ÿþ<HEAD> <title>Eric's Archive</title> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Eric's Journal, the irregularly updated journal of Eric Lis"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="eric, lis, emperor, aerica, aerican, journal, eric's head"> </HEAD> <left><font face="Times New Roman"> <font face="Monotype Corsiva,Bernhard Modern Roman,Unicorn,BellGothic,News Gothic MT"> <center> <big><big><big><big> Eric's Archive<br> Entries 451-460<P> </big></big></big></big></font> <I> Those who forget the past<Br> Are doomed to reread it.<p></i> </center> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/index.html">More recent</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/401-500/461-470.html">Entries 461-470</a><BR> <a href="#460">Entry 460</a> March 18 2008<br> <a href="#459">Entry 459</a> March 15 2008<br> <a href="#458">Entry 458</a> March 12 2008<br> <a href="#457">Entry 457</a> March 9 2008<br> <a href="#456">Entry 456</a> March 6 2008<br> <a href="#455">Entry 455</a> March 3 2008<br> <a href="#454">Entry 454</a> February 29 2008<br> <a href="#453">Entry 453</a> February 26 2008<br> <a href="#452">Entry 452</a> February 23 2008<br> <a href="#451">Entry 451</a> February 20 2008<br> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/401-500/441-450.html">Entries 441-450</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/archive.html">Archive</a><BR> </blockquote> <HR> <a name="460"></a> <U><B>Five More Things I've Learned This Year</b></u><p> On january 7th of this year, after completing the first section of my time in hospital (Introduction to Clinical Skills), I iscussed some of the things I'd learned during that time. Seven weeks later, I've now completed the second portion of my semester, Introduction to Surgery. Over the last month and a half, I've learned how to suture, administered anesthesia, made a dozen humans stop breathing, and generall done all sorts of weird stuff that most people never imagine they'll get to try (or at least, not legally). Here's a few more thoughts on some of them.<P> 1) It's disconcerting to watch somebody get anesthetised. When propofol enters the bloodstream, it takes less than a minute for it to reach the brain and start knocking somebody out. Over the course of that minute, the patient goes from being wide awake (and, in fact, understandably hyper-vigilant and nervous) to being a lump of meat which, in absence of the anesthetist's tender mercies, is already essentially a dead body. Most patients seem to feel talkative as the drug enters their bloodstream, and you can really watch how for the first twenty or thirty seconds they start to speak more slowly and have more trouble finding their words. At this point, they become silent and their eyes drift closed; it's impossible to tell the exact moment that they fall asleep by watching their face, but if you watch the rise and fall of their chest, it just sort of stops between one breath and the next. To test if the patient is asleep, we rub their eyelashes with a finger-tip; if the eyelid doesn't move, we know they're well and truly out of it. I assume that, with practice, it becomes easier to tell the precise moment that they fall asleep, but at my current stage, there's just this odd transitory few seconds where it's impossible to tell how they'll react if you say their name to them. On a related note, it's very interesting to observe how nobody seems particularly rushed when the patient stops breathing... after all, you've got at least five minutes or so to get the ventillator working before they suffer brain damage, so why hurry?<P> 2) Writers of fantasy and science fiction get a real kick out of talking about how sickening the smell of burning human flesh is. On an evolutionary level, this makes sense; we should react hyper-negatively to the smell of burning human because this would give primitive animals a sense to flee from whatever burned their conspecific. Burning human flesh is, at least in fiction, one of those quintissentially foul-smelling substances, which makes everyone sick and is instantly recognisable. Now that I've gotten to observe surgery cauterization, I can say with certainty: it's not actually that distinctive a smell. Yes, it smells subtly different from the smell of other burning meats, but not so much so that it would be instantly identifiable without context. Having heard my classmates talking, I can confirm that most people find the smell incredibly aversive, but I actually rather liked it. I didn't find it appetizing, but it was pleasant and relaxing, in much the same way as sandalwood or other incense. My best guess is that about one in every ten people actually likes the smell of burning human, so it's not a question of whether I'm human (I suspect that homo Sapiens Callidus is still close enough to Homo Sapiens Sapiens to cross-react), nor is it something to do with my extremely weak sense of smell. On a related note, my next surgery rotation, in my third year, has been scheduled for at the start of summer, and I am seriously looking forward to it, because operating rooms are all kept at about eighteen degrees celcius.<P> 3) The sci-fi geek is always the last person you'd expect. When a group of classmates and I got to speaking about our favourite movies, the person who announced that they'd seen Dune well into the double digits was the single least geeky-seeming person at the table. As we all know, much as we try to say we don't believe in stereotypes, most stereotypes become stereotypes because there's an element of truth to them, sometimes big and sometimes small. The truth is, in my experience, most geeks look like geeks, and relatively few tall, good-looking blue-eyed blonds you meet in the general public turn out to be gamers or sci-fi nuts; this isn't to say it's unheard of, but it is, at least, my experience. On the other hand, when I was president of the Concordia Pagan Society, I remember being told quite a number of times by young men and women in black jeans and black turtlenecks that I didn't look how they'd pictured me when they communicated with me via e-mail, and in much the same way, I shouldn't judge my classmates by their appearance; even if I am proven right nine times out of ten, it would be a real shame to miss getting to interact with that tenth person. On a related note, when you ask my classmates what their five favourite movies are, it's astounding how many of them will mention the Usual Suspects.<P> 4) Proper hand-washing is really, really annoying. In an operating room, for understandable reasons, proper cleanliness is very important, and this proved doubly true when the surgeon invited me to scrub in and assist him in a procedure. I was taken aside by a nurse and taught how to "properly" wash my hands, a process which takes a full five-minutes and in which specific parts of the arms must be washed with specific parts of the sponge in specific order to absolutely minimize the chances of germs being missed (whether these hand-washing techniques have been empirically validated, I have no idea). The worst part is then walking from the sink into the operating room while keeping one's hands from touching anything at all, and I would have had to go back and wash my hands an extra five or six times if the doctor and nurses hadn't decided to overlook all of my small errors and burshing-againsts. On a related note, in my first year of medicine when I was in the anatomy lab taking apart cadavers I found myself obsessively washing my hands sometimes ten or twenty times over the course of the rest of the day; it's interesting to discover that when I after having my hands inside a living human and covered in bright fresh blood, I don't feel any particular need to wash my hands at all, and do so once before eating just because I know I'm supposed to. <P> 5) Diabetes is bad. Yes, we all know it's a disease and so, by definition, isn't good for you, but it's really bad, and proportionately I really never want to develop it. Of course, I already knew all the horrible things that diabetes does to you, systematically causing every nerve and blood vessel in your body to slowly stop working, but I was never too terrified by seeing the common complications, such as foot ulcers, blindness, heart disease, and death. What finally got to me was spending three days in a diabetic foot clinic, watching the surgeon cut dead tissue off of the feet of living and unanesthetised diabetics with a scalpel, and even as she hacked great big necrotic and infected chunks of flesh off of them, the patients felt no pain whatsoever, because that's exactly what diabetes does to you. Why I should be disgusted in the single situation where patients feel *no* pain is beyond me. On a related note... well, I actually can't think of a related thought to put here, but it seems a shame to drop a running gag right at the end.<P> Of course, I learned quite a lot of neat surgery-related stuff these last few weeks that aren't being mentioned on this list, but that's because individual fun facts aren't generally conducive to having one hundred words written about them, so they don't make for good posts. Besides, stuff I don't mention here, I can later drop into casual conversation with people to sound smarter... you have to ration knowledge if you want to it go far enough. <HR> <a name="459"></a> <U><B>Tlhlngan Hol VljatlhlaHbe'</b></u><p> Geek seanchaís speak of levels of geekdom -- depths, perhaps, might be more appropriate -- which even most hardcore, quote-spouting, lightsaber-owning geeks can scarcely imagine. They speak of real-life wedding ceremonies conducted fluently in Quenya and Sindarin (colloquially known as "Tolkienian Elvish"). They speak of bands who release Cds entirely in the Black Speech, and entire armies of linguists currently to create a fully-functional language out of Mandalorian. When the storytellers sit down and speak of such things, though, they reserve a special, almost reverential smirk for the most widely-used and most infamous of all geek tongues: Klingonese. Those of us who embrace moderate geekdom and revel in our silliness still most often look with a mixture of horror and confusion at those few, those proud and fortunately very very few, who genuinely and fluently speak Klingon better than I can speak French or Hebrew. At once, we admire the dedication even as we recoil in fear from the obsessiveness, and for that brief moment even people like me can look at someone and, for an instant, we know why non-geeks recoil from us. It's a strange sort of horror, conmposed of equal parts "dear god, don't you have lives" and "there but for the grace go I." There is, perhaps, just a tiny bit of jealousy to it, because deep inside every geek there's a little bit that wishes it could be that dedicated.<P> In much the same way, a small part of me has always wanted to own a genuine Enligh/Klingon dictionary. The Klingon dictionary is a modest book which has been reprinted many times to keep up with new phrases heard in newer Star Trek films and books, and recent printings incldue respectably large lexicons, grammar rules, and speaking and pronunciation guides, and actually form the basis of a nearly-functional language, albeit one which is quite consonant hevay and sounds very much like one is choking violently. Owning a copy of the book has always appealed to me because it seems like the sort of thing a dedicated geek should have in their library. It should be noted that I've always wanted to *own* the book but I've never ever wanted to *read* it, more more importantly, learn the language. I'm terrible at languages and learning them is hellish for me, but more importantly, if I were to sit down and actually make an effort to learn Klingon, I would no longer be able to claim that my geekness is healthy and moderate... there's no coming back once you take that step. The main block to me buying the book has always been the price; cover price for older editions of the dictionary usually ran at least 16 dollars Canadian, and that's more money than I could justify paying for a book that I'm never going to read. The original 1985 dictionary is today a hard-to-find collector's item which can cost almost one and a half dollars plus shipping and handling if it can be found, but the 1992 expanded printing and the 1997 "Klingon for the Galactic Traveler" (which includes the main language, plus slang, curses, and even appropriate body-language) both run closer to twenty dollars. I always told myself, if I ever saw a copy for under four dollars, I'd pick it up, partially taking solace in the assumption that this would never happen.<P> Imagine my surprise when I happened across a copy of the 1992 version -- updated with new words and phrases from the just-released Star Trek VI -- at a used book store, for two dollars Canadian, tax included. This was a doubly odd moment because this was a used bookstore on the ground floor of Saint Mary's Hospital, where I was going to attend a lecture, and one does not usually associate hospitals with the Klingon language (except, perhaps, as where you go after attempting to speak it to the wrong person). One of the really wonderful things about all the major hospitals in Montreal is that they all have little used book shops near their main entrances, and I've sent many a cursory four minutes glancing through their shelves on my way to one location or another, but this was the first time I'd seen something actually attention-grabbing there, and for it to be a Klingon-English dictionary... the moment was surreal, to say the least, but that's what life is like when two gods of Chaos take a personal interest in your daily life. I immediately snatched the book and paged through it, as if to reassure myself that it was real. Not only was it real, it was a copy of the still relatively-expensive 1992 edition (with the collectible cover featuring no less an actor than Christopher Lloyd in full Klingon makeup from Star Trek III), and it was in near-mint condition despite being over fifteen years old -- presumably, the previous owner hadn't spent much time actually *reading* it. In the space of a heartbeat I ran through the twenty or so reasons not to buy it and the four or five reasons why I should buy it, then decided that, to hell with it, life only gives you a handful of chances like this in your lifetime, and besides, if it cost less than my lunch or my bus fare, it was a pretty good deal, and bought it. <P> Flipping through the book so far has actually been kind of fun. The sections on how to speak the language and how the language operates are quite dry, but the author was obviously trying to have some fun with the project, and particularly in the appendix ("A Selected List of Useful Klingon Phrases") there are some choice items. The appendix gives a number of presumabl genuinely useful phrases, such as "where is the bathroom," "how much fuel do we have left," and "surrender of die!" and also gives a selection of less useful phrases which were presumably put in for fun, such as "that helmet suits you," "your nose is shiny" and "where do you keep the chocolate?". If the book took itself painfully seriously -- as Stark Trek publications have been known to do -- then I'd put it on my shelf and never look at it again, but given that the author chose to be a little bit tongue-in-cheek with the book, I might actually skim through it and see if any other bits are enjoyable. A couple of the highlights I've already noticed: the book does have a small selection of curses ("may they lose their nostrils!") and in Klingon, "what do you want" is considered to be a polite and proper form of greeting.<P> Oh, yes, and at the same bookshop I found a four-dollar copy of American Gods, too. Some days, the Goddess kisses you right on the lips. <HR> <a name="458"></a> <U><B>The Ecology of Bacon</b></u><p> Zoology is, perhaps oddly, one of the most continually rapidly growing fields in modern science. Would-be biologists have been cataloguing different species of aniomals for thousands of years, and have been doing so with a systematic taxonomic system since the mid 1700's. None the less, entirely new species are being discovered every year, and it's all the encyclopedias can do to keep up with the new data and the mountains of research which support or oppose the classification of some new animal as a reprsentative of a previously unknown species. Today, I make my small contribution to this research, and I can only hope that I can add something of value. Today, we consider the ecology of bacon.<P> What is bacon, precisely? This is an excellent question, and more difficult to answer than one might suppose. Most people have exposure to bacon only as a foodstuff, and so not only do they have limited idea of where the bacon comes from most people go to great lengths to avoid finding out, since nothing spoils a nice meal like suddenly developing sympathy for the cute little animal you're about to dissect and devour. Let's begin simply: what animal does bacon come from? Consider: we eat chicken, which comes from a chicken. We eat lamb, which comes from a lamb. Clearly, then, bacon must come from a bacon, obviously an elusive and rarely seen animal. It behooves us to ask where bacon comes from, how it is found, what its life-cycle might be like, and so forth. The advancement of science and knowledge demands it. You don't want to dissapoint advancement of science and knowledge, do you? After all they've done for you? Honestly, if you had any idea the hours which the advancement of science and knowledge spent slaving over hot stoves and lonely engineering stations, just so that your life could be a little bit easier, you'd have a lot more appreciation for it, but you never stop to think about these things, do you? That's gratitude for you. <P> From painstaking efforts at reconstructing what a bacon might look like by reassembling individual slices, I have assembled what I think is an accurate portrait of the bacon's anatomy. The bacon is a small animal; a fully grown mature bacon is only about one foot long from nose to end, with a tail that can reach another foot in a particularly healthy and swift-footed individual whom keeps a healthy distance from lawnmowers and rocking chairs. Bacons are squat and furry, not unlike the raccoon, but with smaller paws. Bacon having originally evolved in very cool climates, bacons have adapted an extremely sufficient fat-storage system, which enables them to survive long winters but which leaves them with the slow-waddling gait which has led to them being such an easily-obtained breakfast food. Bacons subsist on a diet of leaves, berries, nuts, and even insects for added protein. They nest underground in self-dug burrows, which partially explains why it can be so rare to see a bacon in the wild or on farms, where they are most commonly kept underground for reasons of reducing their stress. Bacons typically live alone within a haphazardly-defined territory; when one bacon wanders into another's territory, unless it is the bacon's mating season, the two individuals will typically fight until one (usually that which has the least body fat) admits defeat and waddles away. Bacons produce litters of two or three baby bacons each year, which go off on their own within two months.<P> Unusually for a small, fur-bearing mammal, the natural habitat of bacon is the club sandwich. This provides bacon with something of a unique life-cycle among the animal kingdom. Within their burrows, young bacon will assemble crude club sandwiches using materials they can scavenge from the surrounding area; when a young and aggressive bacon moves into a new territory, farmers often report seeing the animals sneaking into chicken coops and killing birds to make off with white meat and, if they have time, some lettuce and tomato. Wolves, badgers, and other animals which prey on bacon will often track their prey to its lair by following the trail of spilled mayonaise. When raised in captivity in bacon farms, bacon farmers will carefully watch these club sandwiches for signs that the bacon inside has reached peak size and succulence. When the bacon is ready, the farmer will open the sandwich, remove the bacon, and bring it to the slaughterhouse (how they do away with the bacon is best not described in a G-rated document). The head and tail are removed and the bacon is de-furred using electrolysis machines. The hairless bacon is carefully cleaned, skinned, and passed through an expensive and delicate machine known as a rasher, which can split a single bacon into hundred of uniformly-sized strips. These strips are preserved, packaged, and sent to local restaurants where, ironically, they are used to make club sandwiches. Leftover bits of bacon (heads, tails, internal organs, paws) are used to make bacon sausages.<P> In the wild, bacon typically live for two or three years, or longer if kept properly cold or frozen. Bacon may be unique in the animal kingdom as being the only species whose health is improved by tobacco; the greatest cost involved in bacon farming is the purchase of cigarettes, and many producers elect to produce "unsmoked" bacon which may is sometimes considered lower-quality and which spoils faster. As a furred mammal which does not possess hooves, bacon is, of course, unkosher. <P> This completes our discussion of the ecology of bacon. Obviously, much information is currently missing: What are the nutritional requirements of bacon? How many colours can they perceive? What diseases are they susceptible to? And what happens to all that unused bread? These questions are, at this time, unanswerable, but it is my hope that this initial research may provide the early hints which will help later researchers solve some of these mysteries. Now that we know the gross anatomy and natural habitat of the bacon, it should be easy for some living specimens to be found for observation and naturalistic study, which will significantly improve our understanding of the life-cycle of this elusive, tasty animal. <HR> <a name="457"></a> <U><B>Glittering Prizes</b></u><p> On days three, four, and five of the Prosperity Game, respectively, the virtual cheques one has to play with are $750, $1000, and $1250. We still aren't into the comedically huge values of money that make the game truly absurd, but a three thousand dollars is still a large sum of money and, for most of the world's population, a pretty extravagant sum which can change how they live for a long time. For today, though, we're not thinking about those four or five billion less-fortunate souls, but rather of our own petty consumptions. More importantly, mine. So, when you've loaded up on books and furniture, how do you spend three thousand dollars in three days?<P> Actually, I found it pretty easy. Half an hour on Amazon.com was all it took for me to spend some fifteen hundred dollars, and that's just on things I'm genuinely likely to watch again one day. Another thousand dollars is easily spent on a three-foot TV with appropriate plugs to hook up a computer, and a few hundred dollars on a relatively low-end PC (with a top-of-the-line graphics card and DVD drive) to be a dedicated media player. The sound system rounds out some of what's left, and the remaining four or five hundred dollars goes towards other movies which I might never again watch but would, given unlimited resources, want in my collection. At the end of day six, I still haven't bought all the movies I'd want. This is exactly why I buy so few DVDs in real life; I don't want to get into the habit, because that sort of thing can run away from you very quickly.<P> Which isn't to say that I wouldn't love to have the complete series of Babylon 5 on DVD... just to say that I'm happy with my cheaper recorded copies and wouldn't want to spend my money on shiney new copies unless, of course, I had effectively unlimited funds. Ditto for Blackadder. And Red Dwarf. And Monty Python's Flying Circus. And Firefly. And, apparently, a good two thousand dollars worth of others.<P> This will, it appears be the last post made here on the topic of the Prosperity Game. The reason is simple: I don't see the point. At first, I'd hoped it might be somewhat interesting... it uis, after all, one massive experiment to answer that very important question What Do You Want. On the other hand, I'm a lousy candidate for this method of solving. The things I want out of life can't really be bought, and while infinite income would certainly dull the pain, I don't find the act of spending to be inherently exciting. Perhaps this is why I've managed to save money the way I have over the years; I love books and movies, but I get a thrill out of owning them, not buying them, and that means that a game like this, and a though experiment like this, is really just a cruel illusion to me. It doesn't help that my hungers are, as a general rule, limitless, and there's always another book, another movie, or another life-sized solid bronze statue of Boba Fett to buy. I could just keep spending and spending, but it doesn't sound like very much fun.<P> So much for "re-aligning my energy." Apparently, my energy likes it just fine where it is, thank you very much. My energy is in a "no new-age feelosophy" zone where crystal-wearing is punishable by smiting and energy channelers are always standing in the tow-away zone. I don't mean to sound arrogant, closed-minded, and contemptuous, but I am, so that's how it comes out.<P> Not that I mean to sound like I frown upon consumerism. Quite the opposite; I enjoy being a consumer, despite being very aware that my every action is a step towards the world's destruction and the entropic heat-death of the Universe. I'm actively at war with the Universe (most of you forgot that, I bet, but I take these things seriously), and I'm glad to be able to do my small part in destroying it. If I had more money, I'd be able to do that much more to facilitate it, too. Sure, on the small scale I'd prefer to help people, save the world, be able to pay the medical bills of everyone in Africa for a year with one week of my virtual cheques, and one day when I rule this stinking mudball I hope to do exactly that. And, in principle, the hours I spend contemplating what I'll do when I rule the world isn't that different from the Prosperity Game (it's equally unrealistic and equally non-profitable). I think there are two key differences, though. First, when I dream of ruling the world, I do so with the express intention of preserving the world and helping others, so it's at least *partly* unselfish. Second, when I contemplate my future rulership, it's on my terms and on my schedule, whereas the Prosperity Game takes a fun thing like imagination and turns gives it rules and restrictions. Rules and I, we don't get along. I acknowledge that they have their place and their use, but I don't want to be told I have to follow them unless I choose to. I particularly don't like time-limits or exact numerical values to meet. I mean, seriously, what's the point of imagining stuff if you're going to follow rules? You may as well be doing homework or something. Rules are important and worthwhile when they're telling big people that they aren't allowed to beat me up or when they tell the bank that they should let me take back my money when I need it, but I don't think they have any business infringing on my private time.<P> For those who are curious, though, by my calculations, it's somewhere between day thirteen and fifteen that I have to go out and get a bigger appartment (probably a condo, actually) just to hold all my Stuff. Stephen Wright knew what he was talking about. <HR> <a name="456"></a> <U><B>Pot of Gold</b></u><p> Let's take a second to talk about the Prosperity Game. With a name like that, the Prosperity Game has to be one of two things: a wacky capitalist boardgame or a painfully dumb New Age thought experiment, and regrettably, it's the second one (though for all I know, it's also the first and I've just never played it). The Prosperity Game is a game wherein each day, you receive a virtual cheque which rises in value each day, and you spend as much of it as possible that day. The premise is intellectually and scientifically insulting, to be both blunt and cruel in my assessment -- I stop reading something as soon as it starts talking about "realigning your energy fields" -- but the basic idea is to free yourself from inhibitions and miserly fears by learning to think in terms of "there's always more money coming tommorow." As a student, my expenses are currently much greater than my income, and so I'm very much used to the idea of watching where every penny goes and being acutely aware of everything I spend, so the idea of going out and deliberately spending money -- not saving, not investing, but actively engaging in concpicuous consumption -- seems almost anathema. On the other hand, I've always been a bit materialistic and I've always been the sort to look through the windows of toy stores and scream "IT MUST BE MINE!" and from a certaun point of view, the Properity Game hands you a simple question: what would you spend your money on if you'd found the Infinite Money cheat code that god programmed into real life. So, let's have a go at it for a few days and see if anything interesting comes from it.<P> First, some ground rules. I'm the sort of person who's always said that if I win the lottery, ten percent right off the top will go to charity. In this case, I won't be doing that, because it's not the idea of the exercise. Second, in a game which encourages you to think big, an imagination like mine is not an asset; I'll actually sit down and work out how much it would cost to buy an appartment building and turn it into a co-op where the city's homeless are given simple jobs, room, and board. For this exercise, I'll be scaling back my imagination considerably... no earmarking a million dollars to pay for an astronaut to plant the Imperial flag on the moon, for example. Third, a time limit. The Prosperity Game can theoretically last forever as checks simply get larger and larger linearly and without assymptote... I expect to only try playing it for six or nine days -- long enough to squeeze in two or perhaps three posts about it, and then I'm done. It's theoretically possible that I'll be having so much fun I don't want to stop, but it's pretty unlikely.<P> Here's how it works: On day one, you receive a virtual cheque of $100 (we'll say it's in Canadian dollars for simplicity, but these days the USD and DCN aren't that different). On day two it increases to $250, then to $500, $750, $1000, $1250, $1500, $2500, $4000, $5000, $5500, $7500, $10000, $12500, and $15000. As of day 15, the formula is simply value = (day X $1000), so on day 32, you receive 32,000 and by the end of two years you've got more money than god and Bill Gates put together, or at least you would if you hadn't spent it all. That's all you need to know to play, so if anybody reading this feels like giving it a try themselves (preferably somewhere public that I can read about it), share and enjoy.<P> For today's Entry, I took the cheques for the first three days and looked at how I'd spend them, were I given the guarantee that 1) more is coming and 2) consumer's guilt is currently deactivated. Some people I know look at a few hundred dollars and have a very hard time finding ways to spend it, but oddly, that's not a problem I have. In fact, I already know exactly what I'd want, and to be honest, the first few days where you receive only values in the triple digits feels to me like the game starts off too slowly.<P> <B>Day 1: Something Beginning with "B"</b><BR> When I lived at home, my brother and I shared our books. We both love books... we love to read them, and we love simply having them for their own sake. When I moved out, I took with most of my very favourite books, but I left behind a lot of ones that I'd really love to have in my library. I haven't replaced them because, after all, money is tight and the ones I want to replace are books I'd want, not to reread, but simply to own, and until I'm earning at least twice my annual housing costs and have finished paying off my debts, I can't ethically justify spending money like that, or at least, not much money. Today, though, I've got a cheque for one hundred dollars and the moral imperative to spend it as quickly as possible, and that means books. A mere hundred dollars won't even put a dent in my Dream Library list. For simplcity and ease of math, I added all the books I wanted to an Amazon shopping cart as "buy new" but were I doing this with real money, I'd want to take the extra time and investigate if I can get them cheaper used. For tonight, though, I'd rather get the whole thing done quickly rather than with maximum efficiency of spending, and besides, like the game says, there's always more money coming tommorow.<P> Shopping list:<BR> The Traitor's Hand - Sandy Mitchell <BR> Caves of Ice - Sandy Mitchell <BR> The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde <BR> Frankenstein - Mary Shelley <BR> For The Emperor - Sandy Mitchell<BR> Dracula - Bram Stoker <BR> Duty Calls - Sandy Mitchell <BR> Death or Glory - Sandy Mitchell <BR> Star Wars Revenge of the Sith - Matthew Stover <BR> Blade of Tyshalle - Matthew Woodring Stover <BR> Total: $98.62 including taxes and shipping. With my remaining money, I buy one or two dice.<P> This nets me the complete Ciaphas Cain series -- not counting at least one book in the series which is not yet published -- and a bunch of my favourite classical works. The Matthew Stover collection isn't complete yet, as a third book, "Heroes Die" is currently difficult to buy online and so wasn't added to today's list. There's always tommorow, though. In the process of making this list, I actually discovered that a number of these books are available brand new from Amazon for under four dollars, so some benefit may alreday come from this game: I'm probably going to buy them in the not too distant future.<P> It occurs to me at this point that a particularly sneaky person could probably refer back to this page as a handy "what to buy Eric for a present" list in the future. That would be pretty sneaky, except that 1) if you're reading this, you're probably under strict instructions not to buy me presents and 2) since I just suggested it, I'll now see it coming. And now I'm getting Vizzini flashbacks again...<P> <B>Day 2: Something Beginning with "M"</b><BR> Shopping List:<BR> The Book of the Dead - Douglas Preston <BR> Brimstone - Douglas Preston <BR> Still Life With Crows - Douglas Preston <BR> Relic - Lincoln Child <BR> Deeper Meaning of Liff: A Dictionary of Things That There Arent Any Words For Yet - Douglas Adams <BR> Dance of Death - Douglas Preston <BR> American Gods - Neil Gaiman <BR> Reliquary: Sequel to the Relic - Douglas Preston <BR> Dune - Frank Herbert <BR> The Cabinet of Curiosities - Douglas Preston <BR> Complete Tales And Poems Of Winnie The Pooh 75th Anniversary Ed - A Milne <BR> Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman <BR> Heroes Die - Matthew Woodring Stover <BR> Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams <BR> Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams <BR> Iron Dawn - Matthew Stover <BR> Jericho Moon - Matthew Stover <BR> WYRM - Mark Fabi <BR> Total: $204.20 <P> The remaining 46 or so dollars buys a copy of "Betrayal At House On The Hill" ($27.70 on eBay), a Miskatonic University Alumnus Pin ($10 from Miskatonic University Student Store), a bottle of white Citadel Foundation paint ($4 plus tax) and some dice.<P> <B>Day 3: And Somewhere To Keep It</b><BR> On day three, the virtual cheque is five hundred dollars. I've stocked up nicely on books -- by no means is my library complete, but it's enough for the moment -- and I'm faced with a new, wonderful problem: I now have too many books for my limited shelf space. When I first considered trying the Prosperity Game, I thought that my very first cheque might go towards a bookcase, but when I stopped to think about what a nice bookcase costs, I decided to wait until Day 3. We turn now from Amazon to Ikea. Furniture is tricky because I know that no matter how I go about buying it, I could find an equally nice piece cheaper somewhere else, but again, we're trying to accept the idea that there's always more money coming, and anyway, I know that I like the quality of Ikea stuff and even find it moderately fun to build. In real life I'd shop around; for a game, I'll use a single website and call it efficiency.<P> Given the dimensions of my appartment, my idea bookcase would be at least as tall as I am, have adjustable-height shelves (I have mostly smaller books, but some very large ones, and may also want to display toys and statues on it), and be less than one foot deep because I only ever store books one layer deep. I don't really care how wide it is because if I don't have enough space for my books, I'll just buy another bookcase. I don't much care about appearance or style, but I do sometimes have odd aesthetic ideas about furniture which can make finding a piece I like a bit tricky (though usually cheaper).<P> Shopping list: <BR> 5 X Flarke bookcase (Width: 59 cm Depth: 25 cm Height: 171 cm, $26.99 each)<BR> Expedit TV storage unit ($249.00)<BR> 40" Step Ladder ($19.99)<BR> Beanie Baby Weasel "Runner" (eBay)<BR> 6" Stuffed Tux (eBay)<BR> Total: Almost 500 to the penny, perhaps over by a couple of dollars, depending on how carefully I watch eBay or if i just buy the Tux doll from Thinkgeek. Each bookcase above is two feet wide and a quick estimate suggests that my entire library, including books I actually own and books listed above, could be fit comfortably onto two, perhaps even just one of them. Buying five might be a bit excessive, but there's lots of other stuff I want to keep on them, *and* I've got lots more money I'll be spending in the near future, so arguably, it's simple efficiency to plan ahead and get extra, and then perhaps only build them as needed, leaving the rest unassembled in my closet. The idea is, once I'm buying, I may as well ensure that I've got all the shelf space I could possible need for a *very* long time, even given a new cheque every day.What can I say? I just really like having shelves available. The TV storage unit adds a huge amount of extra shelf space (easily the equivalent of one and a half of the bookcases) and additionally leaves room for an unecessarily large TV to be bought on a future day (some thoughts on that if and when that day of the game ever comes). The stepladder is because, let's face it, I need one to reach the top of most bookcases. The rest is because there's money left over.<P> And that's it for the first 3 days (I've run over two thousand words on the topic, if you don't feel I've said enough). Next Entry may be another three days of spending, or if I've gotten bored, it'll be something else. Only time will tell. <HR> <a name="455"></a> <U><B>La Mechanique</b></u><p> One year after publishing my first article in an academic journal, the biggest change to my life has been the quality of my junk mail. For years, I got the same mail in my e-mail that everyone gets, and at home, I'd get nothing more exciting than unsolicited magazines from my university, pleas for money from various charities, and the occasional religious tract. That all changed when I published, and people all over the world began to mistake me for a doctor. Nowadays, once or twice a week, I'll recive junk e-mail related to some neuroscientists' convention, usually somewhere in Europe and usually associated with some journal whose impact factor is less than one. In my paper mail, three or four times a month, I'll receive unsolicited pamphlets about the wonders of EndNote and other academic software and press releases about various new and extremely uninteresting journals. Last week, I received a personalized form letter from no less a body than the journal Nature, possibly the world's formost general-interest scientific journal, offering me this once in a lifetime chance to subscribe to their publication for only sixty dollars per year, and that with my "professional's discount" already factored in. I still get junk mail, but I feel good knowing it's a higher class of junk.<P> None of what I receive on a regular basis, though, compares to what came in the mail this week. Again unsolicited, I received a copy of a huge catalogue of laboratory supplies geared towards the bioscientist, the physician-researcher, and the practicing surgeon. In addition to a wide variety of needles and sutures, electrocauterisers and self-contained sterilizers and autoclaves, this catalogue contained some really neat devices which I'd never imagined existed and which actually help explain a lot of the stuff that scientists do, which I'd never been able to imagine how it might get done. And, in addition to a host of useful and over-priced gizmos, they sell rat and mouse-sized stainless steel magnet-powered guillotines. <P> Really. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. Okay, I could, but I'm not. Permit me to share some of the more memorable bits (and permit me to do so with an excessive number suffix-thoughts in brackets).<P> Most of the catalogue was neat stuff, albeit neat stuff which has a mind-bogglingly-narrow apparent range of usefulness. Tt contained, for example, some twenty different voltometers, each designed to be useful for measuring a single physiologic function, from the action potentials on a single neuron (with comically teeny weeny electrodes) to flow rates through coronary arteries (you might think that you'd measure flow rates through all sorts of things with a single unit, but nope, you apparently need a special machine for that). The catalogue has a huge variety of different types of scissors; diamond-edged scissors (used to cut through small bones), for example, are not the ones you might want to use to cut open a patient's cast (special safety scissors with one sharp-&-pointy blade and one safety blade). Speaking as someone who occasionally builds and modifies models cast in metal and plastic, I have a keen appreciation for the value of a good sharp knife, and the wide and varried choice of differently shaped, sized, and curved scalpels and exacto knives came the closest to being something I might actually want to order (and I might have, if they hadn't been ten times the cost of a decent exacto knife at my local shop). Perhaps the items which really seemed like the sort of thing that'd be useful to someone like me -- being, someone utterly devoid of manual dexterity -- were the series of devices designed to eliminate shaky hands from research. Whether you're delivering a nanoliter (less than a drop of water) of fluid to a rat brain or performing an incision less than a millimeter long, special devices are sold to do all the fine motor work for you, and if you've got the budget, you could practically arrange that you'd never have to do anything with your own hands except for lift the rat out of its cage. Again, I mostly see how this sort of thing would be useful when I'm painting.<P> Then, there was the item which really caught my eye. I had to reread the product's blurb twice, because I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. When working with experimental animals, particularly in biological science and medical research, it's inevitable and unfortunate that most of your participants end up dead. If you're researching the effect of a chemical in a rat brain, for example, you can't get an MRI for two hundred rats, and so standard practice is to "sacrifice" the experimental animals and examine their brains ex-cranium. Conscious of the ethical issues in animal experimention, scientists have laboured to find the most quick and merciful method of killing the animals. For most of my science education, no one ever bothered to explain how they sacrifice the animals; it's considered something impolite and sensitive to discuss outside of the laboratory. One of my professors, an icthyologist, did tell us about it; depending on what sort of experiment they were conducting, their lab protocol was to either asphyxiate (by the simple expedient of draining all water) or electrocute (by putting an unshielded live wire into a tank) all specimens. He further described that when his experiments didn't involve drugs or chemicals, he would sometimes take a bit of liberty with the legal requirement that all animals be incinerated; incineration of large sea-bass and salmon, for example, would sometimes be done over a barbeque until golden brown, with a light coating of barbeque sauce.<P> Aside from that one professor, I'd always sort of assumed we killed experimental animals with drugs or gasses, the same way animals get put down at the vet or humans get put down in prison. Logically, though, they can't do that; if you're experimenting on the heart or brain of an animal, you can't risk using a toxin which might alter those organs. Similarly, you can't use electricity, which would cause immediate damage to all muscles and neurons, which leaves only one method of sacrificing: mechanical. This catalogue contained only one method of sacrifice, which suggests to me that it's an industry standard, and to their credit, rather than hide behind fancy terms and colourful euphemisms, they call it what it is: a guillotine. Oh, it's no unreliable wooden contraption; it's a stainless steel marvel, capable of cutting through iron in zero-gravity. Picture four triangles of metal, suspended in such a way that they form a large square with a diamond-shaped opening in the middle (different models have different-sized openings, from one inch (for mice) to four inches (for "larger animals" of unspecified nature). The unit is supported on a thick, flat metal base, which has been weighted to ensure that the unit doesn't move, shake, or fall over at an inconvenient moment. Gravity, deemed unreliable by the manufacturers, has been rendered obsolete by building an electromagnet into the unit. When triggered, the blades don't fall; they're pulled together at two or three times the acceleration of gravity. Scalpel-fine blades part tissue and bone with relative ease, causing minimal trauma to any specific tissues of interest. It's all quite remarkable and rather advanced... someone has clearly invested millions of dollars to build, one might say, the better mousetrap. Robespierre wishes he'd had it so good.<P> If my real mail was half as interesting as my junk mail, I'd lead a very interesting life, but then, that's probably true for most of us. <HR> <a name="454"></a> <U><B>Dupliciticiticiticitous</b></u><p> <blockquote><I> So the prophet said unto him, I name thee Jack the Double, for never have I met one more two-faced than thee, and Jack didst thank him twice. <p align=right> From </i>The Book of Contrivance<i>, The Parables of Jack the Knave, chapter 1, verse 32. </blockquote></i><P> <left> Sometimes, when a word has a repeating pattern of similar letters, the trick isn't knowing how to spell it, but when to stop. This is also a problem I sometimes have when trying to write banananananana.<P> So anyway...<P> The Codex Dolosus defines a "vestislie" as a lie which is perpetrated in social interaction by the expedient of dressing to convey a specific image. The Codex differentiates between a multicilie -- deception through dressing up -- from a pannuslie -- deception through dressing down -- and a trechediplie -- deception through wearing different clothes to dinner than you did during the day. The Codex Dolosus points out that the aims, intentions, and results of each of these subtly different lies can be said to be so widely different from each other as to justify their differentiation, though it goes on to note that for most practical purposes there is little need for the average person to agonize over the issue and that those who would concern themselves with such minutiae are usually indulging in nothing more than an academicallie -- deception wrought through using complex, ology-specific terms to make onesself sound smarter.<P> I've commented before about how each and every time I put on my white coat or surgical scrubs when I go into the hospitals, I'm implicitly lying to any patients who see me, and there's no need to go into that discussion yet again. The important thing is that now you know the technical terms for exactly what type of lie it is. Oddly, the Codex Dolosus doesn't differentiate between "dressing up" in a social situation or "dressing up" to make oneself appear more professional or educated, perhaps because even the Codex doesn't see a need to split hairs quite that thinly. <P> Time for a trip through Webster. The word of the day is "clothes" which Webster defines as "clothing." "Clothing" is in turn defined as garments in general as well as "covering," which itself is defined as "something that covers or conceals." From here, we're not led anywhere in the least bit interesting, which might come as a bit of a surprise to those of you who thought I was leading up to something clever about concealing. That's life. Back to the topic now.<P> Last week I had the experience of working with a physician who gave me a very valuable piece of advice: the most important thing a medical student can do is appear confident. In no uncertain terms, he advised me that if you look and sound confident, the patient feels safe pretty much no matter what you do, which makes them more patient and reduces their discomfort. Setting aside for the moment the kick I got out of him effectively telling me to lie, it's good advice, and not exactly shocking. There's a school of thought in psychology which suggests that we don't display facial expressions in response to emotion; rather, a stimulus triggers a facial expression, and then sensation of your facial muscles moving causes you to feel happy or sad or what have you. This theory has largely been abandoned because there's ample evidence that the emotion precedes the face, and people continue to experience strong emotions even if their faces are paralyzed, but while the theory was being debunked, it was found that the brain's emotional centers are triggered in response to facial changes. With most people, if you choose to put a cheerful expression, you actually start to feel more cheerful, albeit fairly transiently. In a similar way, there is some justification to the suggestion that if you make yourself appear confident, you'll actually start to feel confident, and the feeling of confidence really does improve performance at most tasks, medical ones included. One might argue that when you make yourself look confident, you aren't lying... you're just giving a true impression, prematurely, like if you smiled a few minutes before you became happy.<P> You could argue that, but I wouldn't. I call it lying.<P> Confidence is a funny thing. There are a lot of things I can fake on the spot -- interest, enthusiasm, wakefulness, and innocence, for example -- but I've never been able to reliably fake confidence. More accurately, I *can* do fake confidence, and I can do it really well, but I've always had a hard time doing it on command. I can't choose to be confident, and my acting talents have let me down in that regard plenty of times. On the other hand, even when I don't feel confident, I'm told fairly frequently that I don't merely project but actually exude and perhaps even secrete confidence. My barber -- barbers are always good judges of character, have you ever noticed that? -- has told me a couple of times that he thinks I'll make a great doctor simply because whenever I say something to him, I project an aura of authority and certainty. Similarly, classmates have frequently told me that when I'm sitting near them during a lecture or a small-group session, I carry myself as though I know the answers to all the questions, which is really quite absurd given that more often than not I'm totally lost and simply praying that I won't be called upon to answer any questions (above and beyond the fact, of course, that I went a whole year looking surpremely confident and then was asked to repeat it). I wish I could turn my confidence on and off at will (I'd settle, naturally, for being able to turn it on), but I suppose I'm lucky that, even if I can't control it perfectly, at least it's usually there when I need it, much like luck, my stuffed penguin, my computer's music-player, and oxygen.<P> For what it's worth, that doctor was right. When I've got my confidence going strong, I can really see a difference. Inserting an IV in a patient's arm is a wholly different experience with and without it; even when the level of skill doesn't change, it's a lot easier when I'm confident than when I'm not, and the patients seem to tolerate the needles better when they believe I've done it a thousand times before. Amusingly, when I am projecting confidence, my hands still shake just as badly, but people don't seem to notice it as much. If there's one skill that'll really serve me well to pick up between now and the end of this academic year, it'll be the ability to project that aura of "trust me, I'm a Doctor." If there's two skills, I'd also like to be able to guess the contents of people's pockets, because that'd really freak them out. <HR> <a name="453"></a> <U><B>Other Things You Can't Do</b></u><p> Last week, I was assigned to work at the Lakeshore General Hospital, on the West Island of Montreal. The hospital is a mere fifteen minute drive through quite, reidential streets away from my parents' home, which would be very useful to me if I didn't live forty minutes away in the very heart of the city's Downtown. As a result, last week I found myself moving back home for seven days (Saturday to Saturday); I didn't widely advertise this fact because not everyone I now is trustworthy and I didn't think it would be wise to make it public knowledge that for seven days nobody would be home in my appartment. Ironically, my parents themselves were out of town the whole week that I moved back home, returning only on the Friday that I finished working at that hospital, but my brother was home as normal (was home qute a lot, in fact, since it was his spring break/reading week) and spending more time with him was very enjoyable (and I'm not just saying that because he might be reading this). It turns out, the old saying isn't true; you *can* go home again, although you may find that your furniture has been rearranged, your shelves filled with someone else's books, your closet filled with your parents' clothes, your computer's wireless adapter and mouse missing, and your bed set up as storage space. Also, you no longer have an alarm clock and have to steal the one that's normally kept in the washroom. Aside from that, you can go home as much as you want, or at least, *I* apparently can.<p> By an astounding coicidence, the day that I started in the suburban hospital just happened to be the six-month anniversary of the day I moved into my appartment, which is completly unimportant except that it gives us a very convenient point by which to measure how long it'd been since I lived at home. After six months of living on my own, I'd moved back to my old residence. I never fully cut ties with my old room -- some of my stuff still gets kept there, and most of my mail still goes to the old address -- but re-entering it after half a year, it no longer felt like home. I was going to sleep there, but I didn't feel I *lived* there. I admit that I didn't take pains to make it feel more homey -- I never unpacked my suitcase, for example, chosing to live out of it rather than put my clothes into the empty dresser drawers -- but still, the place didn't feel like my home. For the first day, in fact, every time I went to get a drink or a snack, I had the odd urge that I ought to be asking someone's permission before I used their glasses or ate their food. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I slept quite well while I was there, which I suspect was due more to my absolute exhaustion at the end of a day spent in hospital more than any matter of comfort or security. Every time I walked up to the front door and dug out my house key, it didn't feel like I was coming home... more like I'd gotten to a friend's house where I happened to be staying.<P> What surprised me a bit was that even after a full week of sleeping at my parents', I still didn't feel like I was home there. I suspect that the main contributor to thsi was the fact that I didn't have my own computer, and so had been subsisting on my mother's laptop computer (oh, how I hate laptops...) which, thankfully, at least had internet through the house's wireless network. When I moved out, I commented to people that in the first few days I felt like I was sleeping in a hotel more than I felt like I was living in my own place, but the truth is that the "hotel" feeling lasted only a very short time and nowadays I can't even remember what it was like to be in the appartment and not have it feel like Home. I struck extraordinarily lucky when I found this place; the White Spiral was all but handed to me on the proverbial silver platter and living here has been a joy ever since, but then, I've always had rather extraordinary luck with that sort of thing (Forsteri wouldn't tolerate a sub-par temple any more than I would a sub-par appartment, after all, and has much more influence on the matter than I do). Within two or three days, I felt like I was at home, and certainly by the end of august, I felt settled in. Moving back to my parents', I didn't settle in at all... by day seven, it didn't feel like being in a hotel, but it certainly did feel like being in a modest B&B without the benefit of being served your meals. The really curious thing is that I was in town on Wednesday evening for a class assembly and dropped by my appartment to check on it, make sure there wasn't too much mail concpicuously protruding from the mail slot and so forth, and for the two hours I spent there, it didn't feel like home either, trapped as I was in a strange "I don't live here" state. When I returned to the appartment the weekend after finishing in the hospital, even with my own beloved computer keyboard caressing my fingertips and a full-fridge (having sensibly done groceries on the way home), I didn't feel at home there either, because after all I'd spent the last seven days living somewhere else. After one night's sleep the feeling was gone and everything was back to normal, but there was that in-between time. I suspect that somewhere deep in my soul there's a little "I live here" meter, and it takes some times for it to acclimate to new environments. Presumably the process could be sped up by terraforming, but really, who's got that kind of time or energy?<P> I'll say this, though: it sure is nice to be home... wherever that is. <HR> <a name="452"></a> <U><B>Esthetics</b></u><p> And so, following this past week's misadventures, I know at last what it means to have human blood on my hands. Specifically, it means they're sticky. Kids, when inserting intravenous lines, always remember to untie the tourniquette before you release pressure or remove the needle from the catheter. <P> So anyway...<P> This week, I found myself working in anesthesia. In some ways, I found myself looking forward to this week, because anesthesia is one of those few areas of medicine in which I actually have a small degree of interest. Anesthesia is the field of medicine which most concerns itself with what pain is and how to make it go away, both of which I find very interesting. Anesthesia is also the field of medicine which most directly and frequently makes use of fascinating mind-altering substances, such as propofol (it hurts you *and * it knocks you out... the possibilities are endless) as thiopental sodium, the so-called "truth serum" (actually just a simple barbiturate, in principle not very unlike any downer one might buy on the street). Obviously, for an individual with my unique interests, anesthesiology might be an ideal field in which to spend my life.<P> As it happens, though, anesthesia looks to be one of the last fields I might choose to work in, based on what I've seen in this one week. The anesthesiologist has become the professional associated with inserting intravenous lines, because they administer systemic drugs through them, and intubations, because their drugs make people stop breathing and so a tube must be inserted into their throat for the ventilators. When a patient goes to the operating room, it's the anesthesiologist (or their staff) who jabs the needle into their arm and leaves it there for a few hours. With sufficient practice -- two or three years, say -- this becomes routine, easy, and perhaps even fun. In the short term -- to, say, a medical student spending a single week in the department and isn't overly fond of touching humans -- these tasks are unpleasant at best and downright distasteful at worst. Years ago, I enjoyed hurting humans, and might have had more fun learning these skills, but I outgrew that sort of thing long ago and now it makes me uncomfortable to know I'm poking metal into someone's skin. Worse, I'm not yet particularly good at getting the needle into the vein on the first try, and so it means pricking their skin twice, or three times, or doing all that and then giving way to someone more experienced, so any such pokings were entirely profitless. I don't so much mind that I'm hurting people, as much as I mind that I'm hurting them for no decent reason... when I actually get blood on the first try (I'm slightly below 50% success in that regard) then it's pain for a reason and doesn't bother me in the least. Thinking about it now, actually, I don't think it's the infliction of pain I mind, so much as the fact that because I'm naturally the center of the patient's attention for that moment, if I fail, it's really, really obvious and inconvenient to them. I don't mind hurting people nearly as much as I mind being embarassed.<P> All of this is rather unfortunate, because otherwise, I think I might really enjoy anesthesia. I like the idea of knocking people unconcious for a living... it appeals to me on many levels, some of which are right at the core of my being and really address the things I want out of life. I like the idea of being the doctor who removes pain; people might not be happy to meet their surgeons but almost everyone I've seen is pleased to meet their anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist spends their life doping people up, which sounds like loads of fun, and a way to have some really neat (albeit short) conversations with people. The anesthesiologist gets to watch all kinds of different surgeries comfortably and with a front-row seat without any of the stress of having to actually be the surgeon; this week alone, I had the opportunity to watch knee replacements, hip replacements, cataract remivals, gallbladder removas, mastectomies, and all manner of neat things I've never seen before (most of it red and squishy). Best of all, the anesthesiologist is quite busy early in the surgery, when the patient must transition from "awake person" to "sleeping person" but after those first five or ten minutes the anesthesiologist is mostly there for purely ceremonial reasons, and it's quite normal for the anesthesiologist to spend the whole surgery reading a book or the newspaper, or by the time I'd be practicing, watching movies or playing videogames on any imaginable portable device. I'm quite sure that if I became an anesthesiologist tommorow, I'd invest in a Nintendo DS and an iPod video on my way home from my first day of work.<P> Of course, the downside of not having to do much is not having much to do. Sure, laziness sounds nice and appealing right now, but then again, one doctor I met this week, I strongly suspect is actually clinically depressed, in part because he finds his work and the huge breaks it affords him to be desperately, painfully dull. Would I grow bored, spending five hours of my workday every day reading and watching TV in the operating room? We can never say how we'll feel in thirty years of course, and the me of tommorow might find it soul-crushingly dull, but the me of today thinks that a chance I'd be prepared to take.<P> I haven't ruled the field out as an option as yet, but at this moment, it's certainly looking like a less attractive option. As with so many fields of medicine, I'm limited in so far as I don't like doing things with my hands and I don't like getting my hands dirty, both of which you do a lot of as an anesthesiologist. I'll certainly still consider it, but I'm not keeping it at the top of my list of options. Likely I will choose to spend one of my optional electives in an anesthesia department some time in the future, probably in my fourth year of studies... only time will tell if I'll find it a month of nice relaxation or a month of pure hell and inserting IV lines. And then again, maybe inserting ten IV lines each day is a small price to pay for reading one hundred novels a year... <HR> <a name="451"></a> <U><B>Long Division</b></u><p> One of the curious things about my life is that I face all kinds of difficult decisions the average person never has to think about. When I'm about to make a critical roll on a twenty-sided die, for example, do I invoke Forsteri or Eris for the greatest chances of divine intervention? When I make new friend, do I tell them the tuth (that I'm an inveterate liar) or lie to them (and pretend that I'm honest and trustworthy)? When I leave my home, do I take a route that maximizes the risk of zombie attack or werewolf ambush? When I get home from school or work, do I give the first hug to my penguin, my weasel, or my computer? These are all questions that people know I tend to struggle with each and every day, but one question which most people never stop to think about frequently pops into my head and eats up entire mols of glucose as it dances around my synapses. When I rule the world, how will I parcel it out?<P> Let's be honest: the world, the whole world, is pretty big, and it would be difficult for a single person to govern it effectively. Even the most autocratic emperor would have to find some way of delegating work, because a planet of six billion souls, two hundred states, and innumerable political factions would simply be too hard to keep track of, let alone guide wisely. Cognizant of this problem, I've discussed the idea of governance with many of my aquaintances over the years. Arguably, most of the people I offer countries to -- friends and classmates -- are utterly unqualified to manage a neighbourhood, let alone a country, but then again, assuming they've got some decent advisors helping them out, they can't possibly do worse than most of the genescrapes currently in power around the world, and at least they'd have good intentions going for them.<P> A problem arises, though, in so far as that my social circle has changed over the years. Six and seven years ago, I was "promising" areas to friends of mine, but over the intervening years, some I've lost touch with, some I've come to dislike, and some have merely proven themselves unsuitable to rule (in the defense of both my friends and myself, most of the people to whom I offered rulerships remain just as worthy now as they were then). In some cases, I've offered the same landmass to two or more different people, primarily because the person to whom I'd offered it once has since proven themselves unfit to rule. I pride myself on the fact that my word, if I can be persuaded or tricked into specifically giving it, is unbreakable, but on the other hand, my code of honour applies only to people worthy of it, and so I feel no obligation to keep a promise made to someone who fails to live up to the standards I expect of them. People to whom I promised major cities six years ago but who I no longer respect still have my promise, but I don't consider myself obligated to live up to it. Fortunately for me, by and large, it's safe to say that people to whom I promised land more than five years ago today won't recall that I ever gave my promise, let alone whether or not I specifically used the phrase "my word of honour." <P> This leads to another problem. When people tell me they want to rule an area -- most commonly Australia, for some reason -- it's reasonable to assume that they don't actually believe that I'll one day rule the planet. They say they want to rule something because it's fun to say, not because they really want to... if they believed for an instant that I might actually one day possess a continent and offer it to them, they would most probably have second thoughts... and the people who didn't have second thoughts aren't the sort you want running a country. This is useful to me on the one hand because it means that I could keep my word by offering the country to them secure in the knowledge they'd refuse, but on the other hand, it's a major inconvenience; suppose I did conquer the world planning on the assumption that I'd have X number of governors to whom I could parcel out land, I might suddenly find that nine out of every ten of my governors turns white as a sheet and declines the title, leaving me dangerously short-handed. Such failures of administration can be catastrophic in the short term, particularly if, as is likely, large segments of the planet are actively resisting my rulership.<P> The third and final problem associated with the whole mess is that, whereas I spend large portions of my life planning and pondering what would be involved in ruling the world, it's reasonable to assume that, for reasons already elucidated, most of my would-be governors don't put as much bioelectricity towards the problems. The term "ruler of the world" is arguably something of a misnomer, because the world can't realistically be run by a single person. One person couldn't even hope to make all of the important decisions. I like to think, and there's some evidence to support the thesis, that I'm a relatively ennlightened and widely-educated intelligence. I possess an advanced grasp of matters both philosophical and scientific, and I'm in a position to make relatively well-informed judgements regarding public policy in a number of fields. On the other hand, I'm no economist... I can't plan fiscal policies and I have no conception of how to plan a budget for two years from now. Left to my own devices, my social programs would rapidly bankrupt the entire planet, leaving humanity to spiral down into a catastrophic oblivion. Similarly, I only speak one language well, which leaves me utterly unequpied to conduct business with most of the population of the world. To rule well, I'd need dozens, perhaps hundreds of advisors, since I'm essentially clueless in many areas of human life and world structure. While most of my friends are equally or even superiorly top-notch minds with a wide and varried range of expertises, none of them, in my opinion, know everything they would need to run a country up to my standards, and will need a variety of advisors. The world has moved beyond the point where a single person can be said to truly and singly rule much of anything, or at least, not well. Still, it remains vitally important that the person who makes the decisions based on the advisors remains intelligently, broadly-educated, extremely ethical, and ideally walks that razor's edge of having enough motivation to do a good job but not so much that they decide to start killing their superiors to get a bigger throne room.<P> Rest assured, though, if you reading this are one of the people to whom I've promised a specific area of land, I defintely haven't forgotten and I have every intention of keeping that promise. As long as you don't look too surprised when the time comes. <HR> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- function SymError() { return true; } window.onerror = SymError; var SymRealWinOpen = window.open; function SymWinOpen(url, name, attributes) { return (new Object()); } window.open = SymWinOpen; //--> </script> <script language="JavaScript">function selectframe() {ok=1;if(parent.frames.length!=0) {area=0;frameid=0;for(n=0;n<parent.frames.length;n++) {x=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientWidth;y=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientHeight;narea=x*y;if(area<narea) {area=narea;frameid=n;}}if(parent.frames[frameid]!=window) ok=0;}return ok;};function saltar() {window.top.location.href=destino;}function mover() {if(selectframe()) {mosca.style.visibility='visible';mosca.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-110;mosca.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+10;info.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-430;info.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+40;} else {mosca.style.visibility='hidden';}}function mostrar() {info.style.visibility='visible';}function ocultar() {info.style.visibility='hidden';}function init() {mover();setInterval('mover()',100);}</script><DIV ID="mosca" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"><IMG SRC="mobileface.gif"></A></DIV><DIV ID="info" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"></DIV><SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">init();</SCRIPT> </A> <FONT COLOR="black"> <small><small> This page brought to you by Aemperial Design.<BR> <i>Aemperial Design: When it Has to be Good Enough for an Emperor</i> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- var SymRealOnLoad; var SymRealOnUnload; function SymOnUnload() { window.open = SymWinOpen; if(SymRealOnUnload != null) SymRealOnUnload(); } function SymOnLoad() { if(SymRealOnLoad != null) SymRealOnLoad(); window.open = SymRealWinOpen; SymRealOnUnload = window.onunload; window.onunload = SymOnUnload; } SymRealOnLoad = window.onload; window.onload = SymOnLoad; //-->