would also be “nerdy” but more importantly, the “learning” perspective). In this post, I hope [...]

Some of the things that we ponder here from time to time at NCL are: a) Where are we now? b) Where are we going? c) Is this stuff worth fighting for?

Spring break is one of those times in a medical student’s career that keeps the student both sane and human. Many of my peers would attest to my confession that spring break is a time to catch up with life, friends, family, and also to prepare for the final push of the semester. Fortunately as [...]

I fondly remember a time in my life when computer games used to feature heavily in my day-to-day routine. If I wasn’t getting at least five hours a day in on Counterstrike or Unreal Tournament then I was probably either ill or on holiday. However, my last monster-kill streak has long since past and I [...]

Perhaps the most elegant example of learning while actually having fun came from a real-time strategy game called Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. But first some gaming history. Strategy games such as Chess, Risk, and Stratego have enjoyed a long heritage. The classic games were turn-based, essentially allowing each player to gather his or [...]

It was during the autumn of 1999 that I fell in love. She was beautiful, complex, tremendously high maintenance, and from the land of the rising sun. Her name was Gran Turismo, and our relationship was tumultuous, fiery, and a constant struggle for performance and power. Horsepower, that is. In a few short weeks, I [...]

While the happy reunion with Princess Hygiena was taking place, Clostridium difficile sat silently beneath the cover of darkness plotting his quest for total gastrointestinal domination.  Billions of innocent Normal F’Lora had fled from their ravaged homeland after the Apothecaries had made an unsuccessful attempt to banish the Lords of Pestilence.  “Friendly fire” and the [...]