Philip K dick had a story where this was essentially part of the plot line -- a man from the past arrives in the future and is able to actually...fix things (The Variable Man)
In one scene, children are playing with a toy and it gets broken. The main character starts to fix it and the kids are wondering what he is doing and why he doesn't just throw it out and get a new one.
I think the assumption was that the brother's disease, which was genetic, was causing problems with the new kidney.
Not quite: FTFA:
Researchers have theorized that it may be caused by a factor circulating in the bloodstream.
From something a little less...mainstream:
Idiopathic or primary FSGS is postulated to result from a plasma factor that increases glomerular permeability. This
hypothesis is supported by the observation that FSGS may recur in a renal allograft. However, the presence of such a permeability factor has not been confirmed
although some of its characteristics have been described. Another possibility to explain the pathogenesis of FSGS is lack of an inhibitor to the permeability
factor. Hence, what causes FSGS and why it may recur in a transplanted kidney is yet unknown.
(Szczepiorkowski ZM, Winters JL, Bandarenko N, et al. Guidelines on the use of therapeutic apheresis in clinical practice--evidence-based approach from the Apheresis Applications Committee of the American Society for Apheresis. Journal of clinical apheresis. 2010;25(3):83-177.)
Usually FSGS is thought to be acquired (e.g. HIV or heroin use) rather than genetic. Of course, underlying genetics or haplotypes may play a role, but I too lazy to look that up:).
Larry Ellison "borrowed" against the value of his stock to buy his giant yacht and doesn't pay a dime in taxes.
This is one thing that has always puzzled me: if Ellison is "borrowing" the money (against hist stock portfolio) presumably at some point he needs to pay the "loan" back....Is it just how double ledger accounting is done that people are okay with having an outstanding loan on their books to Ellison (which in the intricacies of the double ledger counts as an asset for the entity giving the loan -- In which case the "loan" never really needs to be payed back?).
I've always had a good experience returning stuff to Microcenter. I don't build up systems too often, so when I do, it is not infrequent that I buy the wrong connector or perhaps the cheap memory doesn't quite work that well with the MB I got. Microcenter takes it back, no questions asked, and I can get on with getting the right part right then without waiting for shipping. When I lived right around the corner from one, it was great.
If closures and lambda expressions were so easy to implement using basic inheritance, Java would already have it. Java 7 has no lambda structures or closures. Anonymous inner classes are a hacked on incomplete poor mans semi-closure that provides just enough to get you almost what you want, but not quite. Last I checked, JCP (or related) had this as a work in progress. And will it be a first class construct in Java or some kind of pre-compiler/interpreter/VM? I am not sure, but hopefully the former.
Java makes many things easier, but functional programming constructs is not one of these. Once I (re)learned how to use the more functional approach (it has been a long time since my LISP days) I really started to (re)appreciate the power of it. Some may wax poetical about elegance, simplicity, etc.. but that is really what it felt like to me. It sure made it harder to swallow some of the limitations that Java has without these constructs.
I am definitely not a javascript fanboi, and absolutely agree with you (and the 1E6 others) that hate the toolset for developing with it, but I do appreciate the programmatic constructs it allows. And these constructs are definitely not in Java yet (cause boy, could I have used some of them on my last project!)
I took an extra year (post-sophomore fellowship) in Med school to make it 5 years. Standard path residency is 4 years, but most people do 1-2 years subspecialty training after that to make it 6 years total. It took me 2 years of classes at night while working full time to get all my pre-reqs in for med school.
I took an extra year in Med school to make it 5 years, residency will end up being 6 years, and it took me 2 years of classes at night while working full time to get all my pre-reqs in for med school. Md-Phd would have been interesting, but I like reading about bench research more than I like doing it!
Actually pathology. It's an overlooked field (only 2% of med students go into it) but great for tech minded people. The hours are not bad, even during residency (some rotations are 8-5, others, well, aren't). The paperwork is a function of how good the business workflow and technology use is -- one place I was at everything was electronic, template driven, and once you had the meat of the report, it took about 1 minute of checking some billing boxes. The back end behind that I can't speak about, but my part was definitely not onerous. Reimbursement wise -- not sure where that will go in the future, but at least from a salary comparison right now, on average it is well compensated (academically) and if you are private practice even more so.
Of course, you get to do things like determine that people DON'T have cancer (when everyone else thinks they do) which is great -- some of my best days have been figuring out that the abnormal lung PET scan was a mild self limiting infection and not small cell carcinoma.
Also, we get the strangest stuff (1 in 100E6, literally) so no one thinks they have seen it all. Even faculty who have been around since dirt was clean still get excited about the rare stuff that comes in
I am 8 years into (medical) training that will take 13 years total (not counting my 4 years of undergrad). Even if I won the lottery, I would have a hard time throwing away all the work I have done to get to where I am (one of the top training programs in the country for my field). So I would probably stay to finish things off, even though the hours are long and the days off are few. I make a big impact on people's lives everyday, I see things that most people only ever read about, and I enjoy the constant intellectual stimulation.
Of course, if I had $$$E6 tomorrow, maybe my perspective would change. If anyone would care to give such an amount, we can make a study/paper out of it:)
Modded funny, but as someone who just recently moved to BalDimore from the midwest, this is more insightful.
My wife and I relied heavily on our GPS units to find places when we first got here. We would joke that the software seemed to have a "get crack" option enabled, as it routed us through some fairly scary neighborhoods.
This happened to Christianity in 1054, with another major fork happening in the 16th century. I guess it had a lot to do with questions regarding the disagreements with management of the code base and who is best able to do that (or something like that).
Now it seems like there is a fork every week or so. Who can keep up with the versions? No wonder we had to develop distributed version control, since everyone seems to want their own local branch to work with. Merging it all back to the tip (or trunk) it pretty much impossible -- the devil is in the details!
FYI - egoless programming is talked about in the book Code Complete (Amazon link). This is a great book for beginning programmers (and heck, even those whose neck beards are getting longer...) I read it early on in my career and it left quite an impression, the concept of egoless programming being one of the more lasting ones.
I did the same thing. Scholarships and such helped with about 10-15% of the total, but the interest rates changed from 4-something to 6.75% (thanks to GWB) when I started. I had money saved that I was going to use for a house, but ended up using it for tuition (thank goodness, as the housing market tanked soon after I made that decision!). My debt burden is much better than most of my classmates, but still not insignificant.
But yes, I agree with you -- in terms of risk, med/student/nursing loans are pretty low risk. Yeah you get some people you drop out, but that is a small minority. Financially speaking, it probably cost me around 1E6 dollars to quit my job, take out loans, interest on them, lose income/investments/etc...But I enjoy what I do a heckuva lot better and there are great opportunities for docs who know software, so we'll see how it goes.
Reminds me of my days writing PERL...which must be the closest thing to simulating coding-while-under-chemical-influence:
When writing everything seems so clear, understandable, and simple. A regexp here, bless something there. Then come back 2 weeks later and BAM! What they hell was I thinking when I wrote that??? What does that regexp even do? (cue jwz regexp quote here).
I had a similar story, except that I was 32 when I left my full time software job to go medical school. I did part-time consulting for the first two 2.5 years of school until political events at my client had a changing of the guard, so a part time guy coming in for 10 hours a month to do the odd-optimization/requirements review/troubleshooting wasn't really desired.
I had an easy job (tech lead, analyst, occasional hands on work), but just couldn't see myself sitting in management or sitting in long meetings talking about font -sizes and what icons to use for the rest of my life. Add to that the age discrimination that I saw in the industry and while I enjoyed contract work, thought that wasn't the direction I wanted to go (or the position I wanted to be in) when I was in my 50s.
Fast forward 5 years and I am done with med school and doing a residency. It's long hours and intense but great. I do autopsies right now, which is perfect for someone who just loves to take things apart (but is not so good at putting them back together). It cost a lot of money to make the move out of the job, but has been worth it.
The kicker is with my software background, I've been doing more straight-up development in my free time than I did in months of work at my old job. Having the background in software makes an extremely powerful combination when combined with another traditionally non-software job.
If there is one thing the FSM has taught us humans is that beer volcanoes are awesome. If there are two things the FSM has taught us, it is that nature finds a way. Or maybe that was Jurassic Park. Hmmm...
Slashdot Mirror
Philip K dick had a story where this was essentially part of the plot line -- a man from the past arrives in the future and is able to actually...fix things (The Variable Man)
In one scene, children are playing with a toy and it gets broken. The main character starts to fix it and the kids are wondering what he is doing and why he doesn't just throw it out and get a new one.
The book is free on Project Gutenburg here
From the referenced PDF:
we also developed an automated machine learning algorithm to detect the presence of malaria parasites,
I think the assumption was that the brother's disease, which was genetic, was causing problems with the new kidney.
Not quite: FTFA:
Researchers have theorized that it may be caused by a factor circulating in the bloodstream.
From something a little less...mainstream:
Idiopathic or primary FSGS is postulated to result from a plasma factor that increases glomerular permeability. This hypothesis is supported by the observation that FSGS may recur in a renal allograft. However, the presence of such a permeability factor has not been confirmed although some of its characteristics have been described. Another possibility to explain the pathogenesis of FSGS is lack of an inhibitor to the permeability factor. Hence, what causes FSGS and why it may recur in a transplanted kidney is yet unknown.
(Szczepiorkowski ZM, Winters JL, Bandarenko N, et al. Guidelines on the use of therapeutic apheresis in clinical practice--evidence-based approach from the Apheresis Applications Committee of the American Society for Apheresis. Journal of clinical apheresis. 2010;25(3):83-177.)
Usually FSGS is thought to be acquired (e.g. HIV or heroin use) rather than genetic. Of course, underlying genetics or haplotypes may play a role, but I too lazy to look that up :).
Larry Ellison "borrowed" against the value of his stock to buy his giant yacht and doesn't pay a dime in taxes.
This is one thing that has always puzzled me: if Ellison is "borrowing" the money (against hist stock portfolio) presumably at some point he needs to pay the "loan" back....Is it just how double ledger accounting is done that people are okay with having an outstanding loan on their books to Ellison (which in the intricacies of the double ledger counts as an asset for the entity giving the loan -- In which case the "loan" never really needs to be payed back?).
Emacs is a decent operating system, but it could use a better text editor.
I've always had a good experience returning stuff to Microcenter. I don't build up systems too often, so when I do, it is not infrequent that I buy the wrong connector or perhaps the cheap memory doesn't quite work that well with the MB I got. Microcenter takes it back, no questions asked, and I can get on with getting the right part right then without waiting for shipping. When I lived right around the corner from one, it was great.
Sorry to disappoint: herpes whitlow
Unless you are pregnant -- in which case prenatal herpes infection can cause death or severe morbidity of the fetus.
Or unless you get encephalitis -- HSV is a big player in that game too.
Or unless you are immunocompromised (due to cancer treatment, HIV, lymphoproliferative disorders, etc...)
Still, you have to admire their breasts (but only if you work for the TSA).
FTFY
Mumps was NoSql before NoSql was cool: MUMPS and NoSql
Disclaimer: my only interaction with MUMPS has been via thedailywtf: A Case of the MUMPS
If closures and lambda expressions were so easy to implement using basic inheritance, Java would already have it. Java 7 has no lambda structures or closures. Anonymous inner classes are a hacked on incomplete poor mans semi-closure that provides just enough to get you almost what you want, but not quite. Last I checked, JCP (or related) had this as a work in progress. And will it be a first class construct in Java or some kind of pre-compiler/interpreter/VM? I am not sure, but hopefully the former.
Java makes many things easier, but functional programming constructs is not one of these. Once I (re)learned how to use the more functional approach (it has been a long time since my LISP days) I really started to (re)appreciate the power of it. Some may wax poetical about elegance, simplicity, etc.. but that is really what it felt like to me. It sure made it harder to swallow some of the limitations that Java has without these constructs.
I am definitely not a javascript fanboi, and absolutely agree with you (and the 1E6 others) that hate the toolset for developing with it, but I do appreciate the programmatic constructs it allows. And these constructs are definitely not in Java yet (cause boy, could I have used some of them on my last project!)
That's the nice way of saying "The REAL wtf is..." :)
I took an extra year (post-sophomore fellowship) in Med school to make it 5 years. Standard path residency is 4 years, but most people do 1-2 years subspecialty training after that to make it 6 years total. It took me 2 years of classes at night while working full time to get all my pre-reqs in for med school.
I took an extra year in Med school to make it 5 years, residency will end up being 6 years, and it took me 2 years of classes at night while working full time to get all my pre-reqs in for med school. Md-Phd would have been interesting, but I like reading about bench research more than I like doing it!
Actually pathology. It's an overlooked field (only 2% of med students go into it) but great for tech minded people. The hours are not bad, even during residency (some rotations are 8-5, others, well, aren't). The paperwork is a function of how good the business workflow and technology use is -- one place I was at everything was electronic, template driven, and once you had the meat of the report, it took about 1 minute of checking some billing boxes. The back end behind that I can't speak about, but my part was definitely not onerous. Reimbursement wise -- not sure where that will go in the future, but at least from a salary comparison right now, on average it is well compensated (academically) and if you are private practice even more so.
Of course, you get to do things like determine that people DON'T have cancer (when everyone else thinks they do) which is great -- some of my best days have been figuring out that the abnormal lung PET scan was a mild self limiting infection and not small cell carcinoma.
Also, we get the strangest stuff (1 in 100E6, literally) so no one thinks they have seen it all. Even faculty who have been around since dirt was clean still get excited about the rare stuff that comes in
Why would anyone?
I am 8 years into (medical) training that will take 13 years total (not counting my 4 years of undergrad). Even if I won the lottery, I would have a hard time throwing away all the work I have done to get to where I am (one of the top training programs in the country for my field). So I would probably stay to finish things off, even though the hours are long and the days off are few. I make a big impact on people's lives everyday, I see things that most people only ever read about, and I enjoy the constant intellectual stimulation.
Of course, if I had $$$E6 tomorrow, maybe my perspective would change. If anyone would care to give such an amount, we can make a study/paper out of it :)
Modded funny, but as someone who just recently moved to BalDimore from the midwest, this is more insightful.
My wife and I relied heavily on our GPS units to find places when we first got here. We would joke that the software seemed to have a "get crack" option enabled, as it routed us through some fairly scary neighborhoods.
I see what you did there.
This happened to Christianity in 1054, with another major fork happening in the 16th century. I guess it had a lot to do with questions regarding the disagreements with management of the code base and who is best able to do that (or something like that).
Now it seems like there is a fork every week or so. Who can keep up with the versions? No wonder we had to develop distributed version control, since everyone seems to want their own local branch to work with. Merging it all back to the tip (or trunk) it pretty much impossible -- the devil is in the details!
FYI - egoless programming is talked about in the book Code Complete (Amazon link). This is a great book for beginning programmers (and heck, even those whose neck beards are getting longer...) I read it early on in my career and it left quite an impression, the concept of egoless programming being one of the more lasting ones.
I did the same thing. Scholarships and such helped with about 10-15% of the total, but the interest rates changed from 4-something to 6.75% (thanks to GWB) when I started. I had money saved that I was going to use for a house, but ended up using it for tuition (thank goodness, as the housing market tanked soon after I made that decision!). My debt burden is much better than most of my classmates, but still not insignificant.
But yes, I agree with you -- in terms of risk, med/student/nursing loans are pretty low risk. Yeah you get some people you drop out, but that is a small minority. Financially speaking, it probably cost me around 1E6 dollars to quit my job, take out loans, interest on them, lose income/investments/etc...But I enjoy what I do a heckuva lot better and there are great opportunities for docs who know software, so we'll see how it goes.
Reminds me of my days writing PERL...which must be the closest thing to simulating coding-while-under-chemical-influence:
When writing everything seems so clear, understandable, and simple. A regexp here, bless something there. Then come back 2 weeks later and BAM! What they hell was I thinking when I wrote that??? What does that regexp even do? (cue jwz regexp quote here).
I had a similar story, except that I was 32 when I left my full time software job to go medical school. I did part-time consulting for the first two 2.5 years of school until political events at my client had a changing of the guard, so a part time guy coming in for 10 hours a month to do the odd-optimization/requirements review/troubleshooting wasn't really desired.
I had an easy job (tech lead, analyst, occasional hands on work), but just couldn't see myself sitting in management or sitting in long meetings talking about font -sizes and what icons to use for the rest of my life. Add to that the age discrimination that I saw in the industry and while I enjoyed contract work, thought that wasn't the direction I wanted to go (or the position I wanted to be in) when I was in my 50s.
Fast forward 5 years and I am done with med school and doing a residency. It's long hours and intense but great. I do autopsies right now, which is perfect for someone who just loves to take things apart (but is not so good at putting them back together). It cost a lot of money to make the move out of the job, but has been worth it.
The kicker is with my software background, I've been doing more straight-up development in my free time than I did in months of work at my old job. Having the background in software makes an extremely powerful combination when combined with another traditionally non-software job.
What's missing: 'Get off my lawn!'
Of course, some bacteriophages actually produce virulence factors when they infect bacteria (e.g. Diptheria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diptheria#Mechanism)
If there is one thing the FSM has taught us humans is that beer volcanoes are awesome. If there are two things the FSM has taught us, it is that nature finds a way. Or maybe that was Jurassic Park. Hmmm...