INTERESTING TIMES

Without deviation from the norm,
progress is not possible.
-Frank Zappa

Tim Minchin: If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out
https://youtu.be/bBUc_kATGgg

Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.
--Lily Tomlin

If at first you don’t succeed,
Try twice more
so your failure will be
statistically significant.
--Peter D'Adamo

It sounds cruel, but survivors laugh and play, and even in the most horrible situations--perhaps especially in those situations--they continue to laugh and play. To deal with reality you first much recognize it as such...and play puts a person in touch with his environment, while laughter makes the feeling of being threatened manageable.

...Laughter stimulates the left prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that helps us to feel good and be motivated. That stimulation alleviates anxiety and frustration. There is evidence that laughter can send chemical signals to actively inhibit the firing of nerves in the amygdala, thereby dampening fear. Laughter, then, can help temper negative emotions.

Laurence Gonzales in Deep Survival, page 41.

The other day while challenging us with a case in which the patient needed extensive advanced medical care the prof asked "OK, what next?". I responded with "Does the patient have medical insurance?" And the professor joked that first on the TO DO list is a "wallet biopsy". We laughed. It is necessary to assess people's ability to pay for treatments, but too painful to use such terms with a patient. But at that point I decided that I need to begin collecting medical slang, not jargon but the most offensive and borderline slang that I hear. I have always been interested in language.

So tonight I was working on my homework assignment for clinic synthesis, and trying to find the abbreviations for a few things, when I ran across the wikipedia page listing medical slang. I have pilfered the entire contents of the wiki page, and started adding to it. I think this may be the beginning of something especially perverse. I LOL'd when I saw the definition of the acronym TEETH.

( medical slang list here, not all offensive, moved forward from 2/20/09 )

Maybe
some day
a chicken can cross the road
without having its
motives questioned.
--heard from Ed O

Medical researchers have discovered a new disease that has no symptoms. It is impossible to detect, and there is no known cure. Fortunately, no cases have been reported thus far.
--George Carlin

Unfortunately, as Shrub proved, lack of intelligence and unclear speech do not disqualify one for the presidency. Quotes to demonstrate Santorum's lack of sophistication and insight:
( Santorum quotes )