The Bride Was Beautiful

This was a tough series of photos to get through: The Bride Was Beautiful.

Katie Kirkpatrick, 21, held off cancer to celebrate the happiest day of her life. [...] Her organs were shutting down but it would not stop her from marrying Nick Godwin, 23, who was in love with Katie since 11th grade.

The last photo is just heartbreaking. (via cup of jo)

Grant Achatz in the New Yorker

The New Yorker profiles chef Grant Achatz this week. The piece focuses on his restaurant, Alinea, and the battle with tongue cancer that threatened his life, and worse to Achatz, his career and passion. The loss of his sense of taste had a bright side:

Because his ability to taste has come back over time, Achatz feels that he is understanding the sense in a new way -- the way you would if you could see only in black-and-white and, one by one, colors were restored to you. He says, "When I first tasted a vanilla milkshake" -- after the end of his treatment -- "it tasted very sweet to me, because there's no salt, no acid. It just tasted sweet. Now, introduce bitter, so now I'm understanding the relationship between sweet and bitter -- how they work together and how they balance. And now, as salt comes back, I understand the relationship among the three components."

In the Diner's Journal, Pete Wells contrasts Achatz with another chef that the New Yorker recently profiled, Momofuku's David Chang.

In March, The New Yorker published a profile of a chef who was about to open a restaurant. The chef complained about his health, worried about the future and cursed as if he had slammed his thumb in a car door.

On Monday, the magazine will publish a profile of another chef. Last year a doctor told this chef that he had advanced oral cancer and that unless he had his tongue cut out, he would be dead within a few months. According to The New Yorker, the chef reacted as if he'd just been handed a particularly challenging logic problem.

The point of the contrast is not to marginalize Chang's problems or his reaction to them but to demonstrate what a different approach Achatz takes to kitchen work than the typical (stereotypical?) Anthony Bourdainity of the restaurant kitchen.

The NYer article includes an online companion, a slideshow of photos of the latest menu items at Alinea and chef Achatz, looking very Seth Bullock.

Good news: Alinea's Grant Achatz announces that

Good news: Alinea's Grant Achatz announces that his cancer is in remission. Achatz found out earlier this year that he had cancer of the mouth and instead of the traditional surgery route, he worked with his doctors on a treatment that would allow him to continue to cook, his profession and passion.

Reconsidering Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: it was

Reconsidering Rachel Carson's Silent Spring: it was an influential book...too bad the science was all wrong. "She cited scary figures showing a recent rise in deaths from cancer, but she didn't consider one of the chief causes: fewer people were dying at young ages from other diseases (including the malaria that persisted in the American South until DDT). When that longevity factor as well as the impact of smoking are removed, the cancer death rate was falling in the decade before 'Silent Spring,' and it kept falling in the rest of the century."

Update: Scienceblogs' Tim Lambert has been following a campaign to discredit Carson and her book. More here and at Google. (thx, jim & paul)

Some have advised Roger Ebert not to

Some have advised Roger Ebert not to attend his yearly film festival because of his changed physical appearance due to recent cancer surgery. Ebert says nuts to that...he may look a little strange, but his brain still works, his thumbs still go up and down, and he can type his columns just fine. "We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I'm not going to miss my festival." I love Roger Ebert.

Why is the incidence of cancer in

Why is the incidence of cancer in India so much lower than in the US?