Monthly Archives: January 2009

Making Mistakes

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Making Mistakes | iface thoughts.  This was a great realization by Mr. Nadgouda.  Making mistakes (and learning from them) is the key to true innovation in any field.  Unfortunately, mistakes are not so “affordable” in medical treatment.

What can we do to continue to advance our field without endangering the lives of patients?  Is the only way to innovate in medicine through approved research?  Or is there a place for innovating and learning from mistakes in every medical practice that will not harm our patients?  What about the efficiency of your office and its dynamics?  What about innovation in the economics of the health care industry?

It’s something to think about.  Unfortunately, I think the threat of being slapped with a lawsuit has stifled a lot of potential innovation in medicine.  There is a fear of making mistakes, and a desire to maintain the status quo.  No doubt we want to reduce the number of negative patient outcomes, but that should not be done at the expense of the future of medicine and its practice.

Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov

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“One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.”

via EOP – Blog Post – Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov.

Now that’s something I didn’t expect.  Sounds like a very interesting idea!  You can subscribe to the Whitehouse.gov Blog for more info on what’s going on in the new Obama Administration.

My Back Pages

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YouTube – My Back Pages – The 30th Bob Dylan Anniversary.  This is a great lyrical song by Bob Dylan as performed by Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, and George Harrison.  Sadie and I saw a clip of this when we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.  Dylan’s lyrics are phenomenal.  They’re a “must read” even if you don’t listen to the song, but it’s even better to read them while listening.  It’s a reflective song about his own influence on counter-culture in the ’60s.  The last stanza sums it up nicely:

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.

In the video at the Rock Hall, they used this last sentence to allude to some of the difficulties associated with growing up as a rock star and dealing with the early deaths of many great stars (and their friends) like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.  Pete Townshend gave an impassioned soundbyte in the video to this effect, and I feel like the chorus, “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” embodied the frustration very nicely.  Anyways, great song.  Give it a listen, eh?

GIVE [dive into mark]

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GIVE [dive into mark] is a Gentle Introduction to Video Encoding by Mark Pilgrim.  It’s an on-going, really well-written set of articles on all parts of video and audio encoding.  Considering these topics took up a large part of my livelihood in the past, the articles definitely grabbed my attention.  So far they’ve all been really informative, and they’ve been great in catching me up on things that I’ve lost track of in the past few years.  Even if you’re not interested in backing up your movies on a computer, I found the article on container formats and especially the one on lossy audio encoding incredibly informative.

Harrison Bergeron Review

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The dystopian short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut is an interesting tale of life in the year 2081, when all humans have been made “equal.” They’re equal because anyone who is exceptional is given government-issued handicap devices: masks for the beautiful, constant weight for the strong, and mind-numbing noise for the intelligent.

The premise in this story is an interesting one. It makes you think about some arguments for “equality.” The premise is reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged for me, although the dystopia was not as fully developed. The story is being made into a (short) film called 2081, which is how I first heard about it. I am a big fan of Vonnegut, so it’s always nice to get to read some of his work. I’m hoping that the film can expand the dystopia and make it more tangible for non-readers. Keep an eye out for it in the future, and read the story today. See the first link for the full text.

4/5