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Well I just spent the last four hours or so hacking out my physiology notes. They're purrrty, but they're not done yet, and I'm tired of learning about the fucking kidney. It's got to be the most complex organ system we've learned about yet, and I find it horribly boring. Perhaps because there are so many little details.

However, this was a little interesting:

• Urine
1. At its most dilute it is 65-70 mOsm/L
2. At its most concentrated it is 1200mOsm/L

So basically when your piss is really rank and dark, you're probably ~1000 milliosmoles of waste per liter of urine. If you're severely dehydrated, you're right up around 1200mOsm per liter of urine - so dark you basically can't see through it. Yum!

I fucked around quite a lot over the last two days or so. Doing everything except what I was supposed to be doing — studying. So I need to refocus and buckle down.

I had my pathophysiology final today (fourth exam, basically, non-cumulative), and I passed the class, but I could have done so much better on the exam because it was quite easy. Dammit, I could have raised my grade somewhat. Instead I "wasted" time writing and worrying about it getting published.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And my belly has been hurting off and on all day.

One last thing… I bought a DSLR this afternoon. Specifically, a Canon Digital Rebel with a 2GB compact flash card. Both items should be here by Wednesday. Pics from the Intarweb at large:

"…it is DJ … Ti?sto."

And so opens the greatest trance album ever made. I wish I had been at the show.

Tiesto owns me so much I can't even tell you. Especially this album, Magik 7 - Live in LA, and even more especially the opening track "People want to be needed" by Auranaut. Oh my fucking God it is an orgasm for your ears. It's a live recording, and you can just feel the energy of the crowd. From there it moves on to "Sunset on Ibiza" and after that what track it is just stops mattering because all you can do is just sit there and feel the music.

I first heard this album when I was experimenting with some techno streams just after we got broadband a few years ago. I had just found a program that would record whatever was coming out of your speakers (not a microphone recording), and this was the first recording I'd ever made. It was something like 72 minutes long; it barely fit on a CD. I remember being annoyed because all I knew was that it was DJ Tiesto, and I didn't know anything about the album, or how I could acquire more of his music.

Well, the other day, I found the way. If you're a trance fan, download the first two songs on Magik 7. You won't regret it. If you don't like trance, you won't like these two tracks, though. :p

It's raining today. I like the rain for a lot of reasons, one of them being that I tend to get more done. Knowing this, I decided last night to try to get some work done for a change.

I got up today at a pretty normal hour, but I changed one thing about my routine: I took a shower immediately. For some reason, my ADD is both better and worse all at the same time in the morning. My thoughts jump all over the place as they always do, but at the same time, they're somehow more focused along productivity-related wavelengths, and I get more in-depth ideas. Plans take come out of thin air, and take detailed shape with relative ease compared to normal where I have to have complete silence in order to wrack my brains to come up with something. Today, in ten minutes, I had planned no fewer than four things that I wanted to write about, one of which was this topic right here, as well as coming up with a meta to do list for the summer months. Perhaps it's the white noise of the shower that helps. I do know that white noise + a mindless activity = high levels of mental activity.

Annoyingly enough, as soon as I get out of the shower, I forget everything. It's sort of like when you're asleep and dreaming, and when you wake up, you can only remember the dream in the most vague manner, and the longer you've been awake, the less and less you remember. Well it's like this for me when I'm in the shower.

This time, I dried off as quickly as possible and ran to my computer to write everything down. I made the most general notes about what I wanted – just enough to be able to remember exactly what it was that I was thinking while I was in the shower.

So far today I've done two things that require Herculean concentration and discipline. To write some of the things I want to write about is going to require more. Happily, though, the better trends I set in the morning, the more likely I am to be productive later.

But back to the topic at hand. I wish I could somehow write down my phantasmagoric thoughts while I am actually in the shower. A waterproof whiteboard or something. Has anyone ever seen or heard of such a thing?

The Serenity trailer is out. I didn't know a damn thing about it until just now. It looks sexy. I'm going to have to look into Firefly.

"Define interesting."

"Oh God Oh God we're all gonna die?"

I'm borrowing the title of eJacqui's blog today. Because the things below will make you go "wtf?"

Far From the Medical Trenches, It's O.K. to Laugh

It was not from natural causes that Bobby was a patient. Rather, he was a victim of his lady friend. The lady had left the young man on the doorstep with a stab wound to the left chest. Not only had she delivered the patient but, as we learned later, she had delivered the stab wound.

[...]

I couldn't come to their aid. One slash opened Bobby's chest. I found a tense pericardium containing dark blood, which when opened to the reward of a waking patient and a returning blood pressure, revealed a one-inch gash of the right ventricle, the heart chamber that pumps blood to the lungs. Now the patient, awake, tried to leave the operating room with his heart poking out of his chest.

The emergency over, I asked Izzy how things were. His response, unmasked, remains noteworthy: "And there he was, no respirations, no blood pressure, no pulse and no insurance."

It turned out that old Izzy was right. The patient, who recovered uneventfully, had no insurance. After his stabber spurned him a second time, he appeared once more at the hospital, with two broken legs, the culmination of a suicide jump from a two-story window.

I heard that he still had no insurance, but that Izzy did the anesthesia for his fractures.

What the fuck? Surreal. Specifically:

Rather, he was a victim of his lady friend. The lady had left the young man on the doorstep with a stab wound to the left chest. Not only had she delivered the patient but, as we learned later, she had delivered the stab wound.

[snip]

The patient, who recovered uneventfully, had no insurance. After his stabber spurned him a second time, he appeared once more at the hospital, with two broken legs, the culmination of a suicide jump from a two-story window.

That's what I call a hell of a woman.

Just a note about Peace Corps

A few days later, the military mortared a neighborhood in Lome populated by the opposition. As we are 12k from the border, my postmate and I were supposed to evacuate to Cotonou the day that the violence started, but Peace Corps never contacted us. We only found out because Michelle went to the bank the next day and found that Peace Corps had evacuated everyone else in the area, including those who are farther from the border than we are.

That's just a snippet, but seriously, what the fuck? GG peace corps.

Mix Math and Medicine and Create Confusion

For example, a depressed patient told me she had read that the chances were 60 percent that she would respond to the antidepressant I had prescribed for her.

"That means that 60 percent of the time I will feel better on this, right?" she asked.

Well, not exactly. I explained that if 10 people with a depression just like hers walked into my office, about 6 would be expected to respond to that antidepressant.

But the statistics, I told her, referred to a large sample, not an individual. She would either improve with this treatment or she would not, I said, but she shouldn't worry because we would keep trying until we found a treatment that worked.

"You mean my chances of getting better are really only 50 percent?" she asked with dismay.

Are people really that stupid ignorant? Because I'm pretty sarcastic, I'd probably have told her that 60% of her would be not depressed, and the rest would be depressed. Because it seems like that silly of a question to me. I guess maybe it's not, though.

Innumeracy explains much of the public's confusion about the risks of various drugs and medical treatments. But not all of it. In a classic 1966 study, a group of subjects was told that a man had parked his car on a hill and that the car had rolled back into a hydrant after the man had left. The subjects were sympathetic to the man.

But a second group of subjects, told that the car had rolled into another person after the man walked away, held him responsible, even though the cause was the same.

People might chalk up a minor mishap to chance, but they are reluctant to blame a serious event on bad luck. Someone or something has to be held responsible.

Huh, interesting. I would have still been sympathetic to the guy whose car rolled, and held the idiot who got hit by it responsible for not paying attention to his surroundings. I guess that's just me, though.

This part hits home, especially recently:

So although the young man might lower his chances of having a depressed child by avoiding women with depression in the family, he could never eliminate that risk.

The truth is that random events can make or break us. It is more comforting to believe in the power of hard work and merit than to think that probability reigns not only in the casino but in daily life.

Substitute "Crohn's disease" for depression and I'm in the same boat. God forbid I procreate with someone of Jewish heritage… my kids wouldn't have a chance. :p

I'm pretty sure I just got a boner.

• Magik, Vol. 7: Live in Los Angeles
• In My Memory [Bonus Disc]
• Superstar Dj: the remixes of
• NYANA
• Just Be
• Parade Of The Athletes

Does it get any better than –preset standard mp3s of DJ Tiesto?

Well actually it does. If you want lossless.

All available in any format you want.

Up until about two months ago, I'd never smoked anything in my life. Nothing. No cigarettes, no maryjane, no cloves, no pipes, nothing.

But I'd always been interested in smoking a cigar. For a couple of reasons.

1. It looked like fun
2. It smelled good
3. People don't usually get addicted to them.

So Adam and I were up in NH a little while back and there's this huge smoke shop on 28 in Salem. (2 Guys Smoke Shop) We picked up a Macanudo torpedo apiece.

It was fun once I figured out how to actually smoke it. (It took me a few minutes. )

We went back a little while ago and picked up a pair of Padrons. It was also good — but the diameter was a little much. I also picked up a cigar cutter and a nice Colibri lighter. We got much better and more even burns with the lighter than with matches. I also picked up a refill container.

I went back again today and spent a little more money:

1. 4x Padrons (of a smaller diameter)
2. a Perdomo reserve sampler pack containing:
• 2x Cameroon
• 2x Cuban Cafe
• 2x Maduro
• 1x Champagne
3. Another Colibri lighter.
4. Another cigar cutter.
5. A humidity bag or whatever they're called.

I need an ashtray, and I'm thinking about getting this one later on this summer.

If my mom reads this, she's probably going to be disappointed in me.

What the hell is wrong with some people?

My wife has informed me she has a student named Quantum in her class now. He has two brothers named Quark and Quasar. I am not shitting you. If I can get a copy of the roll book, I will post a redacted copy.

And yes, the father is a Physicist.

Obviously he's a physicist. And obviously he has only a very tenuous grip on his good senses. If at all.