Archive for October, 2008
What if doctors were tenured?
Reason is the unique path to knowledge. This is the credo of rationalism. Existence as a pure rationalist may be a highly-prized state, but getting there certainly is not “half the fun”. There is a lot of pain involved in recognizing and discarding long-held positions when they do not pass the rationality test. On the lead page of this [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Singularity Summit ‘08 from a non-nerd
San Jose, California: the most expensive place to live in the USA. The international airport is only three miles from the historic downtown district, but my imaginative taxi driver was still able to get the meter up to $25. On Sunday morning, city employees are out power-washing the sidewalks and pedestrian alleyways. The “light train” seemingly [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Do you know the way to San Jose?
Long-time reader, first-time visitor to Silicon Valley. I just arrived for the Singularity Summit. It will be interesting to see how out-of-place a redneck sex doctor will be in this sea of geniuses. More to follow.
Add-On: see today’s Summit summary.
Nude Banzai
Today’s post is a chapter from my not-yet-published book, Chasing a Light Beam. If you actually read it, please let me have your criticism.
NUDE BANZAI
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
[...]
Out of my league
The students at Park Shore Junior High came from “feeder” elementary schools, back in the days when no one went to private schools, and you lived where you learned. I didn’t have much experience with kids from the “haves” neighborhoods; I was a “have-not”. I don’t mean I was homeless or raised by beggars, but [...]
Bigger is better
In the mid-1970’s, few doctors and almost none of the general public were aware of the existence of one of the 20th century’s most wonderful and most overlooked inventions: the inflatable penile prosthesis. Not so for the late Lafayette, Louisiana barrister J. Minos Simon (it’s a Cajun name, pronounced “minus see-maw”). His private medical library rivaled that [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )No good deed goes unpunished
“Doc, I just cain’t get a hard-on by no-ways, and it’s torturin’ my wife and a-killin’ me.” The man was from the “redneck” area of Louisiana, a society very different from the Cajun-influenced culture of “Acadiana”, the site of my practice. He was an evangelical born-again-Christian 54-year-old hypertensive diabetic who had not been able to have [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Doctor education #2… more real-life drama
I got a call from a pharm rep for a company that markets one of the three well-known pills for treating erectile dysfunction one day about five years ago. She lived and worked in the alluvial plain area of the Mississippi delta. If you have never listened to a woman from “the delta”, as they [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Bias on the hoof: Hanson and RU continued
Today’s post is a study of bias in the intellectually gifted (at least as pertains to one of the parties; I’ll let you guess which one).
In my October 4 post on Disagreements, I used a disagreement between Robin Hanson and me as subject matter for a set of disagreement analysis questions Hanson had [...]
Disagreements
Prologue:
Robin Hanson and I had a disagreement about the accuracy of an anecdote he used to illustrate doctor arrogance. I was dissatisfied with the lack of resolution to the disagreement, unless one considers “no change at all in either party’s postion” to be a “resolution”. He titled his piece “Doctors Kill“; it’s subject is nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections. [...]
What, me worry?
Today, on Less Wrong, one of the commenters used the word “sinecure”, sending me rushing to the dictionary: an office or position that requires little or no work and usually provides an income. How did I reach this stage of life without benefit of this marvelous word?! It’s Latin roots suggest an even deeper meaning: sine cura, “without [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 6 so far )
