John Rawls: Obama Supporter?

"It is the task of the statesman to struggle against the potential lack of affinity among different peoples and try to heal its causes insofar as they derive from past domestic institutional injustices, and from the hostility among social classes inherited through their common history and antagonisms. Since the affinity among people is naturally weaker (as a matter of human psychology) as society-wide institutions include a larger area and cultural distances increase, the statesman must continually combat these shortsighted tendencies...

"The relatively narrow circle of mutually caring peoples in the world today may expand over time and must never be viewed as fixed. Gradually, poeples are no longer moved by self-interest alone or by their mutual caring alone, but come to affirm their liberal and decent civilization and culture, until eventually they become ready to act on the ideals and principles their civilization specifies. Religious toleration has historically first appeared as a modus vivendi between hostile faiths, later becoming a moral principle shared by civilized poeples and recognized by their leading religions. The same is true of the abolition of slavery and serfdom, the rule of law, the right to war only in self-defense, and the guarantee of human rights. These become ideals and principles of liberal and decent civilizations, and the principles of the Law of all civilized Peoples."

(The Law of Peoples, John Rawls)

New Diet

Increase lean proteins.
Increase fiber.
Decrease cupcakes.

A Guide to the French

Number 7: Feeling Sexy Is a State of Mind, or: Buy Good Lingerie
(By ELAINE SCIOLINO)

In her close-fitting sweaters and pants and tailored leather jackets, Eliane Victor is both stylish and alluring. The retired author and journalist is in her late 80s.

For French women, being sexy has nothing to do with age and everything to do with attitude. Arielle Dombasle, the actress and cabaret singer married to the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, dared to expose her breasts on the cover of Paris Match and took off her clothes in a song-and-dance revue at Crazy Horse in Paris. Some people feel she tries too hard. But give the lady some credit. She’s turning 50 and has a Barbie-doll body.

A 600-page sociological study of sexuality in France released this month concluded that 9 out of 10 women over 50 are sexually active. The sexiest French women seem naturally skilled in the art of moving, smiling and flirting.

Chic French women prefer to peel and polish rather than paint their faces. Too much makeup, they say, makes a woman seem older, or worse, “vulgaire.” “The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion,” Yves Saint Laurent once said. “But cosmetics are easier to buy.”

French women spend close to 20 percent of their clothing budgets on lingerie. But you also have to know how to wear it. When the Galeries Lafayette department store inaugurated its 28,000-square-foot lingerie shop in 2003, it offered free half-hour lessons by professional striptease artists.

ups and downs

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see more crazy cat pics

The Moth

http://www.themoth.org

The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon's Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda's porch. After moving to New York, George missed the sense of connection he had felt sharing stories with his friends back home, and he decided to invite a few friends over to his New York apartment to tell and hear stories. Thus the first "Moth" evening took place in his living room. Word of these captivating story nights quickly spread, and The Moth moved to bigger venues in New York.

Why "The Moth"?

The screen around Wanda's porch had a hole where moths would flutter in and get trapped in the light. Similarly, George and his friends found that the characters in their best stories would often find themselves drawn to some bright light—of adventure, ambition, knowledge—but then find themselves burned or trapped, leaving them with some essential conflict to face before the story could reach its conclusion. So George and his original group of storytellers called themselves "The Moths". George took the name with him to New York, where he hoped that New Yorkers, too, would find themselves drawn to storytelling as moths to a flame. They did.

Positive PPD!

"This is what i get for doing my preceptorship at Highland."

Raised welt, greater than 10 mm. Third year JMP student, on routine exam in preparation for UCSF clinical clerkships, finds she is first in our program to sero-convert during* years of our program; wow!

What does it feel like to find out you caught tuberculosis in medical school? "I hope i don't have to start INH treatment until after I binge drink post-Boards." First line TB drugs are relatively toxic to the liver and contraindicate alcohol.

Can I touch it?

"Ow!"

Obama

The following is taken from an op-ed piece by Roger Cohen.

Honesty feels heady right now. For seven years, we have lived with the arid, us-against-them formulas of Bush’s menial mind, with the result that the nuanced exploration of America’s hardest subject is almost giddying. Can it be that a human being, like Wright, or like Obama’s grandmother, is actually inhabited by ambiguities? Can an inquiring mind actually explore the half-shades of truth?

Yes. It. Can.

The unimaginable South African transition that Nelson Mandela made possible is a reminder that leadership matters. Words matter. The clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years.

Hillary Clinton said in January that: “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” Wrong. America’s had its fill of the prosaic.

The unthinkable can come to pass. When I was a teenager, my relatives advised me to enjoy the swimming pools of Johannesburg because “next year they will be red with blood.”

But the inevitable bloodbath never came. Mandela walked out of prison and sought reconciliation, not revenge. Later Mandela would say: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Like countless others, I came to America because possibility is broader here than in Europe’s narrower confines. Perhaps it’s my African “original sin,” but when Obama says he “will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible,” I feel fear slipping away, like a shadow receding before the still riveting idea that “out of many we are truly one.”

Why it turns out to be pretty good.

It is 840 am. I am tired and sleep deprived. I am sitting in the back corner of an advanced cellular & molecular physiology class for which i am an assistant teacher. (this supports my art and a $3 a day cappuccino habit). The professor has pulled out two clear plastic laboratory flasks out of his back pockets. "Its blood!" he declares delightedly. The blood has been diluted with saline. It looks like a delicious berry wine. He is a Man of Science in the old way - gray haired, stalwart, smells of sweat and coffee. He comes everyday, his large frame in a tie and a well pressed shirt, wears his eye glasses on a cord that hangs from his neck and sits on his large stomach. He has a patrician New England accent in which he gesticulates wildly about hemoglobin protein structure and the intricate curls of carbon dioxide graphs. To reach his office, you must traverse the dingy yellow laboratory, with its caldrouns, humming machines, and pale, hunched over graduate students who look up briefly to regard you with suspicion and to squint at the sudden onslaught of light. Inside his office is a beautiful dark wood bookshelf, heavy with text books, and that air of sweat and stale coffee is also thick with the souls of the great dead men--Fick, Boyle, Bohr, the weight of their tomes, the mysticisms of their equations, their journeys into blood and breath.

The students coo while he adds packets of nitrates and watch the rich red become a deep startling purple.

Barista not actually flirting with you, VI

A poem, cut, paste, and reformed from Mark Doty's "1981"

I don't remember who bought who drinks
Or why I liked him; I think it was simply that I could
I was wrong about so much: him,
my prospects, the charm of the gift.
Out of context, it was a cool

lumpish thing, earth toned, lop-sided
incapable of standing on its own.

I called him more than twice

If I knew where he was, even
his last name...I might call again
to apologize for my naive

persistence, my lack of etiquette,
my ignorance of the austere code of tricks.

I thought of course we'd go on learning
the fit of chest to chest, curve to curve.
I didn't understand the ethos, the drama of the search,
the studied approach to touch
as brief and reckless enjambed

...Nothing was promised, nothing sustained

or lethal offered. I wish I'd kept the heart.
Even the emblem of our own embarrasment
become acceptable to us, after a while,
evidence of someone we'd have wished to erase:
a pottery heart.

Things that are Douche-y

(1) Little dogs, especially in public restaurants

(2) Women who great each other in with a lot of high pitched, exuberant cooing

(3) Awkwardly aged people who are obviously not young, quite affluent, lack an ease about both these things, and continue to front like they are as young, edgy, and hip as they may or may not have been previously.

(4) Cappuccinos

(5) Psychology (study of, practice of)

(6) Do-gooding

(7) Hippies

(8) People who read Nietzsche in public spaces, especially if they are not 19 year old university students.

(9) Young business people, especially men, who don dress pants and pale blue button up shirts, and conduct their chatter about portfolios and stocks in bohemian coffee shops amid dreadlocks and marijuana smoke.

(10) College graduates who either work or continue to hang out in coffee shops

(11) People with babies, especially if they are affluent and all their baby doodads look obscenely Well Designed.

(12) Waify hipster kids and their voluminous irony

(13) Young people who knit

(14) Apple products

Douche-y things of which i am guilty
#2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14

Douche-y things of which I could potentially become guilty, in the future
#3, #11

Things that unambigulously command my unironic respect
(1) Old ladies

(2) Kitchen staff

(3) Hot girls reading scientific papers

(4) John McCain

(5) Professors of philosophy

(6) People with very good posture

(7) People who can do shit with their hands.

The Friday after Exams

(1) Wake up without an alarm clock setting, much later than one would normally.

(2) Continue to loll around in bed

(3) Get out of bed

(4) Get back into bed. On principle.

(5) Roll out again. Feel last night's intoxication and double order of take out pad thai like a satisfying, but heavy, lingering mist. (mist= hang over + stomach ache + self disgust)

(6) Bathe. Maybe.

(7) Put things in a back pac, leave house.

(8) Reach the end of the block before realizing you have no where to go.

(9) YAY!!!!!

(10) puzzle over what to do.

(11) Go to too-cool-for-school coffee shop

(12) look serious, tic tap at key board. Reorganize color scheme of operating system

(13) Its 2 hours later. What now?

(14) Go to bohemian coffee shop one block away.

(15) tic tap at key board. write letter to friend of many years, who lives many miles away. sigh wistfully and reminisce. reflect on current life. dream of future life. giggle over cute boys.

(16) Its 2 hours later. What now?

(17) Walk home. Get back into bed

(18) Watch a lot of youtube videos

(19) stare at the clouds passing behind the barbed wire outside your window.

(20) feel very very happy.

(21) feel a little bored

(22) remember list of 473 things you would do as soon as you have some free time (e.g. clean room, pluck eyebrows, grocery shop, read chekov, create progeny). Remain in bed.

(23) Get out of bed. Prance around. Wear very high heels that you have worn once in last 2 years. Dance to Mariah Carey. Pretend you are a fabulous motherfucker.

(24) Now it is 330 pm. Is a day really this long? holy shit!

(25) Floss. Very well.

(26) Give up. Read the new england journal of medicine. Take notes on tuberculosis.

Practicing the Art

Does Anyone Have a Case? The Balint Group Experience

By Cecilia Runkle, PhD; Laura Morgan, MD; Eric Lipsitt, MD

The Value

The practice of medicine is often referred to as the "art of medicine." Our experiences in participating in and co-facilitating Balint groups reflect this adage. After a case is presented and clarifying questions answered, the presenter listens while the group verbally shines a light on the case from many perspectives. Gradually, the picture becomes three-dimensional, with many shades and possible meanings. The presenter is then invited back into the group discussion, free to view the picture of their case from new directions. Sometimes, a presenter will put further touches on the picture; sometimes one will paint it over completely; sometimes one will simply contemplate a new picture they'd not been aware of before. In all cases, for all participants, there is a change in perception that leads to finer practice of the art of medicine.

In the community of shared experience, with sensitive and strong facilitation, we learn to support and trust each other. Cases with "risky" content, such as doubt about our medical knowledge, difficulty setting limits, or negative feelings toward patients, become normalized and safe to share and thus better understood. In this community, we heal ourselves while we practice the art of healing others. We believe that Balint groups provide a forum for the kind of professional development that leads to spontaneous personalization of care. We hope to share our enthusiasm and support for initiating this process with all interested colleagues.

A Boy Named Sue

"Studies showed that children with odd names got worse grades and were less popular than other classmates in elementary school. In college they were more likely to flunk out or become 'psychoneurotic.' Prospective bosses spurned their résumés. They were overrepresented among emotionally disturbed children and psychiatric patients."
Marion Tierny, NY Times

A poem by Al-Kabir, of the 15th century

Saints, I see the world is mad
If I tell the truth they rush to beat me,
if I lie they trust me.
I've seen the pious Hindus, rule-followers,
early morning bath-takers--
killing souls, they worship rocks.
They know nothing.
I've seen plenty of Muslim teachers, holy men
reading their holy books
and teaching their pupils techniques.
They know just as much.
And posturing yogis, hypocrites,
hearts crammed with pride,
praying to brass, to stones, reeling
with pride in their pilgrimage,
fixing their caps and their prayer-beads,
painting their brow-marks and arm-marks,
braying their hymns and their couplets,
reeling. They never heard of soul.
The Hindu says Ram is the Beloved,
the Turk says Rahim.
Then they kill each other.
No one knows the secret.
They buzz their mantras from house to house,
puffed with pride.
The pupils drown along with their gurus.
In the end they're sorry.
Kabir says, listen saints:
they're all deluded!
Whatever I say, nobody gets it.
It's too simple.

HIV, Tuberculosis, Giardia and Hepatitis

Here I am, I spent the weekend emerged in pestilence, now write the clinical dissection of domestic violence while grooving to Erykah Badu. I'm aching (OCD, stress, ovulation, the perils of foolish love). Well, my soul is raw, I describe in maps of nerve deficiency a woman's battery, and in protein electron polarity, the ravage of AIDS. What is required to proceed: a tolerance for contradiction, an embrace of the nonlinear.

Murmurs of the Earth - A mixed tape of the cosmos

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html

"The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears, because passionate love is also partly about terror."

("These violent delights have violent ends")

Serotonin in the brain is associated with obsession, depression, and racing thoughts.

"What a paradox, what a cruelty, what an irony, that inner life and imagination may lie dull and dormant unless released, awakened, by an intoxication or a disease." (Case study, neurosyphilis in 84 year old woman)

Experts report that "drama" is not good for your "brain".

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12/AR2007021201657.html

(says A.S., this article=ginsberg+neuroendocrinology+hunter s. thompson)

To do: reasons to write love letters, reason to put them in bottles.

Four Doctrines of Happiness

(1) Know thyself
(2) Control your desires
(3) Take what is yours
(4) Remember Death
- Jennifer Michael Hecht

It is important that you do it.

"We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have."