Stupid Topics of the Day

Stupid Topics of the Day:

1. Seattle-Bound. I'm heading out to Seattle for my short-but-sweet XMas Vacation. I've never been there before but have no doubt that my friend Jason will give me an outstanding tour.

2. Day-Time Super SAR. The only thing standing between myself and the lovely Seattle trip is three days of serving as the Day-Time Super SAR, the chief admitting resident for the hospital. Even moreso than the Night-time Super SAR rotation on which I've already rotated, the Day-Time Super SAR position is really an administrative one. I can tell you, for instance, that precisely 24 patients requiring floor or intensive care Medicine beds have occurred from the span of 8am until 4:26 pm today, and that it's a busier day than usual for the Oncology service.

3. Crappy Football Weekend. What a depressing weekend for me. First, my Fantasy Football team plays like poop and I get knocked out of the playoffs...had I won this game I would have been ensured of winning at least $70. Second, I had to watch the Minnesota Vikings suffer a humiliating loss in the presence of my friends Aravind & Sameer, two die-hard Steelers fans. Third, the Indianapolis Colts (one of my "adopted teams" given the fact that my parents live in Indy) were stopped short in their attempt to become the 2nd team ever to go undefeated throughout the course of a full NFL season.

4. Forced Feeding of Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. During my down time today I read an interesting editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine on the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, many of whom have decided to protest their situation by a mass hunger strike. Interestingly, the military and its physicians have taken the position that they are not going to allow the detainees to do this, and have begun a program of forced feeding. This involves the insertion of a nasogastric tube (or "NG tube") down the nose and into the stomach so that liquid food can be delivered which prevents them from starving to death. This understandably raises a host of ethical issues which are not easily answered.

5. Knights of the Old Republic: For all those of you who were wondering, the Rancor is easily disposed of by tricking it into eating a frag grenade by hiding it in the nearby corpse pile along with the artificial odor. Kaboom!

6. It's friggin' cold outside. Just thought I'd mention it. By the way, that didn't stop me from going for a pleasant run last night with naught but shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt :) Also, did you know that -40 degrees centigrade is the same as -40 degrees Fahrenheit?