Me in 2005: “Ideas for Building RVs in China”. I figured that the Chinese would be able to build competitive basic motorhomes at prices lower than what American firms charge because so … | Continue reading
“Big Cable Company to Offer A High-Speed Internet Link” (New York Times, March 9, 1994): Continental Cablevision Inc., the nation’s third-largest cable television company, said ye… | Continue reading
A friend is shopping for a new car. He happens to have been working for the past five years on various Silicon Valley self-driving car efforts. What’s he looking at for a new car for himself?… | Continue reading
Books containing harmful ideas will no longer be sold new, says “Dr. Seuss Enterprises Will Shelve 6 Books, Citing ‘Hurtful’ Portrayals” (NPR): “In And to Think That I… | Continue reading
Gynecology rotation starts at 7:30 am in the outpatient surgery center. The chief texted the previous night to skip hospital rounds and just meet the team at the outpatient surgery center for the f… | Continue reading
… just do the opposite of whatever I’m bullish about. Me: Two-thirds full airline idea (12/23/2019) Me: Coronavirus will breathe life into my two-thirds-full airline idea? (3/23/2020) &… | Continue reading
As part of our OB/Gyn rotation, we selected a week-long surgical subspeciality, either urologic oncology (“UroGyn”) or gynecologic oncology (“GynOnc”). GynOnc is known to be… | Continue reading
In the comments to “Why do we care about COVID-19 deaths more than driving-related deaths?” (March 26, 2020), a reader asked a great question: How good of an estimate today can you make… | Continue reading
I arrive for L&D days at 7:00 am and meet the all-female team before our 7:30 am handoff. Nervous Nancy is leaving from the night shift: “I’m loving OB/Gyn. All the good parts of su… | Continue reading
Whenever other people are smarter and more successful than I am, I like to propose a massive tax applicable only to them. Since I neglected to buy Bitcoin…. it is time for a Jimmy Carter styl… | Continue reading
Wildflower Willow after our pediatrics exam. “I loved my OB/Gyn rotation–actually doing something instead of just talking for hours about a patient on internal medicine. We would be rel… | Continue reading
“Up to 90 volunteers in UK to take part in pioneering Covid infection trial” (Guardian): Approval has been given for an initial trial that will involve up to 90 carefully screened, heal… | Continue reading
The last week of inpatient pediatrics is shortened by Thursday’s Shelf exam. I am woefully unprepared, having completed only 100 of the 400 pediatrics UWorld questions. Gentle Greg, a soft-sp… | Continue reading
First week of inpatient pediatrics starts at 7:00 am. The team consists of a PGY3 (“senior resident”), a PGY2 (“the mid-level”), two interns (would be “PGY1”), a… | Continue reading
Nathaniel Greenspun died at age 90 on February 24, 2021 at home with his wife Regina in the Maplewood Park Place Retirement Community, Bethesda, Maryland. He had been getting progressively weaker … | Continue reading
Day shift at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) begins at 7:00 am. The night shift neonatologist is finishing her notes in the physician lounge before the 7:30 am handoff. I asked why she isn&… | Continue reading
“Amid COVID Outbreak, UMass Amherst Prohibits Students From Leaving Dorms for Walks” (NBC): For the foreseeable future, all UMass Amherst classes will take place remotely, and students … | Continue reading
My week in the nursery starts at 7:45 am. My attending, a specialist in NAS clinic (babies born addicted to opioids from addicted mothers), strolls in at 8:15 am. After residency two years ago, she… | Continue reading
America’s science-following health care professionals and science-informed politicians decided that health care workers, police, and firefighters should have top priority in getting COVID-19 … | Continue reading
We’re about a year into Worldwide Coronapanic. Let’s make sure that we’ve been following expert advice. How about checking out Pandemic Influenza Preparedness And Response, A WHO … | Continue reading
From the Dutch NPR (February 9, 2021) plus Google Translate: ‘German ministry hired scientists to induce corona fear’At the beginning of last year, the German Ministry of the Interior w… | Continue reading
One of my worst predictions ever was a 2003 forecast that, by 2023, the Chinese would be able to sell a basic car for $3,000 in 2003 dollars (about $4,300 in today’s money, adjusted via the B… | Continue reading
Genetically defective friends: just in time for attending all of the parties for the one-year anniversary of “14 days to flatten the curve”, I found a mask that doesn’t fog up my glasse… | Continue reading
“Joby Picks Garmin G3000 For eVTOL” (Avweb) suggests that the exciting new world of drones, which I hope will have enough software intelligence to prevent flying into obstacles (see New… | Continue reading
Public Health 101: When confronted with a virus that attacks the obese and unfit, lock people next to their refrigerators for a year. Public Health 102: When the local government runs a COVID vacci… | Continue reading
From a friend who snoops on high schoolers’ remote skool: My daughter was assigned to study the seminal work “The Hill We Climb” by the titan of American poetry, Amanda Gorman.Tea… | Continue reading
Texans are suffering with cold weather, power failure, and water supply failure. (In other words, they’re learning what it is like to live in the Northeast; see, for example, the 2011 storm t… | Continue reading
I caught up with a friend in the hills just west of Austin, Texas today. He was spared from the power failures that have made the news, but life at 0 degrees F was not comfortable. “Even with… | Continue reading
One of the miracles of 2020 was that the U.S. government could borrow/print money like crazy in response to coronapanic and yet inflation, as calculated by the U.S. government, did not go up. But w… | Continue reading
Our mole instead the New York real estate industry told us about a newly available career path: toilet flusher. “The office towers are empty and if you don’t have someone go in and flus… | Continue reading
“Former Sequoia Partner Wins Extortion Suit Against Ex-Mistress” (Bloomberg, January 3, 2020): A salacious three-year legal battle involving a former partner at Sequoia Capital, a oneti… | Continue reading
“2 Tigers at Indiana Zoo Test Positive for COVID-19” (NBC, February 8): Fecal samples for the tigers, Bugara and Indah, were collected for testing and came back positive with the virus.… | Continue reading
If you’re as late to the party as I always am, see “What Is Clubhouse? The Invite-Only Chat App Explained” (PC Mag). Note that, to ensure that only the insufferable can be heard, … | Continue reading
A fair number of our neighbors seem to have invested in “In this house we believe… science is real” or “Science is not a liberal conspiracy” signs. Signs of Justice (T… | Continue reading
Eight of us arrive Monday at 6:00 am for surgery rotation orientation in a small conference room tucked away in the basement of the hospital. The surgery clerkship director introduces himself, and … | Continue reading
For nearly every Black Lives Matter sign in the U.S. we have a Black child whose school remains closed due to coronapanic. Almost every other enterprise in the U.S. that was legally allowed to cont… | Continue reading
On a recent Cirrus SR20 trip to Florida and back, I let the FBOs pick rental cars for me. The result was typically a base-model Toyota Camry from Go Rentals (awesome service!), which is a near-grea… | Continue reading
From a year ago… Aviation weather reports at the time of Kobe Bryant crash: Assuming that it was bad weather that led to this accident, the engineering question is “Why couldn’t the $10 milli… | Continue reading
Students return for Year 3 of medical school. We’ve had a 2-4 week break depending on when we took our Step 1 exam. Most students, including me, are still waiting on their Step 1 scores. Lank… | Continue reading
Our hero has graduated. Coronavirus is almost done (thanks to President Biden’s scientific rule, the virus began to decline weeks before he took office). It is time to resume publication of M… | Continue reading
You don’t want to be working class or a small business owner in the US going forward. With Presidents Biden and Harris promising to direct a larger percentage of American wealth to the credentialed… | Continue reading
A friend is turning 65. If he can easily afford the co-pays (20 percent for most things), does it make sense for him to buy insurance to supplement Medicare? From a reasonably wealthy consumer̵… | Continue reading
From the New York Times, a tireless cheerleader for more low-skill immigration into the U.S…. “Pandemic’s Toll on Housing: Falling Behind, Doubling Up”: Even before last year, abo… | Continue reading
With science-informed leadership in the White House, Maskachusetts residents are now marked safe from late-night alcohol and marijuana, according to the governor’s 62nd executive order (dated… | Continue reading
I’m sure that we can all agree that the working class in Britain shot themselves in the feet by not listening to the elites when it was time for the 2016 Brexit vote. Now that we’ve lea… | Continue reading
What are folks’ favorite Super Bowl commercials so far? (with YouTube links if possible) My favorite is this Jeep commercial in which Bruce Springsteen says “As for freedom, it’s … | Continue reading
A young healthy vaccinated unionized schoolteacher finally feels safe enough to return to work in Los Angeles: Photo by Phill Magakoe and actually from “South Africa Halts Use of AstraZeneca … | Continue reading
From yesterday’s post on Israel… For comparison, how about the U.S. case count, plunging since January 1, 2021 despite no changes in policy or significant numbers of people vaccinated (… | Continue reading