January 12, 2023

A yearly theme, of sorts

Instead of setting a Yearly Theme A CGP Gray video is where I first heard it used as a replacement for New Year’s resolutions, but I’m not entirely sure if he’s the originator. right at the outset, I let it crystalize on its own in the first few months of the year. The theme of 2022 was shelter-building — guess where that came from — and as a result we now have a whistle-clean basement ready to serve as a home gym until a nuclear strike anhilates us all.

Odds are that this year’s theme will end up being statistical shenanigans. First a brief letter to JAMA Internal Medicine we wrote received a confused commentary from a giant of cancer care that showed that even oncology giants are not immune to errors Finding the error I will leave as an excercise for the reader; I do, however, plan to address it in a follow-up letter. Never pass an opportunity to increase your publication count! of statistical reasoning. Soon after that, working on a different — still top-secret — paper got me down a rabbit hole of the many ways we use to present clinical data. I thought these were lacking in oncology; other fields of medicine showed me that there was room for further deterioration. Not to be so secretive about everything, but clinical data representation in this particular field will also be the subject of a commentary. And yet, the US FDA still thinks statistically illeterate doctors — present company included — are important gatekeepers of diagnostic tests, essentially banning home test kits available in other parts of the world because they are worried people are too innumerate to correctly interpret their own results.

Humans being pattern-recognition machines, I don’t doubt I will continue seeing matemathical malpractice, malfeasance, and just plain stupidity everywhere I look. It is pretty much guaranteed I will inadvertently comit some myself! I hope this yearly theme results in a few papers, at least.

Currently reading: How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia 📚

Always wonderful to read experts in their craft writing about it. Two dozen pages in and I am already picking up on concepts beyond jazz, efortless teamwork versus dysfunctional prima donnas being broadly relevant.

January 11, 2023

Finished reading: On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt 📚

A timeless masterpiece that takes less than an hour to read, much longer to digest. What reminded me of Frankfurt’s essay was an article about the age of the bullshitter which, alas, ended up being its own kind of bullshit.

January 10, 2023

Adam Mastroianni’s Experimental History newsletter has enabled paid subscriptions today, and if there is one science-oriented Substack worth paying for, it’s Adam’s. I’m sold.

Finished reading: The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison 📚

A story of damp decay. I didn’t know enough about English geography to fully appreciate the intricacies, but Harrison is the master of the uneasy atmosphere and he got that one just right.

January 9, 2023

🍿 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is on the regular re-watch list. Think what you will of Tim Burton’s style — and I don’t think it fits this particular story — the movie works almost as well as the book in being a didactic tool for toddlers and pre-teens.

It is hard to watch an animation like this (a plot of England’s population versus GDP from 1270 onwards) without a sense of awe, followed by slight discomfort for what could come next.

From the Annals of Internal Medicine: Curiosity

Old (1999), but still good. Even when I first wrote this, and even older now.

When I was a house officer and installing one of the first right-heart catheters, the machine that showed intrapulmonic arterial pressures was enormous and was equipped with strain gauges rather than computer chips. Making it work was difficult. After the line was in, the attending, the nurse, and I tried desperately to adjust the machine to show the pulmonary arterial pressure waves. We could not get them. The line on the screen remained flat. We manipulated toggle switches and strain gauges for about 15 minutes. Nothing. Finally, I glanced at the patient: He was dead.

The story after that is even better.

January 7, 2023

Things that the Arc browser does well:

The one thing keeping me from using it full-time:

January 6, 2023

23 books for 2023

Posting yearly reading lists has become risky as of late, but that won’t stop me. As with last year’s this is more of a guide than a mandate: I may — but probably won’t — read all of them. Odds are, my favorite book of the year won’t even be one on the list.

  1. The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (M. John Harrison)
  2. Hitler (Joachim C. Fest)
  3. NRSV, The C. S. Lewis Bible (C. S. Lewis et al.)
  4. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric H. Cline)
  5. Rules of Civility (Amor Towles)
  6. The Odyssey (Homer, Emily Wilson translation)
  7. Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (Plutarch, Dryden translation)
  8. Station Eternity (Mur Lafferty)
  9. Talent (Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross)
  10. Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life (Luke Burgis)
  11. The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success (Albert-László Barabási)
  12. An Immense World (Ed Young)
  13. From Baghdad to Boardrooms: My Family’s Odyssey (Ezra K. Zikha and Ken Emerson)
  14. Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection (Sam Apple)
  15. How to Listen to Jazz (Ted Gioia)
  16. Whole Earth Discipline (Stewart Brand)
  17. The Revolt of the Masses (Ortega y Gasset)
  18. Debt: The First 5,000 Years (David Graeber)
  19. Against Method (Paul Feyerabend)
  20. I Am a Strange Loop (Douglas R. Hofstadter)
  21. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Annie Dillard)
  22. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
  23. Empty Space: A Haunting (M. John Harrison)