March 15, 2014

Saturday, March 15th. The Weekend Edition of William Shakespeare's Thought For The Day.

"There is no terror in your threats;
For I am arm'd so strong in honesty
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not."

Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene 3, Lines 66-69.

March 15, 2014

I'll watch my language so the faint-hearts don't alert.

But God in Heaven, the GD screechers are at it again! This time over the anti-vaccine controversy.

"Vaccines didn't do anything for me!"

"The purpose of disease is to control populations."

"I've been exposed to every disease known to man and never been sick a day in my life, so phthththththth!"

Dear God, could we please hire some 500-pound guy named Tiny to stand at the door of the Forums with a clipboard and a velvet rope, and bounce all the right-wing trolls when they show up?

March 15, 2014

Doing shots with Will Shakespeare. Ask us anything.

March 11, 2014

The sun in shining in the Pacific Northwest! Flood temporarily avoided!

March 10, 2014

After another night of incessant rain, the Puyallup River is close to breaching.

I live on the Puyallup River floodplain, although a quarter mile or so from the river. I have flood insurance, but who the hell wants to have to use it?

STOP RAINING!...

March 8, 2014

Saturday, March 8th. The Weekend Edition of William Shakespeare's Thought For The Day.

"He's more, had I more name for badness."

Measure For Measure, Act V, Scene 1, Line 61.

March 7, 2014

Bill O'Reilly disrespects the profession of Physician Assistant.

In much the same way he disrespects everything that isn't Bill O'Reilly.

http://www.pasconnect.org/lenny-from-community-college-how-to-respond-to-oreilly-factor-misinformation/

Hey, Bill! I hate your stupid, stinking guts. But if you came into my clinic, you'd get 100% of my skill and training to get you fixed up. Because we are better than you. I was trained in the PA program sponsored by the University of Washington Medical School, one of the best medical schools in the country.

March 5, 2014

Tank movie thread, Part II:

Update on that Brad Pitt tank movie I mentioned previously:

Well, It's called Fury.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fury_(2014_film)

And it will feature a genuine German Tiger tank! The last functional Tiger in the world, on loan from England's Bovington Tank Museum.


I wonder if the film will feature scenes filmed inside the Tiger, while they have the opportunity to do so. Now I'm more excited than ever to see this film!

Bearing in mind the difficulty filming inside the turret and/or hull of an actual tank, they may have to build sets to replicate the tank interiors. This is the perfect opportunity to do this with the Tiger.

The Americans tanks are all Shermans. No problem there. There are likely hundreds of still functional Shermans around. And still others that could be rendered functional fairly easily. The Sherman is the second-most manufactured tank in history, after the Soviet T-55. There are plenty of surviving examples to be found. It seems like every major Army post in the country has at least one on display as a lawn ornament.

March 4, 2014

The word is out among my patients that I'm good at cutting things off of people.

The number of lesion excisions, sebaceous cyst drainage, and skin-tag removals I've been doing has increased exponentially lately.

There's an amusing 'I-heard-from-a-friend-who-heard-from-a-friend' quality to some of my clinic visits.

I'll get a patient fixed up on an unrelated issue (Diabetes, acute URI, anything...) and then he'll pull up his shirt and ask: "Hey, can you get rid of these?" It's kind of fun.

I like procedures. Unlike a lot of treatment plans that require repeated follow-ups, monitoring, tweaking, and re-trying, a procedure allows for visible, same-day results. That's satisfying.