SCOTUS Interruptus

Many times I write about political issues and don’t apologize or hide my left-leaning stance on most issues, but this has to be one of the craziest things I’ve read from the right or the left regarding today’s nomination of “Scalito”:

“Perhaps the most encouraging early indication that Judge Alito will make a great justice is that liberal[s]…have been lining up all day to scream that the sky is falling. Any nominee who so worries the radical left is worthy of serious consideration.”
– James C. Dobson, Focus on the Family

Anybody who uses the reactions of a group of “radicals” (his own term) to any degree as a basis for judging the qualifications of a lifetime post to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is an idiot. Period.

My favorite quote regarding the anticipation of the nomination was that old Jim Crowe-loving Trent Lott–you know, the one who lost his leadership position when he made comments about “we would’ve been better off without all these problems” referring to Strom Thurmond’s segregationist presidential platform–when he said, “I want the President to look across the country and find the best man, woman or minority that he can find.” Like Blacks and Hispanics and other minorities aren’t classified as men and women? Like men and women obviously mean white/Caucasian? What about White Jewish? Uh oh…I see a “Does not compute” meltdown happening…

Sulu is Gay

Straight from the Not-Actually-News department, George Takei, the helmsman on the original Star Trek series, has finally come out of the closet publicly. I guess he thought we should all know, but anybody who has seen him in anything since the “Next Generation” Star Trek movies and other appearances since kinda had their gaydar klaxons blaring “Red Alert!” anyway.

“The 68-year-old actor said he and his partner, Brad Altman, have been together for 18 years.” Good for him. Out of respect for Sulu, I won’t make any “where no man has gone before,” or “final frontier” jokes. It would be wrong and in bad taste.

Smell my finger

For all we may bitch and moan about our respective medical schools, I doubt anyone has actually experienced this hopefully fictional story firsthand.

“It is like a finger, pointing to the moon….[points to the sky, then slaps hapless student who is looking at finger] Don’t look at the finger, or you’ll miss all that heavenly glory.” –Bruce Lee, from “Enter the Dragon”

No glory here. Of course, with our shockingly desensitized anatomy lab prof, doing the above for real wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities.

I wish I were a virus

I would make perfect copies of myself (mutations excluded) and get what I needed done. I’d have thousands of little minions at the expense of one cell, just one tiny cell taking one for the team, to give rise to 100s of thousands of little me. To be a bacterium is ok but not as genetically elegant, often times depending on foreign DNA (plasmids) to even make it in this world, much less have it be worth a damn. I’d be lysogenic, chillin’ in my new crib until I needed stuff to do. Then I could tell each new little lytic progeny “Hey, you!” (or me, if you really take it literally). “Go study the brachiocephalic trunk while I check my email. [pointing to another] You! Write flashcards for all the joints, ligaments and muscles of the thoracic cage. Yesterday. [yet another] You! Go make more of us because I know these two will start getting wild God complexes soon and want to make copies of themselves to delegate my tasks.” I would have no ethical qualms about being a parasite.

Until that happens, I’m just floating in the sea waiting for a home, waiting for a purpose, waiting for opportunity (some hapless sucker of a cell) to to come a knockin’. It’s a lonely wait.

This is the crap I think and write about trying to get to bed before pre-clinics at 7am. I am severely disturbed.

Astros Lose

I knew the Astros would be the long-shot for the World Series MLB Champion, but I never EVER thought they’d go 0-4, losing two in-a-row at home. Backe pitched an awesome game…just outstanding. Lidge yet again came in and screwed up a good thing, allowing the only score of the night.

At 1 out at the bottom of the 9th, “The Catch” (as I’m sure it will be known for a long time) made by White Sox shortstop Uribe was the moment I think we truly lost the game. Not only did it deflate the team and the fans (mind you, we had the tying run on 2nd), but that was a spectacular, unbelievable defensive play where you simply give props and go, “Wow.” Not even foul balls three rows into the side seats are safe.

The Astros were just not as hungry. Other than a few fist-pumping moments by Backe and a few other ’stros teammates, the game, while an incredible effort by both teams, they just couldn’t get their offense fired up.

Until next April. Please, I hope Clemens stays another year for real.

medical cocktail party humor

from www.pushfluids.com:

“In entirely unrelated news, today in plastic surgery clinic, while looking up the ICD-9 code for “mass,” I discovered that the diagnostic code for masturbation is 307.9. You know, just in case you want to bill your insurance company or something.”

’nuff said…..

Sick, Mexican Hospital

I haven’t posted because I have been sick and spent days in a Mexican hospital. Let’s just say there’s no air conditioning and television (unless you rent a small TV with rabbit ears for a fee) much less wireless Internet. As an extra kick in the ‘nads, I have a two-part anatomy test tomorrow and Tuesday over head and neck, so I’ll be offline almost totally until late Wednesday (I need to make time to catch up with life, get hammered to dull the pain, deal with hangover, etc.)

I won’t go into detail with why I was sick, but it was something acute and not seriously health threatening once controlled. I will go into detail, later, about some of my experiences there. Until then, sit tight and don’t forget to check back.

Astros Fever!

We’re going to the world series!! Woohoo!! This is awesome! After a lifetime of being an Astros fan and so many years of disappointment (such as taking bets to see how many games the Astros would lose to the Braves in the 1st postseason series, when they even got to the postseason), this is a sweet day. It would have been great to have won at home on Monday, but stuffing a crushing loss to St. Louis in their own house has its own share of goodness, too. I said in an earlier post that I didn’t think the Astros would ever get past the Cards, but after the 18-inning division win, I thought the chance was there. As it turns out, chance was nothing — the Astros had complete control of this series except for game 1.

Win or lose the World Series, the Astros are already champions for me.

Jakob Nielsen is an Ass

Jakob Nielsen is an “expert” on information design, and ever since 1995, he’s been the self-appointed prophet of web usability. He’s a love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy, as I’ve never met anyone who was ambivalent about him. Many people I used to work with are smitten by him, but I worked in academia where mental masturbation of the most common-sense, basic ideas are the norm. I should say that I’m not an expert on web design; I program for sites, not design them. But I’ve been working in this field long enough to know what works and what doesn’t work. There’s a lot to be said for usability studies when they focused and directed at a specific target, but sweeping commentary about “the state of the Internet,” or in this article’s case, “the blogosphere” is ridiculous.

First of all, the beauty of a personal (not corporate) weblog, much to Nielsen’s chagrin, is that it’s whatever the author wants to make of it. It is essentially an invitation into someone’s virtual home. As an invitation, you can choose to go/read or not; to stay/subscribe or not. To walk into someone’s home and complain about their decor is uncouth at best. To me more blunt, if you don’t like my blog’s content or layout, there’s the door, and mind you not to trip on the dirty laundry on the floor.

That said, I’ll have some fun and take some pot-shots at this ridiculous post:

1. No author biographies: It’s a simple matter of trust…Readers want to know more about Joe. Does he have any credentials or experience in the field he’s commenting on?

All you have to do is go to his own “biography” page. Aside from the self-boasting, snake-oil salesman “dude, I’m a bad-ass” list on the left, careful review will show that almost all of those links date back 3-5 years, some further. As any “web guru” will tell you, that’s a few decades in web-time. Sorry Jakob, your ability to accurately predict the future from a 1999 article doesn’t make me trust you. Neither do your lamb chops.

2. No Author Photo: You enhance your credibility by the simple fact that you’re not trying to hide. Also, users relate more easily to somebody they’ve seen.

Go back to that bio page above. Some people seem more credible virtually. If you want a disturbing insight into Nielsen’s megalomania, click the “high resolution photos” link under the picture. He obviously loves looking at himself. Do you feel more trusting of him or feel he’s more credible now with fake “action” photos? Choosing the ludicrous 1975-era picture as the “flagship” headshot makes me wonder how skewed all of his design sensibilities are.

(2, cont’d): For many, faces work better than names. I learned this lesson myself in 1987 when I included my photo in a HyperCard stack I authored that was widely disseminated on Mac-oriented BBSs.

1987? HyperCard? You have got to be joking. Is that the best example he can come up with to illustrate the power of a photo?! (because he couldn’t pass up an opportunity to say, “Look at me! I’m an expert!”) This isn’t even worth snarky commentary it’s so pathetic.

3. Nondescript Posting Titles: Sadly, even though weblogs are native to the Web, authors rarely follow [my] guidelines for writing for the Web… Avoid cute or humorous headlines that make no sense out of context.

Headlines in blogs should say something cute or leading, like “Awesome find” or “Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed,” because, as Mr. Rigid Sigmoidoscope fails to remember, these sites are personal and informal in nature.

4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go: Many weblog authors seem to think it’s cool to write link anchors like: “some people think” or “there’s more here and here.” Unless you’re writing only for your friends, don’t alienate new visitors by appearing to be part of a closed clique. The Web is not high school. [emphasis his]

A cardinal rule of thumb that was drilled into every person that even knew basic HTML was don’t EVER write “Click here,” with a link because not everyone was using a mouse (you can tell how long I’ve been at this), but more importantly, hyperlinks should be part of the logical flow of the document. I guess WikiPedia and many more massively-linked resources are wrong. To chide about not acting like in high school shows Nielsen’s stunted social growth and is probably a sore spot from his never having gone to prom.

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency: Establishing and meeting user expectations is one of the fundamental principles of Web usability. For a weblog, users must be able to anticipate when and how often updates will occur. Certainly, you shouldn’t post when you have nothing to say. Polluting cyberspace with excess information is a sin.

Regarding polluting, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, even if they are precisely on schedule.

8. Mixing Topics: If you publish on many different topics, you’re less likely to attract a loyal audience of high-value users. The more focused your content, the more focused your readers. That, again, makes you more influential within your niche.

I went to prom, so I’m not trying to be in a pissing contest. Moreover, I don’t consider my readers to be of qualitative “value;” I am honored for those that keep reading my site as much as I hope they appreciate what I have to share. I’m a med student, but I post on lots of things. That might annoy people, or it could shed light on how multi-faceted I am.

I cover a much broader set of usability guidelines in the full-day tutorial on Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability at the User Experience 2005 conference in Boston and London. There’s also a two-day tutorial on writing for the Web.

Ah there we go, yet another sales pitch. This guy is too much. I shouldn’t have spent the last 30 minutes writing all this, but it was very therapeutic, even if I violated almost every rule in the list.

NFW!

The subject line refers to how I felt at the top of the 9th inning of the Cardinals vs. Astros playoff game. The ’stros came in on a three-game winning streak making the series 3-1, playing their last game at home, momentum clearly in their favor at this stage in the game and series. In fact, the Astros were up 4-2 at the top of the 9th with Lidge pitching (relieving a good game by Pettitte) and had the Cards at 2 outs, the count 1-2: one strike away from the NL Championship and FINALLY a World Series appearance.

*crack*

A base hit. Then what seemed like an endless stream of bad pitches led to a walk. This was followed up with Pujol’s home run, making the score 5-4 Cardinals. An impotent bottom 9th by Astros batting sealed the deal. There was one other sound heard, if you strained hard enough to hear it:

*choke*

It’s like a tennis championship match: one player has match point, the opponent down however many breaks or sets, and say match point player is serving, loses a point. Loses another point. Deuce. Ad out. Service break. Oops. Several missed opportunities. Then the opponent keeps winning, breaks back, etc. and slowly claws their way until they actually win. This game wasn’t that bad, but the “sets” are really the game outcomes. We had championship point and we better damn well not let them come back two more times.