I am currently crunching some numbers for dental school (approaching rapidly … 2 years and counting). Interesting thing I didn’t know before: there are mandatory summer terms for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year students. Other captivating/gripping/fascinating trivia follows.
In my second year of school, I will be paying $425+ towards purchase of precious metals. We’re not talking wedding ring budget here, it’s the metal used in actual tooth work. How satisfying is that: here is your chunk of precious metal that you will slowly mold into tooth-shaped items until there is nothing left of it and you will forget you ever had it. Wonderful. Even then, I’m sure we don’t actually see it all in one chunk anyways … just, whoops there’s $425 gone. When you get ripped off at your bookstore for books, at least you get to hold them all at once in your hands. Yeek.
Summer term is $4700 just in tuition. Assume 12 weeks of summer: you, yes you, can learn dentistry for just $78.33 dollars a day! For comparison, I currently net maybe $60 a day. I think it’d be funny to have a cash register sound go off for my morning alarm clock.
I remember thinking how much $700 dollars for books was in my freshman undergraduate year. What worries me about dental school is not that books are more than 4 times that much for the first year, but the amount of paper that that will buy. Is it possible to read that much in two semesters?
The dental school is on the 15th floor of Moos tower. No elevators during power outtages: that’s going to suck.
Most people who know me quickly learn I am a great fan of physical comedy: the bus rolls through the camera view, a crash is heard from screen left. Minister of Silly Walks. That stuff makes me laugh. In a departure from that usual style, I would like to formally recommend the following scene be added to whatever Stiller/Wilson/Vaugn/Ferrel movie approacheth from Hollywood’s ever-predictable jukebox stuck on repeat.
A man or woman commits to a personal training regime (preferably because they are pursuing some goal central to the plot). On screen agony commences with slow motion pans of tremendous feats of pain, driven by a personal trainer. “Take My Breath Away” plays in the background.
Watch for it in the next big screen comedy: you know screenwriters are Googling “funny comedy ideas” just like anybody else doing research.
What if, everyday, people went outside and did something physical? I bet our workforce would be twice as productive if everyone slaving 9-5 could take a run on their afternoon break. Or even just run around. People’d be happier, healthier, able to cope with stress. Anti-depressant prescription rates would fall. Sleeping pills would drop off the market. Orthoscopic knee surgery rates would soar (or sore, as it were). Everyone’d be happier because they’d be healthier, and healthier because they were happier.
This upward spiral would not lead to world peace. It would not solve any economic problems. It would do precisely nothing to help the energy crisis. It is an idea that sounds fantastic and unreachable.
Yet, it is so profoundly simple, so ridiculously straightforward that, somehow, it has a chance of catching on. Imagine a backlash against sitting around: the point at which technology becomes so overwhelmingly intertwined with our lives will be the point when the masses say “enough.” No governments will be overthrown, no technology burned in effigy or reality: everyone will just go outside, move around, and feel better.
The Civic Si is Back, Baby - Check this out - the Si was my favorite cheap fast(ish) car for a while - then came its current horrible hatchback’ness. Now, the 2006 model year rocks the redesigned sheet metal. 200hp, under 20k … absolutely awesome.
A List Apart REDESIGNS - One of the best resources for webdesign on the internet reveals one of the best redesigns on the internet. This one blows the doors off of pretty much anything else I’ve seen.