Medicine

Septoplasty, Part One

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Last Thursday I had a Septoplasty. I thought it might be interesting to some of our readers to read about it from beginning to end. Of course it isn’t really over yet as I’m still in the recovery phase, but I can’t really do much as far as any real activity goes so I decided to do this. I am also wanting to put this short series out as a guide for those who get this procedure done in the future so they know what to expect and how it all goes down. It may also give a glimpse for our foreign readers into how our medical system works in the good ‘ol USA.

Part One, today, will be pre-op, part two will be the actual surgery day, and the final part will be recovery. I may add an epilogue later with financial information and insurance and how that all went down.

Below the fold will be part one, pre-op.

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Worthwhile Reading and Viewing

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Much political anger is based on attributing to opponents views that they don’t actually hold, according to this study, summarized and discussed on twitter here.

Paul Graham, who himself writes some interesting essays, says:

No one who writes essays would be surprised by this. When people attack an essay you’ve written, 95% of the time they do it by making up something you didn’t actually say, and then attacking that.

The skill of surgeons varies tremendously, with bottom quartile surgeons having over 4x as many complications as the best surgeons in the same hospital…so says this study.   And surgeons are keenly aware of who is good & who is bad – their rankings of others are very accurate.   Summarized and discussed on twitter here, where there is also a reference to the classic study   showing 10X range among programmers, and another study measuring the impact of managers on revenue performance in the game industry.

Some innovation stories from small US manufacturers, and a shop-floor driven tooling innovation at GE Aviation.

Speaking of tools, here’s a study suggesting that using mechanical tools improves language skills.

The limits of narrative, at Quillette.

Ryan Peterson, CEO of the digital freight forwarder Flexport, discovered an AI tool that lets you create art without being an artist, and has been having fun with it.

Worthwhile Reading and Viewing

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A list of common cognitive biases

Formative experiences persist over long spans of time

The current status of artificial intelligence in medicine

Related: Limitations of neural networks   Also: Playing against AI can improve the abilities of human Go players.

The realities of energy storage.   I have observed that very few journalists comprehend the difference between a Kw and a Kwh–and why it matters.  (And this includes business and technology journalists.)

Paul Graham, at twitter:

Putin’s bungled invasion shows us that democracy’s greatest advantage, in the long term, is simply its “guarantee that leaders are regularly replaced.”  He was responding to this article.

Some people create or discover new things. Some enforce social norms. There is little overlap between the two.

Graham (who is one of the very few venture capitalists to have attended art school) also recommends this art history thread.

For Christmas

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(A relevant seasonal excerpt from my World War II novel, My Dear Cousin, which was completed and released last year at about this time. Part of the narrative is in letters, between two cousins; Vennie is an Army nurse serving in North Africa and Europe, Peg the wife of a Far East POW, waiting out the war in Australia, wondering for years if her husband is still alive.)  The details of this 1942 Christmas holiday celebration in a military hospital was taken from this book.

Letter from Vennie to Peg, dated 26 December 1942, Postmarked APO NY, headed Arzew, Algiers

My dear Cuz:

We had our Christmas here in Algeria at the hospital and it was more beautiful and moving than I can describe.

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Apparently, We Have Been Naughty

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We have all been naughty, disobedient, ungrateful serfs or so say the self-nominated Covidiocy experts, especially including those of nationwide media fame and of a political stripe known for their fanatical allegiance to the current ruling class. We’re supposed to get another tongue-lashing from the White House tonight, which has already promised a winter of severe illnesses and death for those holding out against getting vaccinated against the latest Covid variant. Are they going to cancel Christmas for those who won’t cooperate? Are we now all enrolled in the variant-of-the-month club, and expected to maintain a constant intravenous drip of boosters for the endless variants?

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