I am an Emergency Physician, and I work in a high volume but well staffed Emergency Department. As such, I have a lot of interactions both with the patients, but also with those who accompany the patients. Answering questions is a big part of my job: many are utterly mystified at the body they inhabit and explanations go a long way toward alleviating anxiety and forming a bond between us. I’m not a touchy-feely guy, but I know that if the patient trusts my judgement, when I come and tell them it’s good news or bad they will feel that I care and that they are in good hands.

Yesterday, while draining an abscess, my patient’s family member asked a question for which I was unprepared: “What’s a bacteria?” was the response to my answer about how this infection began. Koch’s Postulates sprang briefly to mind, but if you haven’t even heard of bacteria, where do you start? So, the best thing I could come up with was ‘single celled organisms that live everywhere’.

What would you have said?

Over at EjectEjectEject.com I have just finished reading a wonderfully cogent rant about celebrity, their opinions and how they are fawned over but not fact-checked.

I have had these thoughts for years, but lack the totality of vision and expression required to do the subject justice.

Go read it, you’ll be glad you did.

I love Junkyard Wars; I’m watching an episode on TiVo right now, as I blog (I’m that kind of guy). I wanted to enter a team in the next season, with my Dad (30+ years as an A&P mechanic, who recently completed his own motorhome, one of about 20 big projects he’s completed), my brother the Aerospace Engineer (who was the lead engineer in designing the Toyota Atlantic cars), and me, who can apply a band-aid with the best of them. Dad and I recently built a new service pit, showing that I’m a snappy dresser and that Dad is a fantastic designer and practical builder.

We were notified that applications are now open for next season, but now they’re only taking individuals, not teams. Crummy decision, and one that will make Junkyard Wars more painful to watch. I suspect their producers believe there will be better TV, watching team buliding while constructing, but I think they’re going to wind up with an unwatchable mess (unless you want to see strife, which it should have a surfeit of).

Phooey. Didn’t want to be on their silly old show anyway.

Apparently, Junkyard Wars is oblivious to the entire DirecTV DSL Karma effect.