I’ve been stuck at the airport gate for hours numerous times waiting for my delayed flight to be cleared for take-off. I see the flight agents typing away at their 1970′s-style computers frantically to rebook stranded travelers. Behind them sits an aging dot-matrix printer churning out airline codes on reams of paper.  Every so often, I hear a muted announcement over the loudspeakers regarding re-routed flights. The passengers, miserable at best, are on their smartphones frantically texting their travel status to friends and family. Some of them sit in clumps near the power outlets to refuel their power-craving gadgets. How could an airport possibly function in such chaos?

In aviation design, there is no room for chance. Every detail serves a purpose. For instance, the design of airport runways required efficiency to the finest detail. Chicago’s Midway Airport is a prime example. Considered the “busiest mile”, the airport roughly consists of a square mile of runways closely surrounded by local businesses. Its longest runway runs approximately 6000-ft, which limits the size of aircraft the airport can handle. A fully fueled Boeing 747 with maximum payload requires a minimum ground speed of 200-mph for a safe take-off, not considering incoming winds. Approximately 13000-ft of runway is needed to achieve this speed. Furthermore, airfields with limited land area implement displaced threshold airstrips.

The area of the runway marked with chevrons is the displaced threshold region. This region indicates that no aircraft is to land directly on that portion of the runway. The designation applies often when noise ordinances or structural buildings prevent a gradual aircraft descent onto the runway from a particular direction. In many cases, the displaced threshold section also offers less structural support than the opposite end of the runway; the ground on which an aircraft touches down must be able to withstand a greater pressure (force / area) than the rollout region.

How the hell does air travel function with airports working the way they do now? It is futile to seek out an explanation. Airports operate the same way our eye clinic does–despite all the mis-scheduled patients, missing charts, absent technicians; all the patients are remarkably cared for at the end of the day.

medicine, misc euphemisms, travel

The further I progress in specializing in medicine, the more I realize how much my daily abilities deteriorate.

Take language, for example. Aside from the broken Spanish I acquire from my Hispanic patients, I rarely invoke English dictum beyond the eighth grade. Our vocabulary in the office is limited to a defined collection of complex medical terms strung together with linking verbs and qualifiers describing outcomes (hemorrhage, blindness, infection, inflammation). Outside of  the office, I’ve struggled to identify common objects like “spoon” and “basket” without using hand gestures.

Is this shift simply a result of natural selection (adaptation on steroids!)? French naturalist Jean Lamarck coined terms like “use” and “disuse” for adaptation spanning generations. Are professionals contributing to their own extinction by being good at their job?

It would be interesting to measure cortical function throughout the course of medical school. This could be followed with serial PET scans to localize metabolic activity in the brain. Areas that fail to sustain signal can be used to correlate with mapped cortical regions. Indeed, a spatial correlation in such an experiment would be damming to future physicians-to-be…

misc euphemisms, humor, life

I recently made a first attempt to rent an apartment in NYC. Even though I had lived in the city for four years before, I previously dealt exclusively with the university for housing (In retrospect, this was a luxury). The manner I approached the process truly showed my naivete to the housing market–I believed that there was a housing market slump. Several months ago, the NYTimes published an article regarding the amazing deals to be had. I was wrong.

I had been on the hospital housing waiting list for over a year now, and initially hoped to take the first available opening. After calling the housing office daily for two weeks, I was finally told that I had two days to accept an offer before the unit was offered to someone else. I frantically requested a personal day at the hospital, and made a trip up. To maximize my trip, I also found two real estate agents to show me additional apartments.

The hospital housing was atrocious. The building itself was nicely maintained, with an ornate, marble lobby. The apartment was a first floor unit directly next to (3 feet away) the loading bay of Gristedes, a local supermarket. It was still under “moderate” renovation when I viewed it, and the electrician was trying to patch up some nonworking electrical outlets. The bedroom also had an elevated 4′x4′x4′ cube in the corner, which apparently formed the ceiling of the outside walkway down to the garbage alley.

Some of the realtor listed apartments in the neighborhood were situated in a more ideal location, but still had major issues. I encountered one listed with a “renovated” bathroom. The bathroom wall tiles resembled those at my high school, a distasteful pale yellow. The tub, toilet bowl, and wall-mounted soap dish were an algae-green. The toilet seat was an off-white color. The shower wall had four knobs–I did not inquire their functions. Indeed, the bathroom was “renovated”. No missing tiles though!

Have I been watching too much HGTV? Is it too much to ask for matching bathroom fixtures? Hell, if I’m going to shell out $1200+ a month for a 280 sq. ft. studio, shouldn’t I get one without brown fungi oozing out of the water faucet? Fortunately, subsequent apartments I viewed were slightly improved, although they wielded a price difference of several hundred dollars.

Weary after several hours of hunting, I finally settled on a modest 1BR apartment on the 1st floor (geh!). The laundry room is located in another building across the street, but at least there is no visible hyphae growing in the bathroom walls. With the recent housing market slump in mind, I attempted to negotiate a better price. This neighborhood was not in a favorable part of Manhattan, and the building was close to hundred years old (with minimal updates). My realtor smiled politely at me, and told me that she would speak to the landlord.

Several hours later, my realtor informed me that another potential tenant for the apartment was interested in paying more than the asking price. So much for bargaining.

For now, my apartment hunting adventure continues…

misc euphemisms, life

Stumped about what to do for residency? Here’s the ultimate guide for career choice. Alfred Padilla, one of the endocrinologists up at Greenwich, graciously sent me his Venn diagram. It doesn’t include all the specialties, but you can extrapolate from the data:

medicine euphemisms, medicine

I saw this electronic billboard at the Philadelphia Airport:

The demise of E. coli

We will never learn. E. coli will always get the last laugh. And for the record, E. coli is also a “native” of our colon. He makes Vitamin K for us. His nemesis C. diff is just waiting for him to die so that we can be blessed with foul-smelling, runny stools 10+ times a day (pseudomembranous colitis).

medicine euphemisms, life