Takin' It Back with Barack, Jack

As many of you know, my sister Suede is a professional singer who's just released a new CD, "Dangerous Mood." Two of the songs have fabulous harmonica accompaniment from a guy named Will Galison. When I saw her CD launch tour's inaugural show in DC this summer, he was there, live.

Little did I know he can sing. Here he is with a swing group – and what a song!



(A plug – this weekend we're going up to see Suede at Jonathan's, a fabulous restaurant and music venue in Ogunquit, ME. We saw her last weekend in Provincetown, and even with a cold she still got a long standing ovation and hollers for multiple encores. What a trouper – can't wait to hear the full voice again!)

Cross-posted: "Born To Be . . ."

From Paul Levy's blog:

Born to be . . .

Following up on the theme introduced last Friday, here is a pertinent animated view of the Baby Boomers.

All I could say in my comment was "o... m... g..."

Inspiring news from my cousin's blog

In May I wrote about my 28 year old cousin Chris McCulloh, who had a spinal cord injury in January (C6-C7 subluxation, for those who know such things). This happened as he was about to enter Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.

He's been blogging occasionally about his recovery. I was inspired to receive this from him last Thursday - a wonderful story of the classmates he hasn't met yet.

Spinal Cord Injury and Healing

A special thanks.. Posted: 07 Aug 2008 07:37 PM CDT Recently, I received a package in the mail from Cleveland, OH. It had been something I was expecting, as I'd been told by a few folks in the admissions office that something was on the way. But I had no idea what was inside, and so I anxiously awaited its arrival. When it did come, I was beyond surprised. When I first opened the box, I found a bag with the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine logo on it. About the size of a laptop, looks like it'd be perfect for carrying one to and from classes. There was also a batch of materials that had been from Second Look Weekend, since I had unfortunately been unable to attend due to the injury. Those were all pretty cool, but they paled in comparison to what else was in there. I pulled out a t-shirt, and the first thing I saw was the Case Med logo: This alone was exciting, as I had tried to order a shirt with the medical school logo on it after I was accepted. Unfortunately, the only shirts available online from the Case school store only have the basic CWRU logo on them, and no mention of Case Med. So having a shirt with the medical school logo on it was awesome. Then I unfolded the shirt and saw the rest of it. All over the shirt in silver marker were signatures and notes from the entire Class of 2012, the group I was to join this summer in matriculation at Case. I saw the names of people who have contacted me since the blog URL was given out to the students, and there were very touching notes from people I didn't know. I was blown away. The front of the shirt: (Click to enlarge) The back of the shirt was even more awesome. In addition to all the other signatures and notes, the students had printed "Dear Chris, Welcome to Case Med! Class of 2012″ in big letters. The back of the shirt: (Click to enlarge) I cannot even begin to express how moving it was to see all of the names. It was one of the few times I've ever been left speechless, and I have been sharing it with family and friends that I've talked to since then. They've all been equally as blown away by the thoughtfulness of the students. Mr. Essman and Dr. Mehta made it very clear to me that it was entirely the students' initiative to create and send the shirt. And this is precisely the reason I chose to attend Case - the people. The student body and the entire community as a whole are truly a supportive group, and the school lacks the cutthroat competition so prevalent at other institutions. I felt something special when I visited the school during interview season in all my dealings with students and faculty, and I've felt that even more so now. The warmth has really made me feel a part of the community, even from nearly 500 miles away. To all the students of the Class of 2012 at Case Med, I thank you with my whole heart! I cannot tell you how much the gift means to me, and how much I cannot wait to get out to Cleveland to meet you all at some point. It is truly special to be one of your peers. THANK YOU!!!

Beth Israel Deaconess on ... Jeopardy??

One of my earliest posts on this blog was a thank-you to Dr. Drew Wagner, the amazing surgeon who removed my yucky-sticky-rude-tumored kidney, without cutting me wide open - just little tiny slits. Amazing.

In that post was a mention of the amazing simulation/training facility at his hospital (and mine), Beth Israel Deaconess. Well, today while chasing a link in the blog of that hospital's CEO, I came across this video clip: last December, their simulation center was featured on Jeopardy's Tournament of Champions!



And yes, they inflated my belly with that unnamed gas. (Yes, I have a bikini scar, and no, you may not see it.)

p.s. To be amazed at the openness of communication at that hospital, and the transparency they're bringing to the world of healthcare, go directly to that video site and page through the "More from this show" items on the right side. The video featured today is a real-life sample of how the hospital now approaches suggestions from workers at every level of the enterprise. What a beautiful example of empowering everyone, and the results it produces.

Memorial Day 2008

Updated 5/27 - fixed typos.

1. The ceremony

Today I sang at the Groton (MA) cemetery, in their Memorial Day ceremony. This is the first time I've ever participated in such a ceremony, and it's time to say why, and what's different this year.

I came of age as assassinations and disillusionment put an end to post-WW II optimism. When I was 13 JFK was shot. We lived near DC and Dad took us to his office to watch the cortege. When I was 18, leaving high school for college, Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy were shot.

Something horrid was happening in the country. Then the Chicago Democratic convention happened, with cops bashing demonstrators on TV while a circus went on inside. (This was when reporters had the guts to call a spade a spade, and show it.) I couldn't believe what I was seeing; I was raised an optimist, fully participating in that post-WW II sense that America was great so all we had to do was work it out by talking.

I moved to Cambridge for college, where my optimism was ultimately shattered when I saw a cop smash the skull of a kid who was simply standing on a corner, while rioting happened 1-2 blocks away. (I know, many of you have heard that too often.) In my world cops couldn't possibly have done that, but I saw it. And suddenly all the things left-wingers and pessimists were saying were happening all around.

That was a filthy, corrupt war. (Note: I did not say anyone who was in it was filthy and corrupt.) I was left with a very disspirited feeling about everything to do with the military, because it seemed so polarized: either you loved everything military or you were anti-American. I just stayed out of the conversation.

Now I've aged. I faced death myself last year, leaving me acutely wondering what we're leaving behind for the next generations. I find myself concerned, seeing the rights that make us America increasingly eroded, and wondering who's going to win that particular fight. And I thought about the people who died to win us those rights.

I realized that for the first time I have a deep respect and appreciation for those who've willingly put their butts on the line for what they believed in, and got killed: went through that portal that I faced involuntarily.

That's really something. Their integrity, standing for what they believe in, transcends any lies and corruption that may have surrounded them.

So today as I practiced (and performed) "the land of the free and the home of the brave" and "America, my home" it had an impact on me that it's never had before.

2. The state of healthcare today

At the cemetery we stood near a tombstone detailing the fate of a family. As we work on solving healthcare's challenges, let's remember what a different world it is today. (The first date is unclear in the photo - it's 1798. Click to enlarge, if you want.)

A new quartet to keep an eye on: "On Air"

At last weekend's local barbershop quartet competition, a new quartet popped a lot of eyes open. Their first song contains, about 45 seconds in, one of the best renderings I've ever heard of a "bangin'" barbershop chord, performed at a level that usually requires an international-top-ten quartet. Three of these four are members of my chorus.


From left to right: Jon Green (tenor), Jayson McCarter (lead), Kurt "Boot!" Boutin (megabass), George "the man" Feinberg on baritone.

What's particularly astounding is that these guys have been singing together for less than two months. Imagine what it takes to be so precise in beginning and ending phrases so completely in synch, not to mention with the pitches matched so well that they produce the "expanded sound" that's the hallmark of barbershop harmony.

What a pleasure to be around at the first coming-out of a new quartet like this.

A Neuroanatomist Witnesses Her Own Stroke

Wow, what a speech, tying together so many aspects of all I've studied (many of us have studied) about what it is to be a human.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor talks about observing her own stroke as it happened.



(If the embedded video gives you trouble, view it on the TED site here.)

Wonderful insights about the functions of the two hemispheres, and what she experienced as parts of her mental function dropped away, leaving her for a time with nothing but the experience of the moment of Now.

Aside from the inspiring beauty of her story, what smacked me in the face was the great similarities between what she says and what I discussed last year with members of my cancer community, about being at peace with it all, as Buddhists have done for millennia and as teachers like Ram Dass (nee Richard Alpert) continue to do today. A lot in common, too, with the description of psychedelic experiences such as described by Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception.

Powerful speaker.

I'm listening to her talk for the third time through. I know exactly what she's talking about re "no longer the choreographer of my life," and several other things, so I have no doubt at all that what she ultimately describes is available to every one of us, and that includes you.

A Singing Valentine from a barbershop quartet

This is a commercial for one of the things that makes me happiest in life: singing barbershop harmony!

As this blog's "About me" page says, I sing in a men's barbershop harmony chorus, the Nashua Granite Statesmen. Most people don't know that there are barbershop choruses, but most do know about barbershop quartets. And indeed, as the photo shows, I'm in one, named "Route 5." It's loads of fun - there's a ton of tradition around this style of music - but the most fun is every February 14, when we hire ourselves out in quartets to do Singing Valentines, as a fundraiser.

The photo shows us with one of our "victims" - the head of the English department at a local high school. We ambushed her in front of a department meeting, claiming that our name is The Dangling Participles, and sang her a love song. A yearbook staffer was there, so next spring we'll be in print. How cool is that?

Next year you can order a Singing Valentine quartet (male or female) by going to www.SingingValentines.com. Or, if you're in the Nashua NH area, just contact me - next year I'm the local chairman. (Better yet, order now - why wait for the rush? :-)

If you're impatient, though, you're in luck - my chorus's annual show, with a superb women's barbershop chorus, is Saturday April 5. The featured quartet is named Rounders - we're flying them in from Fort Lauderdale, because they're good: they placed 8th in the world at last summer's championship. Here they are singing the Irving Berlin classic "They Say It's Wonderful":



As it happens, my chorus is currently recording that same song (a different arrangement) for our next CD, which will be out this fall - all Irving Berlin songs (Midnight Choo Choo, I Love a Piano, How Deep is the Ocean, and many more). When it's available for sale, you'll know it. :) But you can hear a preview, and much more singing, in Nashua NH on April 5. Tix: info -at- granitestatesmen.org (or me).

Web 2.0 means we get to say.

My post below mentions "2.0" stuff. I've been dealing with this subject at work for the past year, but I know a lot of you have only recently heard this "buzzword" buzzing around like an unexplained annoying gnat that keeps getting in your ear, making it hard to think.

The e-patients blog yesterday has the best layperson's introduction I've ever seen for these key aspects of Web 2.0:

• blogs
• wikis (Wikipedia is just one example)
• social networks
  
• social bookmarks.

Worth a view. (These little "training videos" require having your speakers on.)

The big deal about all this is "user generated content" (UGC). See, in the early days of the Web (now known as Web 1.0), the Web was read-only: all web "content" (the stuff you read or view) was created by people who had access to a Web server and knew all the geeky stuff you needed for hand coding a web page.

In contrast to that, today we can create content: Look, I'm sitting here right now, blogging about whatever I want - just as if I could conceive and write a book and get it printed and have it appear in every library in the world, instantly. (Because it IS, right now, available on every computer in the world that has an Internet connection, including my iPod Touch.)

This that you're reading, right here, is user-generated content.

And the big thing about THAT is that it's enabled us to spout our opinions, for instance rating books on Amazon or even posting our own book reviews, as short or as long as we want.

What this means in the world of e-patients is that we ourselves get to talk about anything we want; instead of reading only what a magazine editor thinks we want (or need to know), we ourselves get to start any discussion we want and take it anywhere we want.

You could put it this way: Web 2.0 means we get to say. We get to say whatever we want, and we even get to say what gets talked about.

This is a core principle cited in the e-patients white paper, which you really should read, in PDF or wiki form. More to come.

Books that make you dumb? I don't think so.

Time for another statistics lesson. I'm not the world's greatest statistics whiz (not like the super-geek on TV's "NUMB3RS" show), but that's part of my point: you don't have to be a super-geek to detect major mistakes in statistics that come your way.

This isn't a rant - it's just an interesting example of what to be careful about, with a little entertainment along the way.

I just got an email with something that, on the face of it, is fascinating:

Some one matched up the most popular books in Facebook college groups with average SAT scores at colleges to see what people commonly read at different intelligence levels. http://booksthatmakeyoudumb.virgil.gr/

Nice graphics, and a decent explanation about his method. On the face of it, pretty interesting.

But there's this thing about statistics: you've got to be careful about (at least) three things:

1. When you see a pattern, are you really seeing a pattern you can count on, or is it just a momentary coincidence? (If the first two people to walk into your office are men, does that mean only men will walk in today?)
   
   
2. Even when you do see a pretty reliable pattern, can you be reasonably sure it means what you think it means? (A relationship between the behaviors of two variables is called a correlation, but that doesn't mean you can say one caused the other. A famous example: for some years there was a correlation between wolverine population and the number of sunspots. Did either cause the other? Not likely, and besides, who could tell? The lesson: Similar behavior of two figures could just be a coincidence.)
   
   
3. Finally, you've got to be really careful about whom you actually measured. (If you interview people who are hanging out in skid row bars at 2 a.m., you may reach some interesting conclusions about the opinions of people in skid row bars at 2 a.m., but you can't say they're conclusions about people in general.)
   

Returning to the email: this guy saw patterns in which books were favorites at colleges with different average SAT scores. Addressing #1, he correctly didn't count colleges with very little data. But blew it on #2, when he titled the page "books that make you dumb," revealing a pretty massive fixation on one aspect of the whole picture, and flying in the face of his assurance that "I know correlation doesn't equal causation."

And besides, on #3, he doesn't even mention the gross sampling error of making an assertion about the book, based on data from Facebook readers who read it AND who participate in listing their favorites. Example 1: the Jesuit scholars at Boston College are highly intellectual, and I imagine that if they ranked their favorite books, the Holy Bible would rank high; but I doubt the Jesuits are ranking books on Facebook, and the Bible ranks among the lowest on this guy's charts.

Example 2: if some book actually made many people so brilliant they ditched Facebook, those people would disappear from this ranking entirely, and all that would remain would be the people who completely didn't get it. And, that book would show up as "making people dumb."

Besides, there's the whole issue of whether SATs are any indication of smartness, not to mention which type of smartness (Gardner's Multiple Intelligences).

He woud have been better off titling it BooksThatLowAndHighSATSchoolFacebookMembersLove.

This isn't just an academic issue - these errors can lead us to drive off a cliff. When we think we see something, and we don't, then with the best of intentions we can make serious mistakes in our conclusions, our policy decisions and our life choices.