Cute little nothings

JEK
Wishes color choice was his only obstacle

The Senator from CT

Yup.



JEK
Unlike Joe Lieberman, looks more like himself than a sock puppet

Decision Tree (h/t L. Blair)



Re-linked

Hi Kids,

Facebook has been...not deactivated or disabled, exactly, but gravely injured by the IT department at my place of employment. The benefit to Science may be marginal, though, because the result is not a sudden uptick in pipetting, but a return to this blog as a repository of ripostes.

And thus, a backlog:

This is an essential piece of reading from the NYT re: the mathematics of preventive care and screening. Bear with the arithmetic...it's worth it for the comprehensive understanding of how Positive Predictive Values can change your life.

And this is a nice little shout-out to the cutting edge of modern surgery. Pointless? Probably. But fascinating all the same.

How 'bout that Lieberman?

-JEK
Say it ain't so, Joe

Spider Bites

This was sent my way by GD, a fellow surgery resident from Seattle. She and I both have spent many long nights tending to the epidemic of "spider bites" among a certain ungroomed set in that fair city. Those things are bad news. They cause horrible abscesses that drain terrible, terrible things onto the resident's shoes. On the upside, they inject heroin directly into your bloodstream.

These are its cousins:



JEK
Arachnophobe

Eric's Blog

My old friend Eric has moved to Berkeley for a Ph.D., but he's taking good advantage of his extracurricular time by growing an organic garden in his back yard. And blogging all about it. He's a regular Michael Pollan.

JEK
Irregular Michael Pollan (but just had some killer grass fed beef)

UBG Part 2

The saga continues...



JEK
Gotta learn to play an instrument (but not the tuba)

Sublimation 101

Attaboy.



JEK
Should learn to play the guitar

Lucky

JEK
Not Lucky

TJ

Back in my Chicago days, POHS and I used to take improv classes. POHS did a better job of it than I, and for much longer at multiple places. But when we first started out together, we went to ImprovOlympic and had the masterful TJ Jagodowski as our teacher. He's the guy on the left.

And now he's the well-deserving subject of a movie all his own!

JEK
Makes stuff up, but poorly by comparison

A little dash of hope for us all.

JEK
Glad to see that even as an older, single, cat owner, he may still have potential

Millin' with Trillin

Yup.

JEK
Uncultured Oaf

Back.

And without ceremony, we return from a break.

This is Charles Isherwood's new review for the 2009 Humana Festival, which, owing to assorted opportunities and complications, we didn't make it to this year.

All things considered, to read this review it would seem we didn't miss much.

JEK
Unmissed?

Proof of principal

Tom Daschle seems like a nice guy.

I felt bad when he got beat as the minority leader, though I also thought it said something about his minority leadership that he was hardly the only one to lose that year.

His new glasses suit him.

And this tax business doesn't, on its face, worry me about his ability to formulate a workable health care plan.

But how much of an asset is he to the future of American health care? Is he truly irreplacable? Because if he's not, I think it's time for the Obama administration to put some teeth in their promises to be the best vetted administration in history, and send him packing. Showing a willingness to stand on principal here would undo the image that seems to be setting in in the wake of their pushing for Geitner (whose omissions seem worse to me) and waiving their own lobbying rules for two appointees and counting. They need to show that they're not all talk. Daschle didn't disclose his issue. A loss here seems to me that it would be a win in the long term.

JEK
Available, drives his own car

Late Update: Nailed it.

Illegal Gal

OK so I stumbled upon this http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2009/01/barack-obamas-hillary-clinton.html. Not truly as boring as a babbling article about institutional something, not making past mid page, but this article on 'I will step aside and support you because you are going to give me a really powerful job Hillary,' held my attention long enough to make me nervous. Seems the Constitution doesn't mean much... Now what says you?

ps, did BO ever find his US birth certificate? ;-p

Institutionalize the Institutionists

In my more reductionist moments, this is how I think about the difference between Democrats/liberals/progressives and Republicans/conservatives/libertarians:

Democrats: fundamentally believe that the world was once bad, but can be made better because people are fundamentally good.

Republicans: fundamentally beleive that the world was once perfect, and we must continually fight against its inevitable dissolution because people (except themselves and their friends) are fundamentally bad.

But Brooks is out with another, maddening argument: that it's individualists (meaning, in this context, people who look out for themselves and believe they are better than the system) vs. institutionists (those who take their proper position in society and like it). I really hate being preached to by the penny loafer set, but think this merits some discussion.

JEK
Not a cog, to the benefit of himself and his apparatus

Shout out to the Wingers!

No, not the right wingers, the Matt Wingers. I remain hopeful there's a difference...

;->


These are my cousins in Ohio. Matt is a much more regular blogger than I, so if you're looking for more internet-based information from someone with many of my same genes, he's the place to go. And he's kindly linked my blog from his. Right back atcha, boss.

JEK

Back from the break

In five, four, three fingers, two fingers, one finger...

And we're back. If you're just joining us, this is Nation Indivisible, a loose affiliation of three or so people who, when the moment moves them, post what's on their minds. Not all of it, because otherwise our coverage of the stimulus might have been improved. Short version: I'm with 538, not TPM.

I'm coming to you now, with the first, belated post of 2009, from Washington, DC, where I will be, both by turns and often simultaneously:

- Cold yet warmed by patriotic zeal

- Well fed on food, with an extra helping of Hope

- Attending the Southern Presidential Inaugural Ball, where I will join my fellow citizens in celebrating the election of Barack Obama while being alone among Dixiecrats in trumpeting their loss in the War of Northern Aggression.

- Leaving on Wednesday morning, possibly tarred and/or feathered.

Pictures and reflections to follow.

JEK