Random 11 Oct 2007 11:03 pm
As the son of a nurse and brother of a doctor (and brother-in-law of two more), this squib in the latest University of Chicago alumni magazine caught my attention: “Why Doctors Don’t Feel Your Pain.”
Brain scans show that physicians apparently learn to “shut off” the portion of their brain that helps them appreciate the pain [...]
Random 17 Jul 2007 11:51 pm
Since November 21, 2006, I have unknowingly borne the epithet (above) bestowed on me by the recently cited Thomas Nephew. And maybe I’ll be able to retain it even after I succumb to his initially polite but soon more importunate request that I share with the world five examples of how weird I am.
I was amused [...]
Random 10 Jan 2007 12:23 pm
On December 31, I thought about resolving to be even lazier in 2007 than I was in 2006, but I never got around to it.
Random 2 Nov 2006 10:12 pm
I have been holding my breath this past month, not wanting to jinx the long-overdue electoral retribution awaiting George W. Bush and his gang of miscreants.
To kill time, I’ll write some more irrelevant garbage.
Today it concerns my 1990 Volvo 240 DL. I used to be bothered by the fact that I couldn’t decide whether it’s [...]
Random 12 Oct 2006 11:22 am
My pal Thomas at Newsrack Blog has tagged me. The task: list five ways I’m weird. Now, being tagged is damnably irritating, as we all know. But it’s twice damnable for a person with limited self-awareness. (Needless to say, I have been told this.) And it’s thrice damnable in that the proper task would have [...]
Random 8 Sep 2006 10:30 pm
There is much that is wrong with the world—seriously wrong. One feels silly speaking of this particular wrong. It is admittedly trivial. But it seems to be intractable, and so perhaps worthy of passing consideration.
The evil of which I speak is simply this: on the highway, when the traffic is heavy, it pays to stay [...]
Random 28 Aug 2006 1:17 pm
I haven’t posted much since I got back from the beach. I just wander from blog to blog, enjoying my sense of aimlessness, dropping a dumb comment here and there. All kinds of dumb things have happened in the world, but I can’t seem to work up the energy to take note of them in [...]
Random 30 Jun 2006 1:20 pm
[The world continues to roil around him, and yet he remains mum. Rainfall of Biblical proportions for eight days straight, a seemingly momentous Supreme Court ruling purportedly putting a vagrant administration in its place, ludicrous Congressional gassing about flag burning (almost as rarely seen as the Higgs boson) and treason at the New York Times (i.e., [...]
Random 27 Feb 2006 11:45 am
The subject of passion arose recently in this electronic space, and it sprang loose a quote that I have yet to come to grips with, almost twenty years after encountering it as an epigraph to a book by Don Robertson:
Passions are not natural to mankind; they are always exceptions or excrescences. The ideal, genuine man [...]
Random 31 Jan 2006 12:48 am
Well, another month has all but slipped away. Make that: another year. My year, that is—the reckoning that began when I stuck my head out of my mother’s belly and thought: “Crap, it’s bright out here!” Moments later, a new thought: “Crap, it’s cold, too!”
Actually, the story goes that I had to be dragged out. [...]
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