You stare at the biochemistry book, at your cadaver and marvel at the complexity. Surely, this is evidence of a higher power.
You stare at the biochemistry book, at your cadaver and scratch your head at the complexity. No wonder this stupid system breaks; how much simpler and functional this could be.
An economist gets a chance to talk with God.
“Lord,” the economist says. “The scripture tells us that a thousand years is but like a second to you. Is that true?”
“Yes,” God says.
“Then, would a million dollars be like a penny to you?”
“Yes,” God says again.
“God, I haven’t asked for much in my life and I was wondering if I could have one of your pennies.” The economist asks.
God replys, “Wait here a minute.”
Is it too early to be calling USC the greatest team ever? Probably. Considering our defense, even when we become the first team to win back-to-back-to-back championships there will be those who never admit we’re the greatest team ever. That’s fine, the championships and stats speak for themselves.
What it is not too early to be speaking about is the fact that we’re witnessing one of the best, and probably THE best, college football offense EVER. Not that our defense is bad, it certainly isn’t. It’s good, but not great. However, relative to our offense any defense would sort of look like a “weak point”.
I went to a candlelight vigil to reflect on the donations to the Willed Body Program at my school that have made the Gross Anatomy course possible. One of my classmates brought his daughter who must be right around 3. Absolutely beautiful kid, lively and running around (to the embarrassment of her parents). It was simply a nice contrast — life & death, circle of life, cliche, cliche, etc.
Avastin has a HIGH prevalence for causing serious tears in the users intestinal tract. This is a shame since this drug had enough publicity for even me to have heard of it. Major side effects like this, especially for groundbreaking and novel drugs are very likely; I certainly don’t think such a risk means patients cannot give ‘informed consent’. The drug is still a viable option in the fight against some types of cancer, it just needs to be used with more caution.
He got what he wanted.
Nothing of surprise.
Except he cried;
anyway.
To explain it?
A problem, a challenge.
And you question,
its worth; the effort.
Let him smile
with tears.
Serves him well.
And you not worry.
Not question.
There is nothing more
to give him.
So, that’s not
what troubles him.
He speaks like it does.
For that’s his voice.
Whine and screech.
And advocate.
But not teach.
And choke on a silver spoon.
He wants respect,
he deserves.
Let him earn it.
He hasn’t.
So, he sighs;
and comes closer to it.
Of course not.
He smiles;
and comes closer to it.
But he does.
But it is faked,
and you read it,
and know it is untrue,
and he gets
what he wanted
and cries;
anyway.
- Physiology Class, 9/21/05
From I Am Bored.
This is strange but pretty funny:
I like monkeys. The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece. I thought that odd since they were normally a couple thousand each. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I bought 200. I like monkeys. I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept punching themselves in their genitals. I laughed. Then they punched my genitals. I stopped laughing. I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech, hurl themselves off of the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into its third hour. Two hours later I found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive: they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sorta' dropped dead. Kinda' like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later. Damn cheap monkeys. I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room, on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like I had 200 throw rugs. I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and 199 dead, dry monkeys. I tried pretending that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for a while, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad. I had to pee but there was a dead monkey in the toilet and I didn't want to call the plumber. I was embarrassed. I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortunately there was only enough room for two monkeys at a time so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so it didn't all go bad. I tried burning them. Little did I know my bed was flammable. I had to extinguish the fire. Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and 197 dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed. The odor wasn't improving. I became agitated at my inability to dispose of my monkeys and to use the bathroom. I severely beat one of my monkeys. I felt better. I tried throwing them way but the garbage man said that the city wasn't allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him that I had a wet one. He couldn't take that one either. I didn't bother asking about the frozen ones. I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn't know quite what to say. They pretended that they like them but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I punched them in the genitals. I like monkeys
phi·los·o·phy (
n. pl. phi·los·o·phies
the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics
1. USC (Last Week, #1)
2. Texas (#2)
3. Florida (#3)
4. LSU (#4)
5. Va. Tech (#7)
6. Georgia (#8)
7. Ohio St. (#6)
8. Louisville (NR)
9. Florida St. (NR)
10. Notre Dame (#5)
My top 4 stay the same, but Notre Dame falls from their #5 spot.
Michigan wins by 55 points and still drops off. The new additions are Louisville, who just dominated Oregon St, and Florida St.
Look, despite being a USC alumni I don’t have a lot of respect for the PAC-10. Even so, I finally caught some of a Louisville game, after just reading the line for their win over Kentucky, and they looked great. The easy pick for the Big East (which I’m glad to say easily takes the title of ‘worst’ BCS conference…now they’ll be no more debate of that title mentioning the PAC-10).
Florida St. after looking abysmal against Miami has finally found some offense. In just two weeks no less. Boston College is undersized but that’s a respectable defense they won against.
The other drop off is Tennessee who was being mentioned as a national title contender by most media outlets. Granted, I called Texas to lose to Ohio St. but I’m right about Tennessee.
I’m sticking by my prediction that Tennessee will lose two more games (one to either Auburn or LSU) to finish with a three loss season. A national title run if I’ve ever seen one.
The real question is should I be giving Georgia Tech and Purdue more respect (not when you squeeze by Arizona by 7). Va. Tech, not wanting to embarrass me, will crush Georgia Tech next week.
The rest of my picks for next week:
A survey of first and second year students at UCSF finds that a fourth of them suffer from depression. Incredible.
I don’t view medical school like that at all. I’ve loved my time here so far and don’t imagine the transition from film school, no less, to medical school to be all that incredibly huge.
More than 90% of recent medical school graduates said they felt unsure how to approach a patient from another cutlure.
In some regards I think my Human Behavior class may be necessary but man it needs some work in terms of its organization.
Starbucks could care less about if their employees have health coverage or not. They want an easy way to alleviate themselves of the problem by having the government pick up the tab.
Blogs like Over My Med Body, think that “we’re in trouble” because Starbucks is holding meetings to announce that they now spend more on employee health insurance than on raw products. Isn’t that Starbucks choice? Stop whining Mr. Schultz for the government to do something; either swallow the public relations hardship of cutting your coverage or swallow the cost. The only trouble we’re in, is the fact that this country finds it appropriate to try to equalize everyone by redistributing wealth in the form of welfare, healthcare, food stamps, subsidized housing, etc. The distinction is the effort. I understand the projects are a far cry from the 5000 sq. ft. home of the family whose tax dollars helped pay for it, but the involuntary redistribution of wealth can either always be justified (an argument for say Communism) or never be justified (what I believe). There’s no middle ground. Any philosophical argument for limited redistribution of wealth attempts to place subjective logically unsound limits on just how much wealth should be redistributed. Since limits on the redistribution of wealth are unsound, then the rhetoric for government subsidized healthcare is the same rhetoric for the complete redistribution of wealth.
To get a little dramatic, support of social welfare programs in this country makes you a communist.
The liberal arguments for social welfare which have predominated the past half century are lacking in critical reasoning. I am making a prediction right now: history will make note of some philosophers from this era but as they make note of the social utopians of the turn of the century; for their effect on society but certainly not for any notable skills with logic.
I’m pro-life and yet I believe incredibly strongly in the right to privacy. I also believe in a right to life. If I thought the fetus wasn’t alive then I’d be pro-choice. But I believe the fetus is alive. In a discussion the other day, my pro-choice friend tried to make the argument that the fetus’ dependence on the mother clearly defines the fetus as a non-life.
My first reaction was, well, a newborn is dependent on others as well, but it is clearly alive. I understood her distinction though, there is a difference between having to be fed and changed and having to have a womb to grow in.
What seems unreasonable about those who try to define life as starting at some “subjective” point during development of the fetus is that there’s nothing inherent about it. I pointed out to my friend that clearly the definition of life, as she tried to define it, had changed over the past decade as “premies” are being born younger and younger and living. Without having done any research I claimed (this is what you get when you argue with me: unbased claims…this one turned out to be true) that within my lifetime, I, as a physician, would be able to remove a fetus at any stage of development and “grow” it in an artificial environment to complete term and produce a healthy young infant.
Then today, I stumbled across this article. There’s something inherent about saying life begins at contraception. There’s nothing inherent about subjectively saying life begins at the third trimester. The baby is more viable now? It can start feeling pain? What type of definitions are these? These are just people making up definitions to suit their own purposes.
Artificial wombs will be a huge moral blow to pro-choicers. New “excuses” for abortions will arise from ethicists and philosophers but certainly many of the current arguments justifying abortion will cease to be valid once this becomes a legitimate option for preserving a fetus.
If you’ve missed it, the pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional according to a federal court out west. I know the Supreme Court found a way not to hear this case earlier but now it looks like it might have too (there’s going to be no procedural errors to overturn the decision on now).
Here’s a quote from Voice of America concerning Roberts confirmation hearings,
Earlier Thursday, Judge Roberts said Congress has the authority to pass legislation barring discrimination based on race, gender and disability.
Your right as a private citizen and businessman to serve or employ who you want to is outweighed by my right to not feel different because of my sex or disability or race?
I’m sorry, but if you’re not taking federal tax dollars and you’re not a public institution, then you shouldn’t have to have wheelchair ramps or serve people of Irish descent if you don’t want to. Isn’t that your perogative?
At an incredibly basic level the liberalization of this country (and that’s what protection against discrimination is an example of) is founded in the belief that the world should be fair. It is the timeless debate of equality (fairness) vs. liberty. I’m going to lay it out as simple as possible: GOVERNMENT’S JOB IS NOT TO MAKE EVERYTHING FAIR FOR EVERYONE!!!
The government has a responsibility for justice and fairness in their interactions with their constituents but private businesses and citizens certainly do not. Your choice as a private entity to discriminate against some may be despicable, but it’s certainly not something that government inherently has the authority to regulate (despite the beliefs of the incredibly intelligent Judge Roberts).
