One reason I'm glad I'm not a doctor

I think it might be very stressful if you worked in a team environment and when you went on vacation someone else took over for you and that someone else was not as competent or as dedicated to the job. Thus, it would be very hard for me to take vacations because the result might be very serious for the patients, moreso than when you go on vacation from other types of jobs and the less-competents take over. I mean, no one is going to die because the filing wasn't made on time or the clause in the document was drafted incorrectly. There must be other reasons I'm glad I'm not a doctor, although I can't actually think of them. I should have at least prepared to go to medical school, on the off-chance that I decided I wanted to. I think I took one of the classes I would need to have taken undergrad, and that was entirely coincidental. If only I could go to med school without all the background stuff. In the evening. Or over the internet. It would just be very interesting - I don't think I'd need a degree I could practice with. It would just be nice to self-diagnose more effectively. Although I seem to be just as good as my doctors over the last few years.

My ability to concentrate...

Is somewhere around that of like a three year old child, or if we want to anthropomorphize, of a small sort of bug. Although club music kind of helps, where as it would likely distract either the small child or the bug. Assuming our bug is sensitive to sound vibrations. He might think it was the equivalent of an earthquake in his world and so he might try to stabilize by flying wildly about, searching for a surface. Or sometimes they freeze. In general, bugs tend to overestimate their ability to blend into the background. Perhaps it has to do with the human encroachment on the ecosystem and where as before the bug would have been sitting on a leaf it is now sitting on a cd case and I can see it quite clearly and would never mistake it for part of a leaf. All theoretical, as there are neither bugs nor cd cases in my current environment. I used all my cd cases as part of decorative gifts and I don't wear my glasses and don't have contacts so technically I don't know that there aren't any bugs but I can't see any and I like to pretend that what you can't see isn't there. It's remarkable how much less stressful life becomes when you can see with clarity relatively little of what is going on in the world.

Ever so slightly curious as to what the obsession with Harry Potter is all about

I once saw part of one movie. It was reasonably entertaining but I can't say I was enthralled. And if I'm going to pick up a tome to read, it's going to be one of the classics that I just haven't ever gotten around to. At least that way I'll have accomplished something significant. The whole Harry Potter thing is, however, evidence of the ability to make massive sums of money by tapping into legal addiction. In fact, as the alcohol companies have recognized, one of the best ways to make money on legal addiction is to capitalize to the illegality of many addictions (the alcohol companies fund major anti-drug campaigns, as a point of explanation). All these people out there are just looking to get addicted to something that doesn't have a social stigma and Harry Potter hit on that. The point being that I need to determine how I can create a socially acceptable addiction and capitalize on it. For another day.

A reason not to be miserable

A relative stranger just asked me as I was exiting my building whether pigeons are kosher - this was how he started a conversation. I couldn't remember, although I remembered something about it and as I tend to be more liberal I said I couldn't imagine why not. Strictly speaking, I'm not wrong but I'm not right either. But the important part is that someone randomly asked me this. That means there are more people in the world like me. It's slightly reassuring that other people are living lives of total randomness. I feel a little less lonely.

FBI admits remote install of spyware

This is sort of a niche interest of mine as I briefly worked in a position focused on limiting government control over individuals (particularly as exercised beyond the powers allowed in the Constitution) and one of the policy papers I worked on was a complete overview of government use of electronic hacking devices. The keylogger cases referred to in the article presented a clearer issue of privacy violation because an individual was actually accessing your personal property to install the software. So it begs the question, what level of privacy interest is there in online communications? Because even wanting to be on the side of pro-privacy groups, internet-based communications clearly just don't have the same level of privacy expectation as a normal communication. Why can't the government do what private companies do, without punishment? If my computer can be riddled with spyware, why can't some of that be from a government agency? I'm sure there's some clear analogy to be drawn to more traditional interpretations but I think the truth is probably that the concept of privacy on the internet is an entirely new being and can't accurately be analogized to existing concepts.

Benadryl makes me sleepy

I'm not sure I've ever taken it before. Had to take it today as a preventative measure due to a series of shots I'm getting and wow, did I fall asleep. I haven't slept like that in months. It was beautiful, perfect, ideal sleep, complete with lucid dreaming on both ends and the sensation afterwards of complete calm and food tasting magnificent. I have trouble, however, imagining what people who use this recreationally are shooting for. I would be asleep for days if I took that much.

John Deere at your doorsteps! [sic]

My spam from 2038 recently made this promise. It caused me to reflect on what a hysterical practical joke it would be to have a john deere tractor delivered to someone's apartment. It would be a very expensive joke, so it would have to be somehow highly relevant or hints and clues would have to be dropped ahead of time to justify the expenditure, but it would really be almost absurdly funny. I mean, I wonder if they would even consent to such a delivery. Like, they would have to know something was up when the delivery address was like, Apartment 9H, New York, NY. So it might not even be possible. I wonder if they would attempt delivery. I don't know whether the john deere co itself facilitates delivery or if a common carrier of some sort is used. If the latter, there is the question of FOB what place and whether it just might be possible because the processing of the orders is done separately from the shipping. Actually, even trying to place the order might be hysterical, once you gave the shipping address. I think they would be too suspicious to place the order, in the end.

LaSalle to become BOA after all...

From the iht. I'm not sticking around to have BOA nickel and dime me on outdated charges after it takes over my finances for the second time in a couple years. As much as I'm a fan of LaSalle I'll just have to do what I should have done years ago and move things to Citibank. BOA is a terrible company in terms of managing its clients.

Wigs

No more wigs for certain British judges. Disappointing, because then how are you supposed to know who really has authority in the courtroom? But for the wig, anyone could wander around claiming responsibility and control of the proceedings. It's like when the new teacher looks too young and it's unclear who is the teacher and who are the students. Moreover, I wouldn't doubt that one of the perks that draws many to the profession is the wig allowance - and think of all the people whose jobs will be lost with the lower demand for wigs - it's unlikely many plebs are looking to buy these (apart from as a Halloween costume, but it really isn't such a big holiday over there). A sad day across the board.

Epipen

Is evidently a formulary. This was shocking to me because I am pretty sure I've been hearing about epipens longer than the protected period. I also would like to point out to pharmacists that one of their jobs is to assist patients with questions, such as, excuse me sir but as I may end up in anaphylactic shock anytime in the next hour due to a recent allergic reaction (ergo the reason I am filling this prescription, barely able to talk and unable to stand on my own) could you explain how one uses an epipen? The appropriate response to that is not, call us when you need to use it. It's for when you can't breathe, you prick. I swear Walgreens, if I wasn't so angry with CVS, I would have nothing to do with you. I'm going to have to find a pharmacist who has hung up a shingle or something.

Reality strikes internal dialogues

It turns out that one of those keystroke programs actually was being run on my computer (see earlier post). I won't lie, I'm fascinated. Off the top of my head, I can think of several people who might be responsible. I wish there were more, but it takes someone extra special to actually go through all kinds of random keystrokes searching for things. Of course, I don't have time to actually be bothered with this right now as I am studying for the bar. So if whoever's program I just obliterated is annoyed, please do not contact me until the bar is over. Have some common decency. Danke.

New Resolution

Never again move to a city that is not the major city of a country. Perhaps exceptions will be made in the future for permanent moves to summer homes or a series of temporary moves to random destinations. While no mass of people on a sidewalk in the world evidently walk quickly enough for me, there is no reason to be somewhere where tourists from farms routinely wander into the line of business traffic. I also am tired of having to walk 10 blocks when I want to go grocery shopping at 4am. I am probably going to have to move to Asia - disappointing, as I studied romance and germanic languages.

Cloud Seeding

A totally fascinating form of potential harassment of neighbors.

More tvs than people

In the one legitimate news part of the onion, its invented people discuss this fact. This strikes me as not at all notable. I'm pretty sure we had more tvs than people in my house growing up from like age 8 onwards. And we added a person during that time. Part of it was this competition I kept winning from which I got several televisions, but we still had more televisions than people even ignoring those. What is really shocking to me are the number of people who grew up not allowed to watch tv, and why exactly I seem to have met (or am on a path to meet) all of them. The amount of content, the number of things to learn, the opportunities that are available to the fertile mind from television are infinite. I suppose there are some people whose brains are rather dull and so they don't take much from television and it actually retards brain growth, but I can't honestly see how that's possible as what it does is to introduce an infinite number of possible scenarios into the brain and so it should be creating new connections. It seems more likely to me that since evidently people who get really stuck on tv as children have brains that aren't as developed or something, that those kids just weren't going to have super-developed brains in the first place. A nyt article I was reading yesterday discussed how intelligent children's brains go through the initial pruning process later. So it strikes me as more likely that the intelligent children's brains are inherently intelligent and the less intelligent children's brains are less intelligent and perhaps, as a result, they are more attracted to pre-created content and not as personally creative because their brains just don't work that way (and are pruning connections earlier). In which case, television is probably good for them since otherwise their brains wouldn't be processing anything.

Greenland's Greenness

So at some point, Greenland was green. What is so interesting about this is that it is unclear when exactly Greenland was green because the DNA evidence evidently has an error window of up to nearly 700,000 years. I've always had a bit of a hankering to travel to Greenland - it ends up being quite expensive because the travel there tends to be a lot of outdoorsy stuff but I've gotten very close on a number of occasions. In the tourism brochures the locals wear delightfully bright clothing which combined with the arctic nature of things has this sort of wild spirit that I find inspiring. Plus, back in the olden days of airplane travel, Greenland was often a point for planes to stop and refuel on long trips so a lot of people used to randomly end up in Greenland en route to say, Cuba, which makes it all the more quirky. The fact that Denmark owns Greenland is a turn-off, but that there is a local movement to change that adds to all the other wackiness that excites me about Greenland.

Warren Buffett issues death threat

Yeah, it caught my eye too. The actual story, from Motley Fool, is little more than the most basic investing information - I would be a little surprised if a six year old didn't intuitively understand its concepts.
However, I accept this as my life is full of disappointments. For example, I put on the country music station b.c. I really need to be studying and need to not know any of the music I listen to. It turns out that country music is depressing in the way that realizing your parents and teachers are just normal fallible people is depressing. It sort of shows you what humanity is really about. I also can't help but wonder who the people are who surround me in these buildings who are actually listening to and thereby allowing for the existence of this station. Are they like the people in the songs? Are their lives like this? Are these the things they think about, is this the way they talk? In short, the music is depressing and has also not served its purpose of keeping me focused on my work, adding to the depression.

TB guy

is a total whiner. Particularly his family, who i saw briefly at the recent press conference complaining about how people jumped to conclusions and were ruining their family's name. Well, again, your son decided to travel internationally, after he'd been told not to and how dangerous his condition could be to others. The fact that it's slightly less dangerous than previously thought is totally irrelevant. You've raised a self-absorbed irresponsible boy. It seems pretty fair that your family name should be vilified. Of course, what he did was totally reasonable - he was looking out for himself, but if you're going to be totally selfish then you have to accept that some people might react poorly to that. Particularly considering that he knew he was sick before he left the country, as I understand it, it's sort of absurdly self-indulgent to go on a long European vacation. Of course, I'm biased against TB guy because he looks like a skinny loser. Not a fan of skinny.

Pashat

To put it clearly, something is running on my computer. I like to imagine all types of reasons for this, even though the most likely culprit is windows defender, the most voracious program since Acrobat started running ads. I normally assume that one of my friends has decided to invest in one of those programs that pulls keystrokes from remote computers, although, of course, that is absurd b.c. no one would honestly want to read me struggle through the covenants of warranties or watch me search fruitlessly for information that should be on my master bar outline and isn't. Or, in the alternative, if they do want to follow my typing, all the more intriguing. It really might be kind of fascinating to try to put yourself in someone's shoes, like if you get it in real time you would know when they were pausing, like on google talk. And you could speculate endlessly on what they were thinking. But I don't think I know anyone with that kind of free time right now. So, I should probably just do a system scan. Yep-a-strudel.

Ode to emetrol

I didn't know about this remarkable item until relatively recently and it has definitively changed my life. It probably won't change yours because it is unlikely that you have undertreated stomach ailments that probably relate to a genetic stomach ailment that had to be cured by surgery but regardless, what a delight it is. When tums and nexium and anything else I can get my hands on fail to work, there is emetrol. And as far as I can tell, it's just sugar so I can have as much as I want. Plus it provides calories so I don't have to worry about getting those through food (see "Food Pellet" post in June). So Fraser, wherever you are, thank you for letting me know about this when I showed up terribly hungover in your apartment one sunny Sunday morning. I'd send a card, but I honestly have no recollection of where the apartment is.