Grand Rounds XXIV

And now for something that (mercifully, my readers are no doubt thinking) has nothing to do with Bill Maher or his idiotic statements about Pasteur and is far more important than the blatherings of a windbag comedian who thinks he knows more than he actually does:

Grand Rounds XXIV is now available at Hospice Blog. The Hospice Guy has taken his turn at gathering the best of the medical blogosphere and boiling it down into one nice, neat package. They should give those of us with M.D.'s CME credits for this stuff. It's that good.

Next week is my turn to host. I just realized as I type this that, through some quirk of fate, I've somehow landed the honor of hosting the 25th edition of Grand Rounds at Respectful Insolence. Wow. That's a lot of pressure and expectation, given the routinely high quality of preceding Grand Rounds. (I may not have known what I was in for when I volunteered to do it a couple of months ago.) I realize that some of my readers may be expecting me to try to top my last turn at hosting a blog carnival, The Second Skeptics' Circle, in which I integrated the articles into a story in which a raucous bunch of skeptical free-thinkers were having a loud discussion of various issues in the back meeting room of a bar. Certainly, I was inspired by the Madhouse Madman's take on Grand rounds in January. I was also very impressed by Maria's use of the menu as a means of organizing the posts last week (although some were a little taken aback by the food analogies to various body parts not normally associated with food).

After such great examples, I'm finding it harder to think of creative ways of doing a blog carnival that don't just copy someone else's idea or repeat what I've done once before. I have a couple of ideas about how this time around I might accomplish this. However, I'm not yet sure if Grand Rounds will lend itself to what I have in mind all that well; so the "creativity" (which some no doubt consider weirdness, given my warped mind) might actually have to wait until my turn to host Tangled Bank in April. Right now, though, I'll try to lower expectations a bit. I may well end up using a more conventional method of presenting the posts if I don't like the results of my more out-there ideas. Not that that should be a problem. The posts submitted to Grand Rounds are almost always of such high quality that they probably don't need the host (me) to be messing with them too much by weaving them into a story or menu (although such devices can certainly add to the entertainment value of Grand Rounds or other blog carnivals when done with suitable panache). I expect that the submissions to this week's Grand Rounds will be no different in terms of high quality; so it may not be such a bad thing if I end up being a bit more conventional in my presentation.

But, then again, I may not end up being conventional. I'm unpredictable that way. You'll just have to wait until next week to see.

Enough of my long-windedness. After you're done checking out this week's edition of Grand Rounds, it's never too early to think about next week. So, without further ado, here's the official call for submissions to next week's Grand Rounds. Please send them to me, Orac, at orac_usa at hotmail dot com. The deadline is Monday, March 14, at 9 PM EST (but if you can get them to me by the end of this weekend, I'd be very appreciative). Please be sure to put the words "GRAND ROUNDS" in all caps in the Subject: header and include the URL for the permalink to your post in your e-mail. As a surgeon/scientist, I'm particularly interested in articles having to do with surgery or medical research (but, as always, articles on all medical topics are welcome), and articles on these topics will probably get priority for being listed near the beginning. I will also acknowledge each submission with an e-mail; so if you don't hear from me within 24-48 hours after e-mailing me, contact me again or leave a comment after this post. (I don't want any hyperactive spam filters to prevent anyone's submission from being included, which is unfortunately what happened to the last edition of Tangled Bank.)