The picture below is a stack of the materials I covered for 3 of my 7 classes this past fall semester. I read, generated, or memorized every single one of the pages below.
That’s 1826 pages of paper.
Now, keep in mind that I’m not saying I did anything particularly special here: all my 95 classmates had to cover the same material in the same amount of time. It’s just… a rather large stack of paper.
Help the indie film “Dear Mr. Watterson - a cinematic exploration of Calvin & Hobbes” meet it’s production budget by donating (follow the link for details). They’re over half of the way to their $12,000 goal — I hope to be able to contribute, myself. A bit about the film:
Dear Mr. Watterson is a film that will look to the readers and fans of Calvin & Hobbes to tell the story of the strip and its creator. As we explore the art and impact of Bill Watterson through this unique perspective, the undying appreciation and love of Calvin & Hobbes and the man behind it will be evident in the anecdotes, stories, and memories shared by readers of the strip and friends and colleagues of Mr. Watterson.
This sounds like a great film, I’m excited to see what this little round of fundraising will do.
The Last Question — Isaac Asimov:
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way…
And so begins an incredibly engaging short story about technology, the future, science, philosophy, and religion. Extremely readable, but also very rich. Of course, everyone has said this to themselves: “There may be some way to reverse entropy.”
The American Way of Dentistry is the dentistry article of this year:
The medical profession has struggled to replicate dentistry’s achievements in disease prevention with its “health maintenance” model. Dentists, by emphasizing preventive measures—like biannual checkups and cleanings, fluoridation of community water supplies, the use of fluoride toothpaste, and encouraging patients to eat less sugar and processed foods—have reduced overall treatment costs as well as pain and suffering to a degree medical doctors can only dream of. They have done so in part through a structure of dental benefits that is far more punitive to those patients who slack off on prevention, or for whom prevention fails, than anything health insurers typically contemplate.
There is so much good information here, I think I’ll be coming back this a lot. One more:
Since the ADA, which protects the interests of practicing dentists, won’t concede that there is a shortage [of dentists], it is likely to oppose any significant relaxation of the credentialing rules. Technological developments have improved dental office productivity—digital radiographs, for example, are available much faster than the old-school X-rays that took minutes to develop. But there are physical limits to how much dentists can do. As Dr. Chester Douglass pointed out, “This is micro-surgery. Try doing micro-surgery where you are concerned [with] one-tenth of a millimeter—you can’t do it for more than 33 or 35 hours per week.
Plus, there’s some discussion of wearing a flipper — a temporary prosthetic device that fits a bit like a retainer. It replaces the teeth you’ve had pulled while you heal from surgery. We made these last semester and, first of all, they are really hard to make. One of the trickiest parts is bending wire around a tooth. You have to adapt this piece of stainless steel wire to the contours of a molar by placing minute bends in the wire. It borders on impossible. I talked to my aunt who is a very accomplished dental lab technician — even she said that, after all her years of work, she still relies on a few expert wire-benders. We do the same at the school of dentistry: it’s truly an arcane skill (and critical) skill.
Secondly, our resident dental lab technician expert was telling us he fabricated a flipper for a dentist who lost his front tooth… and the dentist said he never realized how miserable it was to wear these things. Hopefully such an experience provides a new level of dentist-patient compassion. I think that’s the advantage of a generation of orthodontists who’ve had orthodontic work done on them: they understand that moving teeth hurts like nothing else.
The main thing keeping me from getting braces for a year, having my jaw cut away from my face and shifted back to correct my occlusion, then continuing to wear those braces for another year is not the surgery — it’s the pain of a mouth full of metal cranking on my teeth. Most of my memories from earlier in this life have softened with age and I only really remember the good things… with one exception: braces. All I remember is agony.
So — with regards to dental pain: I think I’ll understand when someone comes into the office and says “I AM IN PAIN.” In fact, when someone experiencing acute dental pain comes in, it’s common to numb them up before they make decisions about what to do with their tooth: otherwise they’ll almost invariably beg for the offending tooth to be pulled as soon as possible.
So, here’s how you do it: you analyze what people are searching for online (e.g. “what’s the best lure for muskie fishing?”). Then you analyze how crowded the ad space is for that search by examining how many companies are paying for the ads to appear for the combination of these words: muskie+fishing+lure. You repeat this process many times and select the searches that are likely to be most profitable over a long period of time.
Then you contract cheap laborers to make that content.
You put it on the internet at the rate of 4000 articles and videos per day.
You generate an inordinate quantity of soulless “content” produced by people with no interest in the topic.
You pollute the internet (and make a lot of money).
The full story, profiling Demand Media, is very interesting.
nickd on gratitude during the Christmas season:
if you have a lover, here is the most important thing that you can do. you should go over to that lover and tell them that you are grateful for their existence, and their love. because one very, very sacred thing that exists in this rather bleak-at-best world is knowing that someone out there gives such a passionate damn about you, your health, your success, and your well-being, and is willing to take you seriously and meet you halfway in their life.
Elmo is on Emeril right now. He’s wearing a Christmas cumberbund, and his hair is combed. This is the most adorable thing I have seen today. How can I study when Elmo is on Emeril?
For as long as anyone here can remember, wedding receptions in Pittsburgh have featured cookie tables, laden with dozens of homemade old-fashioned offerings like lady locks, pizzelles and buckeyes. For weeks ahead — sometimes months — mothers and aunts and grandmas and in-laws hunker down in the kitchen baking and freezing. Then, on the big day, hungry guests ravage the buffet, piling plates high and packing more in takeout containers so they can have them for breakfast the next day.
Boy do I know what we are doing when we renew our vows.
Today was not a great day because I lost my keys in a snow bank. On the coldest day of this season. 0°F (before windchill), and I’m on my hands and knees outside the Rec Center, with my red bike tail-light to light up the dark, snowy ground, trying to figure out what the heck just happened.
The U of M doesn’t plow snow around the bike racks (in fact, they tend to plow snow into the bike racks), so I had just struggled to unlock my bike after a workout. The U part of the lock and the shank part fell off my bike into the snow bank after I unlocked them (which never happens). At some point after I grabbed the shank from the powder, the keys fell out of it. I retrieved the U part and then realized — NO — that I didn’t have my keys. 30 minutes into the search, my wet socks frozen hard, I had to give up.
I went back to Moos tower and, after calling Mykala to say “please come after work, halp!” I sat in the library and worked for a while on studying for this impossible radiology test on Thursday. All I could think about was that, there was a 10 square foot area where my keys were, and I couldn’t find them. My bike was fake-locked (the U lock jury-rigged to look like it was locked) outside. Worst case scenario: someone was going to take my bike and I lost my keys for good.
Mykala came by after work. She found the keys in the snowbank.
The colored spaces are almost gone for this year! See the 23rd? That’s where I start 8-10 hour days studying for boards. The fun just never ends.
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