“‘It’s time to reopen our city’: N.Y.C. mayor lifts a school mask mandate and indoor vaccination rules.” (New York Times, 3/4/2022): Mayor Eric Adams said on Friday that he was official… | Continue reading
Despite my passion for Climate Science, I hadn’t noticed that Seattle is now the home of the “Climate Pledge Arena,” a sports stadium seating over 18,000 people (so, including wor… | Continue reading
Today is supposedly the day that the East Hampton airport (KHTO) reopens as a private-only facility. More or less everything there was paid for with federal funds, but enough years ago that the tow… | Continue reading
These events occurred on February 24, but I didn’t want to post then because it is a trivial story compared to what was happening in Ukraine. Our local CVS had a sign on the door promising &#… | Continue reading
From the State of the Union speech yesterday: And fourth and last, let’s end cancer as we know it.Cancer is the number-two cause of death in America, second only to heart disease.Our goal is to cut… | Continue reading
“Ukraine men ordered to stay and fight Russia as others flee” (New York Post, 2/25/2022): Ukraine announced late Thursday that men between the ages of 18 and 60 were forbidden from leav… | Continue reading
Even as thousands of Americans continue to be felled by SARS-CoV-2, state governors are lifting COVID-related protections. Soon it might be possible for a 5-year-old, for example, to go to a restau… | Continue reading
There’s a house for sale in our neighborhood (we rent a 2BR for $2800/month). It went on the market about a week ago. The first showings are today, 10a-4p, and “All contracts must be su… | Continue reading
A reader comment on Why didn’t Ukraine become a NATO member back in the 1990s? highlighted this 2018 lecture at Yale by a French-Russian-American guy, 83 years old at the time(!), who was formerly … | Continue reading
In a comment on MIT weighs in regarding the war in Ukraine, Paul write the following: looks like NATO poking the Russian bear to me. What’s inside the referenced January 10, 2022 NATO documen… | Continue reading
A popular restaurant in booming South Florida, February 22, 2022: (“Sorry, we are closing for lunch due to staffing. Our new hours of operation are Monday through Saturday, 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm… | Continue reading
Back in September 2021, we looked at a New York Times article that explained the #Science of Deplorability leading inevitably to death from COVID-19. States and counties in which people voted for T… | Continue reading
Sadly topical, let me recommend The Great Siege, Malta 1565 by Ernie Bradford. For Americans softened by 150+ years without war on our soil, this is a sobering reminder of the nature of war and lif… | Continue reading
Today is the day that muscular government action brings relief from COVID-19-related shortages. Our “free” (taxpayer-funded) at-home test kits are arriving. From USPS: These were ordere… | Continue reading
Night shift: midnight – 8:00 AM. My resident is a 28-year-old whiz kid with slicked-back hair. An ED nurse rooms our first patient and drops off the paperwork. She teases, “Have fun, he… | Continue reading
Portion of yesterday’s email from Rafael Reif, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Note the implication that Russians are suffering just as much as Ukrainians (in bold): T… | Continue reading
Originally-American Eileen Gu has been criticized by Americans for getting a Chinese passport and choosing to compete on China’s team at the 2022 Olympics. Let’s look at the BBC as a ne… | Continue reading
The second week of EM. As soon as I put my bags down for the second shift (2:00 PM to 10:00 PM) at the physician/nurses station, a code blue is called over the loudspeaker – “Code Blue, Triag… | Continue reading
“More than 1,000 gather at SF’s City Hall to protest Russian invasion of Ukraine” (SFGate, 2/4/2022) will no doubt strike fear in the hearts of the any foreign military. The accom… | Continue reading
“Renters across US face sharp increases – averaging up to 40% in some cities” (The Guardian): According to an analysis conducted by RedFin, rents in the US jumped 14% in December 2021 t… | Continue reading
It’s May and we’re back from an uneventful week of vacation. Emergency medicine rotation, 12 shifts in 30 days. I am one of the first medical students in my class to complete EM. One qu… | Continue reading
We stopped into a Florida pinball machine dealer. He said that he went into the business as a labor of love, but has recently been making more money than he ever dreamed possible. “Prices for… | Continue reading
During our morning session on multiple sclerosis, a stroke alert is called. The clerkship director and I walk over to the ED. A 66-year-old female is presenting for left-sided weakness (arm more th… | Continue reading
In a recent video chat among friends, a Russian immigrant to the U.S., asked about the Ukraine situation, said “I am not following it closely, but I assume that Putin has a reason for doing w… | Continue reading
A friend in Maskachusetts wrote yesterday that his son’s private school had dropped its mask requirement (public schools in MA are still generally masked), overruling at least one member of i… | Continue reading
A friend imports European windows for Americans who are too rich to look at America through American windows. Price increases for components are happening every few weeks. Prices for the finished p… | Continue reading
Neurology rotation. Three days at the VA and then three days at our home institution. Groundhog Day: I meet the VA coordinator at 9:00 am to get my badge and a campus tour (it happened last month, … | Continue reading
The situation in Ukraine is bewildering to those of us who received parochial American educations. The Wall Street Journal attempts to explain it in “Putin’s Endgame: Unravel the Post-Cold Wa… | Continue reading
“Where, Exactly, Did $800 Billion in PPP Money Go?” (Bloomberg): Billions of dollars of federal funds may have been misappropriated as part of the government’s well-intentioned but loos… | Continue reading
Last week on psychiatry. I am paired with an outpatient psychiatrist who specializes in addiction medicine. He splits his time with group therapy sessions and individual appointments for general ps… | Continue reading
American labor force participation rate is falling (BLS): An evil (i.e., profit-seeking) company owner whom I know installed an activity logger on the Windows laptops that he provides to employees.… | Continue reading
With deaths from COVID-19 only about as bad as in January 2021 (when few were vaccinated), in both the U.S. as a whole and Maskachusetts alone, declarations of “Mission Accomplished” ar… | Continue reading
Consultation and Liaison (C&L) service. I meet the team at 7:45 am in the C&L workroom, a windowless room that crams 3 computers and a loveseat. The 35-year-old attending who completed an I… | Continue reading
Friends have been asking me to explain the recent Robinson R44 autorotation off Miami Beach. The incident, caught on surveillance camera: If it isn’t an emergency and your machine happens to … | Continue reading
The first modern Olympics were in 1896 when the world population was roughly 1.5 billion and only 14 countries were wealthy and organized enough to send teams (241 athletes total). There were two m… | Continue reading
After a beautiful one-hour drive into the countryside, an imposing six-story concrete building rises from the hillside. Locals comment about the Soviet-era architecture. The campus also includes se… | Continue reading
Dumb question of the day… why are fake CDC vaccination cards a marketable item? “Fake Vaccine Card Sales Have Skyrocketed Since Biden Mandate” (Pew): The price of fake COVID-19 va… | Continue reading
After a 45-minute drive, I arrive at 8:30 am for paperwork at the local Veterans Administration (VA) hospital. Unfortunately, due to my short time here, I won’t get access to their electronic… | Continue reading
A friend owns a company that makes equipment for factories. His theory is that the central planners who’ve been printing money overestimated the elasticity of supply and therefore created muc… | Continue reading
Week 2 of inpatient psych. The resident is late for the 8:30 am handoff, so I talk to the night resident. There were two “soft” admissions (people who could have gone home) overnight, w… | Continue reading
At a COVID-safe Super Bowl party, one of the guests was a police officer who lives in our building. She was chatting with a guy who works for a small video production company. He talked about the c… | Continue reading
“FDA-approved Vuity eyedrops could replace your reading glasses” (Today): Just approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Vuity’s new product has been found to take effect in a… | Continue reading
An estate owner in a woodsy New England vacation enclave for the rich writes to his neighbors, who rely on a limited collection of colorful locals for every job that requires physical strength and … | Continue reading
From Wikipedia’s entry on Id, ego and super-ego: The super-ego (German: Über-Ich) reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly taught by parents applying their guidance and influenc… | Continue reading
An interesting article by a gymnastics champion-turned-Levi-Strauss executive: My tenure at Levi’s began as an assistant marketing manager in 1999, a few months after my thirtieth birthday. As the … | Continue reading
A senator introduced a bill for consideration by the Maskachusetts State Senate that would impose a 6.25% sales tax on new and used aircraft, currently tax-exempt in MA so as to compete with neighb… | Continue reading
A chapter on diseases of the brain, perfectly timed for Valentine’s Day… (an MIT Economics professor back in the early 1980s told us that romantic love was a mental defect. “You&#… | Continue reading
More Super Bowl questions…. First, in watching TV coverage of the event, did anyone see a spectator wearing a mask? The nearby schoolchildren were recently subjected to an escalation in their… | Continue reading