Ever since my friend Ann told me about This American Life , an hourly show on NPR, I can’t get enough. Especially of David Sedaris’s readings. I present, for your listening pleasure, a few short pieces (only about 5 minutes long, and very funny). It starts at 37:20 (RealAudio file); the first is about the Orthopedic Surgeons Convention, and the other is, of course, about the largest turd in the world.
A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Danah , who interviewed me about this site. She’s a PhD student at Berkeley (referred to as Cal if you’re from northern California, apparently), and working at Google for the summer with the Blogger team. I just realized she’s the #1 Danah according to Google , which must either mean that it’s been fixed, or I’m just jealous. It was a fun interview, and so I thought I’d reflect a bit–this then being me blogging about talking about blogging with a blogger from Blogger.
Google, is, of course, freaking cool. I’m sure it’d be fun to work there (and probably the only reason I would *ever* try to get a PhD), but I would surely gain about 50 pounds in my first month, and most of my teeth would rot away. There’s every type of drink and soda imaginable, and every type of snack as well. In addition to the three organic meals cooked for employees every day.
The interview was fun; I didn’t realize I would have as much to say as I did. I don’t have any real life blogging friends, so it was nice to be able to talk about RSS feeds or CSS hacks or Ben and Mena without having to explain everything. We talked about the medbloggers , why I blog, all of that. I guess I’m drawn to blogging for similar reasons to why I’m drawn to medicine–the people. Their quirks, behaviors, thoughts, insights, experiences, interpretations. This was explained perfectly at a talk by The Trotts back 2 years ago in Chicago. The married couple reads each other’s blog, and Mena said she really enjoyed being able to read about their shared experiences and the moments that were most notable (or blog-worthy) in her husband’s head. She may have really loved the dinner on Wednesday, but he didn’t really like his meal, or he preferred hiking on Thursday. It lets you get inside the other person’s head.
All in all, a fun interview, and Danah seems like the perfect fit for the job.
In other non-medical news, I’m jumping on the meme of encouraging people to drop Internet Explorer as their browser and try using Mozilla’s Firefox browser. A slew of new bugs have been discovered in Internet Explorer that are bigger security risks than ever before. If you go to a website that’s been infected with a virus using IE, the virus can automatically start monitoring your computer, and can literally steal your banking account passwords as you type them. Even Microsoft-owned Slate Magazine just recommended switching , it’s so bad. Even the Department of Homeland Security is telling people to stop using IE all together . So try out Firefox . It looks very similar to IE, won’t allow spyware to be installed on your cmoputer, has many more features, blocks popups automatically, can filter out ads so they’re not displayed on the screen, can resize all website text for those with bad eyes, and a ton of other reasons .
Besides the fact that they really just don’t seem that fun, part of my lack of interest in sports is my overall lack of coordination. On multiple occasions playing basketball on a team through my middle school years, I’d find myself shooting a basket under the backboard, only to have it hit the underside of the rim and come right back at my nose. As more evidence, I present my almost uncanny ability to choke on water daily. It somehow always manages to slip back into the wrong pipe, and make me cough violently. I, of course, am not to blame. My cerebellum is.
The cerebellum is, in a nutshell, your anti-klutz center. It helps coordinate and automate movements, and does error checking, too: if I reach for a glass and knock it over, the cerebellum gets a signal to adjust its coordination in the future. Mine, however, seems to mess up in spurts. I’ve have a month or two without a problem, and then out of nowhere, a whole slew of goofs, leading to large messes and stained clothes. (I have, for this reason, become something of a stain-removing expert.)
Today was one of those days. I’m surprised I didn’t end up wrecking my car. Then again, the day isn’t over yet. I ended up dropping a big yogurt container, splattering it everywhere, followed by staining my jeans with some Indian paneer sauce and splattering it all over the kitchen. Then I almost spilled the curry *again*. Oh, and this morning, I knocked my deodorant into the toilet. And just now I dropped my keys and almost lost them over a ledge. Please pray for my safety. On days like this, I need it.