Category: Statements

Statements

Think the Answer’s Clear?

Look Again

That’s a headline from the NYTimes this morning. Subtitile: Scientist at work: Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier.

As an Internist who works at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Canada’s largest trauma center, he’s figured out that talking on a cell phone while driving is just as dangerous as driving while intoxicated (I knew that).

He’s also figured out that changing lanes is not a good idea – those other people are not really going faster than you, it just looks that way (I didn’t know that and I still think they are going faster, but I’ll think about it).

And be careful about driving on Election Day or Super Bowl Sunday, because there are more accidents on those days (OK, that’s news to me).

Other things he researched and learned — If you are applying to college, don’t go for an interview on a rainy day (I don’t have to worry about that).

And Academy Award winners live longer than the runners up (I don’t have to worry about that, either).

But, more than what he came up with, I am more interested in how he comes up with it and what he’s derives from his discoveries.

“He’ll go totally against intuition, and come up with a beautiful finding,” said Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University, who has worked with Dr. Redelmeier on research into medical decision-making. (Next time, I have an intuition about something, I think I’ll try going the other way on purpose…).

“Life is a marathon, not a sprint,” Redelmeier said. “A great deal of mischief occurs when people are in a rush.” (Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. How many times do I have to tell myself that?)

And how about this?

In 1990, he and Professor Tversky published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine showing that when physicians make a medical decision for a single hypothetical patient, they favor more expensive treatments than when making a decision for a group of hypothetical patients with similar symptoms. And in 1996 the two scientists found that increased arthritis pain had nothing to do with the weather. They attributed the misperception to the human tendency to look for patterns even where none may exist. (Next time I go to the doctors, I’m going to say: “I need to know this (or that), because all my friends have this problem and they need to know what to do…”)

And what about this?

Dr. Redelmeier takes the results of his research seriously. He rides his bike to work, and when he does drive, he resists “small temptations to change lanes.” (I’m going to try that in real life.)

This particular study intrigued me, too, because, in the past, I’ve thought long and hard about it.

Dr. Redelmeier is currently looking at attention deficit disorder among teenage drivers, and whether, like epilepsy, the disorder should be considered a medically reportable condition.

I saw that one clearly when my youngest daughter was learning to drive. I thought it was a no-brainer that kids with ADD or ADHD shouldn’t drive, and talked to her driving instructor, an ex-cop, about it.

He said, “Nah, she’ll be ok. Just get her to take her medicine.”

I wanted her to turn her license in. Of course, she said, no. It was many accidents later – thank god, not serious ones – that she finally got the message to slow down, and not to drive on top of the car in front of her…

So, thoughts to take away? I am not driving in the wrong lane. I am not going slow, and I should be going slower. Intuition is not it’s all cracked up to be, beware of patterns, I’m making it up, and, next time I interview, I’ll cancel if it’s raining.

Statements

Winter never goes south

Dark winter days are depressing. Brick buildings look horribly dead under gray skies and surrounded by denuded sleeping trees. All the world is overcast, and, I remember — looking out the hotel window —  that I wanted to cry. I feel waves of sadness just thinking about it.

All seems like misfortune with no promise of change. Maybe it’s the stillness that is so sad. Maybe it’s the fact that life, when it is completely colorless, is flat and not worth living.

Florida garden without the green

Maybe it’s that there are no shadows. No contrasts. Nothing green. Everything is dead, and there is absolutely no promise of spring. The word does not exist. The concept does not exist.

Caught in that dead place, I felt stuck, and thought that I would be looking out of that hotel room forever.

I am struck by that even today.  Although I live in a place that is eternally green, I find that I rarely make the time to enjoy it —  I do glance out occasionally and appreciate the  beautifully blue sky, or at sunset, with brilliant splashes of color spilling across it. Uplifting! No wonder people  return to Florida each winter!

Winter, I realize, does not have to be so damned. Looking at a country scene, cleansed by snow, winter is beautiful. It’s the city scapes that frighten me — the time before the snow, or after, when the dirt mixed with water makes the world feel like mud, a kind of wet, cold, clinging dirtiness that is horribly unpleasant.

Well, now, I was thinking about death and knowing that I was going to die…

Slowly, I saw my parents rid themselves of life. My mother especially. I watched her disassociate and come to accept her death. She didn’t know that she was dying, that’s the strange part.

My father, always quiet, became even more quiet. At the end, his arms and hands flew around, like they no longer belonged to his body. I thought he was afraid, and I wanted to quiet him, but the hospice nurse told me that moving like that was a part of death. I did not see that with my mother. My dad had a harder time dying. There was more pain, more knowledge, and a harder acceptance.

Me, I’ll probably be like that old lady I saw in Rome — the mean one dressed in a long black dress with the cane. She walked down the street  cursing (even though I don’t know Italian, I knew she was cursing). Rather than use her cane as a crutch, she used it as a weapon, flailing it around in front of her, parting the crowd. Making way.

A grumpy old woman. That’s what I’m afraid I will become.

Which reminds me. This year, I will direct my cane with precision, and, if I fail,  I will go to Oregon and get a job at a grocery store. End of story, and, now that I think about it, not a bad ending, at all!

Statements

Mandelbulb and Mandelbox

whatever they are.

This just looked like something i needed to remember and (since it’s math related), I’ll never get very far, but wanted to share this find, so here it is. Mandelbulb and Mandelbox…

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13886600&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Mandelbox Zoom from hömpörgő on Vimeo.

To read about this kind of stuff, go here. I didn’t know such a thing existed, and I still don’t know that such a thing exists. anyway…

Statements

Urban dictionary: Bitch

I can pick and I can choose (that’s my definition).
Here’s one from the urbandictionary.com
noun 1. the new black 2. (obsolete) a former term of approbation for a woman who acted too forward, self-assured; a woman who did not conform to the patriarchal dictate that women be quiet, submissive, and un-opinionated.
Boy: “Why is that woman wearing such an heavy air of confidence and demonstrating such dead-on assertion?”

Friend: “Haven’t you heard? Bitch is the new black.”

Statements

Let’s have some bitchin’ fun

I loved this. So (bitchin) fun, for no good reason…

Here’s an email that Bob (for a visual, see him here, second down to the left) sent to his friends this weekend.

I get upset when I can’t understand current journalese, and I have NO IDEA what is meant by “she’s the girl who’s more likely to rock a tiny heart tat than a full, fire–breathing back piece.” Can anyone explain, please? And a related question: Is there any online dictionary, thesaurus, or translation website that would help in a situation like this….????

(….the following is a direct quote from an article about the woman likely to be cast in the Hollywood remake of GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO.) Ellen Page: Page is definitely the most mainstream actress that Fincher is reported to be considering. She skyrocketed to fame after playing a pregnant teen in ‘Juno,’ and this summer she hit the big screen again as a dream architect in ‘Inception’. Her name will probably bring more buzz to the film. Still, Page has a childish quality to her — she’s the girl who’s more likely to rock a tiny heart tat than a full, fire-breathing back piece.”

Here’s what I wrote back:

Wow. i might know the answer to that! here’s my guess. She’s a girl who would choose a tiny heart tattoo over a huge weird tattoo on the back of her head. urbandictionary.com – they have rock,  tat and back piece in there!

This led me to watch the movie on Netflix. I managed to get through it, although I avoid this kind of film. It oozed the worse kind of violence (rape, torture, murder) toward women. But for this post, let’s not go there. Let’s just stay with words…

The female lead, Lisbeth Salander, in the Swedish version of the film, had an enormous fire-breathing dragon on her back (So, I guess I guessed the meaning of the quote pretty close).

And then, looking at photos of Noomi Rapace and Ellen Page, I further understood. Pictures can transcend communication disconnects between generations, don’t you think?

Here’s Noomi as Lisbeth in the Swedish version

And here’s Page:

Yes, I do believe that Page has a childish quality to her — she’s the girl who’s more likely to rock a tiny heart tat than a full, fire-breathing back piece.”