MSN + procrastination + boredom = ?

It has come to the attention of Artimus Winter and Davimus Sparling (the real creative geniuses behind the Educated Skeptics), that there is a greater need for extreme weather conditions in the South to increase in size and frequency. It has been widely know that the South has been ravaged by Katrina, Rita and Wilma, however - what isn't as an apparent fact, is the extreme weather phenomena that has been ravaging through parts of Canada, and more recently, Germany.

"Justin", the latest in meteorological phenomenon to be the scourge of our planet, has been found to move in the opposite direction to all of the other storms. So, where Katrina blew through and over New Orleans, Justin has been sucking all over Central Canada and Post-Nazi Germany. Over the last 5 or 6 months to 24 years (how old is he?), the suckiness of Justin has dramatically increased extraexponentially, causing the Tower of Pisa to straighten, the hockey blackout of 04/05, the migration of the water buffalo known as "the pilgrimage", 14,000 droughts in Sub-Saharan Africa, a small - yet unnoticed - ice age, and the extinction of the bunny. Worth noting is how the Fox television network has been literally the only sole entity to remain completely unaffected by the terrors of Justin's magnitude.

Experts Winter and Sparling have speculated that this is due to higher order theories of diffusion. Other theorists have attempted to convince a large body of Fox Executives to stand in Justin's path, thus creating an anomaly that will implode in on itself. In lay terms; two birds with no stone. Most conventional meteorologists, however, are turning to global warming. With global warming comes the increase in aggressive storm action in the south due to the increase in oceanographic temperatures. Storms that blow; the good storms. It has been estimated that the average global temperatures would have to increase by 5 degrees Celsius over the next two years in order to obtain the optimum "blowing" storm level to match the sucking rate that Justin will have achieved by that time. Creating a gentle "global draft" that the world can enjoy on their front porch.

In conclusion, Justin Liu has been deemed the suckiest person to walk the face of planet Earth. This doesn't exclude possibilities such as SuckAlphaPsi, code name for a planet where everyone sucks. In such an environment, it is conceivable that a person suckier than Justin could exist. Until that day, it is respectfully submitted that Justin sucks more than vaccuums, black holes, the Backstreet Boys, toilets, Fender Squier guitars, and likely many other sucky things.

Sincerely,

Dave and Art

Silly Things

Perhaps I'm going a little stir crazy from studying the upper limb. But I thought I'd pass along what I think is probably the coolest name for a body part that I've so far come across. I include a picture of the Anatomical Snuff Box. I kid you not. Apparently in the 1800's it was named based on its use as a snuff holder for those of the snorting persuasion. Really, it's just the space formed between a few tendons going to your thumb. I could tell you what they are, but I'll just let Wikipedia take care of that.
















Secondly, I'm now the proud owner of a stethoscope. This is mostly just cool, since even though I really have no idea how to use it, it does mean i can listen to my own heart beat when ever I get the urge. The real challenge was colour choice. I went with navy blue - not black, but not too overstated. Unfortunately, lime green was not available.




A Day of Firsts

Today was a pretty neat day. After six weeks of mostly class with the odd small group discussion thrown in to keep us on our toes, we finally got to do something today that almost felt like really learning how to be a doctor. From now on, Fridays are Clinical Methods (or, in Western slang, since nothing can be spoken or spelled in full, ClinMeth). For today and the forseeable future that basically means a small group of people interviewing standardized patients.

A standardized patient, for those of you keeping track, is essentially a person who is to act like a patient coming into a doctor's office, with a set of symptoms, family history, etc. Our job is to have one person interviewing the person while the rest of the group waits in the wings, watching. Things get more fun when the person interviewing gets stuck and they call time out. At this point, the "patient" sits and pretends not to hear while we talk about how the interviewer is doing, what they could ask, what they might have done better, and so forth.

Now although I didn't actually do the interview today, it was neat just to be part of the experience. And of course, I'll get my turn soon enough. Interviewing is a bit of a tricky thing. You need to be open enough in your questioning to let the person feel involved, specific enough to get the information you need, personable enough to make the patient feel at ease. For the time being, with our lack of knowledge of disease, it falls to us to work on the third, while dabbling in the first two to get a sense of how it should work.

Apparently, when med school students start out they're all great at being "patient centered," and we all end up impersonal and jaded by the time we make it through clerkship and residency. Probably due to the long hours and frustration with the heirarchy of power we have to claw our way up. For all we're told about the phenomenon, it certainly seems a long ways off right now. Hopefully we as a class can maintain the level of humanity and "patient centeredness" we have now.

The second neat thing about today was my first cadaveric dissection. Though the prospect of this is something that would turn some people's stomachs, I was quite intrigued by the whole thing. Despite the fact that our cadaver didn't have a radial artery that we could locate (no small feat - no blood to half her arm) the rest of the work went reasonably well. Things are never as clear cut as they are in your nice textbook pictures, but our work on the flexors of the forearm (think moving your wrist toward your elbow) allowed us to separate and identify most of the things we were supposed to find.

The real trick will be when we have our bellringer test and I have to be able to identify pretty much any structure they pick in the upper limb... but that's a story for another day.