“Stormy Daniels must pay $300k to Donald Trump after losing defamation case appeal” (NBC): Adult film star Stormy Daniels has lost her appeal in her failed defamation suit against Donald Trump — leaving her owing almost $300,000 in legal fees to the former president.“I will go t … | Continue reading
A money manager friend recently attended a charity fund-raising dinner in Palm Beach. The beneficiary is a liberal arts college in the Northeast. If they reach their goals, the Second Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will be able to hire a second assistant and … | Continue reading
I meet my attending, Coach K, in the four-urologist private practice at 8:30 am. The radio is tuned to the sports channel as he signs paperwork before the first patients are ready. “If I can get you to not consult urology when you cannot pass a Foley, you have had a successful ro … | Continue reading
I meet my attending, Coach K, in the four-urologist private practice at 8:30 am. The radio is tuned to the sports channel as he signs paperwork before the first patients are ready. “If I can get you to not consult urology when you cannot pass a Foley, you have had a successful ro … | Continue reading
“What Quantum Mechanics Can Teach Us about Abortion” (Scientific American): As light can exist as both a particle and a wave, an abortion provider can honor birth and fight for a person’s right to give birth when it’s right for themQuantum mechanics, a discipline within physics, … | Continue reading
From an arcade in Stuart, Florida, the Millionaire pinball machine (1987) renamed “Billionaire”: Related: Pinflation (pinball machine pricing compared to 2020)Elon Musk pinball machine | Continue reading
Interview season has commenced, which means we get days, weeks, or even a month off to travel to residency programs. With the exception of a few specialities such as urology and ophthalmology, the Match starts when the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) opens at the … | Continue reading
Here’s a riddle that I hope the Windows experts among us can help solve. I have a 16 TB drive that is dedicated to Windows File History. It was installed in July 2021, assigned to R:, formatted as NTFS, and functioned just fine through mid-March. Now it doesn’t show up under “My … | Continue reading
Six months ago, the New York Times’s in-house Nobel-winning economist wrote “Wonking Out: I’m Still on Team Transitory” (9/10/2021): if we finally get this pandemic under control, the inflation of 2021 will soon fade from memory. Professor Krugman was correct about Joe Biden ge … | Continue reading
Disney supposedly has cut its maximum capacity, but the new maximum still results in multi-hour waits for rides, up to a one-hour wait to get through security before even reaching the ticket booths, no way to get food without waiting in an epic line, etc. We stayed at a hotel ne … | Continue reading
A reader sent the following: The product can be ordered at jeremysrazors.com. Based on the photos, it doesn’t look like this is yet another private-label Dorco (the Korean experts behind the marketeers at Dollar Shave Club). The commercial is fun and the product description … | Continue reading
We overlapped in Orlando last week with an electronic medical record expert friend who was attending HIMMS 2022, a conference for 20,000 senior hospital executives and the software companies trying to sell them stuff (the first round of digital stuff was paid for partly with $30 … | Continue reading
I haven’t been following the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson (CNN) closely, but it seems that nobody could apply for the job unless he/she/ze/they identified as a “Black woman”. From state-sponsored NPR: PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The person I will nomina … | Continue reading
We visited Madame Tussauds Orlando earlier this month and learned that Madonna might not be the best celebrity advocate for years of lockdowns, mask orders, and school closures: “It’s better to live one year as a tiger, than one hundred as a sheep.” This inspired a search that … | Continue reading
Friends have been asking about China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735, the Boeing 737 (non-MAX) that departed Kunming and crashed nose-down near Wuzhou yesterday. Without the flight data recorder it will be tough to determine what happened, but what I’ve been telling friends is that … | Continue reading
Here’s how tough the supply chain is right now. GM is delivering partially completed cars for dealers to finish once the parts are available. (from Sebring, Florida) | Continue reading
A friend is a tinted window enthusiast and mentioned in a chat group that he was having some trouble getting his doctor in Maskachusetts to sign documents that will satisfy the bureaucracy that runs the tint waiver program: Apparently this should not be too challenging. The ti … | Continue reading
“Twitter suspends Babylon Bee for naming Rachel Levine ‘Man of the Year’” (New York Post): Twitter locked the account of a right-leaning parody site, The Babylon Bee, after it awarded Rachel Levine, the transgender Biden administration official, the title of “man of the year.”Th … | Continue reading
Here’s an annotated chart from a tweet: The CNN article cited seems to be “The Omicron surge hasn’t peaked nationwide, and ‘the next few weeks will be tough,’ US surgeon general says” (updated Jan 18). The February 23 interview with Dr. Biden’s colleague Dr. Fauci can be found … | Continue reading
Cover story in the March 2022 issue of a printed-and-mailed magazine for Cirrus pilots: “Flying Across Russia”. Here’s the route that John R. Bone, a Florida-based pilot retired from Delta Airlines, took in July 2021: (the trip from Florida to Iqaluit and Iceland was a mere … | Continue reading
Although quite a few people of modest means enjoy aviation as a hobby, those of us who fly small aircraft often encounter the financially comfortable ($10-100 million in savings; when a house in Palm Beach costs $210 million, these folks can’t be considered “rich”). U.S. governme … | Continue reading
We’ve been seeing cars with Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick license plates here in Florida. A surprising number say that they won’t be going back to Canada unless forced to. They cite the Canadian government’s lockdowns, mask orders, vaccine coercion, and dissent … | Continue reading
From what I have observed, there is no better way to tackle the perfectly smooth roads between a suburban Florida house and the perfectly smooth paved parking lot next to the beach than in an off-road vehicle equipped with monster mud-tread tires. The neighborhood elite seem to h … | Continue reading
While visiting the new Peppa Pig Theme Park, I researched the glorious history of this cartoon. Wikipedia: Peppa Pig is a British preschool animated television series by Astley Baker Davies. The show revolves around Peppa, an anthropomorphic female piglet and her family and her … | Continue reading
Tucker Carlson took a break today from spreading Russian disinformation and Covid misinformation to interview Rymma Zelenska, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s mother. Fox News: Mrs. Zaxby’s, the whole world admires your son Voldemort for hispersonal courage, determinati … | Continue reading
The latest book… Bubble in the Sun: The Florida Boom of the 1920s and How It Brought on the Great Depression (Christopher Knowlton). I’m enjoying it so far (listening via Audible). Timely, considering that home prices in the decent neighborhoods of Florida have roughly doubled si … | Continue reading
I’ve now done enough coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgeries to learn the typical sequence: Surgeon arrives for “time out” (checklist review to prevent, e.g., wrong side operation), then leaves the room for the physician assistant to harvest the saphenous vein. The anesthe … | Continue reading
A suburbanite came to Boston’s North End, the historic Italian neighborhood, and was enjoying cannoli and espresso at Mike’s Pastry, which opened in 1946. He noticed a funeral procession down Hanover Street. A black hearse was followed by a second black hearse. Behind the second … | Continue reading
“Will Inflation Stay High for Decades? One Influential Economist Says Yes” (WSJ): When the global economy tanked in March 2020, the rate of inflation looked like it was heading to zero. That made it a surprising moment for former U.K. central banker Charles Goodhart to predict t … | Continue reading
Two years ago (CBS): The National Naval Aviation Museum is temporarily closing due to concerns over coronavirus.The museum will be open this weekend, and then close on Monday, March 16. According to the museum’s official web site, the museum is now technically open, but practic … | Continue reading
How is Women’s History Month going for you? Here’s what happens when you type “women’s history month” into an incognito browser (i.e., not affected by your previous search history): Note that Black History Month and National Hispanic Heritage Month are related events, as far a … | Continue reading
The cardiothoracic surgery service invites in some residents and medical students each year, but does not rely on them in the same way that other services do. For six months per year, PGY3 residents come in one month at a time. I am one of four medical students who will rotate in … | Continue reading
Raging inflation at the sushi and noodles place near Legoland (burned some $4.50/gallon dinosaur blood in the minivan): Can we find someone to blame for our debased money? The Wall Street Journal can! “The Humbling of the Federal Reserve” (3/14/2022): The central bank faces a … | Continue reading
A photo taken last week, while Ukrainian cities and homes were being destroyed, on the Brandeis University campus: While bravely behind a Zoom screen, students identifying as BIPOC could participate in the “Surviving White Spaces” support group, for example. There was “drop-in … | Continue reading
“Ford Will Have a ‘Pet Mode’ Similar to Tesla’s, Patent Application Shows” (Car and Driver, 2/24/2022): Perhaps trying to compete with Tesla’s Dog mode, Ford has filed a patent application for something called Pet mode, which would allow drivers to remotely control things includ … | Continue reading
We recently had an election here in Jupiter that generated a fair amount of local advertising, e.g., lawn signs at street corners, and discussion at the playgrounds, soccer fields, dog parks, skate parks, beach, etc. People are very interested in who will be on the town council a … | Continue reading
For basketball fans, today is the beginning of March Madness. For the rest of us, the primary kind of madness to which we’ve been exposed is the idea that humans can control a respiratory virus with bandanas as PPE. But what about the second maddest form of madness, i.e., the bel … | Continue reading
Monday is a typical day in wound care. I perform forearm squamous cell excisional biopsies. and suture the 3 cm incision. We chat about reimbursements. Wound care can be quite lucrative from debridement and graft procedures and marking up devices. “Our wound care clinic is not gr … | Continue reading
“CDC revokes U.S. authority to expel migrant children” (CBS/Yahoo, 3/12/2022): The Biden administration announced late Friday it is ending a Trump-era border deportation policy as it pertains to unaccompanied migrant children in response to a court ruling that could’ve forced of … | Continue reading
Portions of The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III (Andrew Roberts) are, unfortunately, timely. The American rebellion surprised the experts: One of the reasons why British politicians failed to comprehend that Americans would soon be agitating for nati … | Continue reading
Portions of The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III (Andrew Roberts) are, unfortunately, timely. The American rebellion surprised the experts: One of the reasons why British politicians failed to comprehend that Americans would soon be agitating for nati … | Continue reading
Coronapanic shut down America’s offices. It seems that a lot of us aren’t going back to work in the office or back to work ever. BLS: If office buildings are turned into warehouses, apartments, etc., what happens to all of the Herman Miller and Steelcase high-end desk chairs? … | Continue reading
This two-week wound care elective starts at 8:00 am. Most hospitals have a wound care service that is run by certified wound care nurses who change dressings, order offloading devices, and apply negative pressure wound vacuums to complex wounds. Unusually, our hospital has a woun … | Continue reading
Democrats frequently promise to “fight” when seeking election. Here’s the party’s thought leader, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “‘We can and must fight‘: AOC urges Americans to ‘get to work’ to defeat Donald Trump following Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death” (Independent 2020). Nancy’s Pel … | Continue reading
SXSW (like Burning Man, but with better barbecue) starts today. The COVID-19 policy could have been drafted by Andrew Cuomo and his young Science-following friends. Vaccine papers will be checked, including children over the age of 5 (for whom no FDA-approved vaccine exists, only … | Continue reading
The mobile data/voice network in the United States is spotty (in fact, there are plenty of places near our house in flat thickly-settled Jupiter, Florida where it is impossible to get data service from Verizon Wireless). This leads to occasional tragedies such as the family that … | Continue reading
New York is following Science by forcing 2-4-year-olds to wear face masks in their preschools (see Adult unvaccinated New Yorkers can go unmasked to the strip club; 3-year-olds must be masked in pre-K). A saliva-soaked rag has been proven “protective” against an aerosol virus acc … | Continue reading