Its been a tough week

This is my orientation week before I start working in the hospital on Tuesday. It's been almost overwhelming for me to try and get everything done. I haven't had almosta moment free. That's why I haven't been posting regularly. Also none of the photo developers in the are have been able to develop my pictures so I still don't have them posted. I only hope I can get it done before Tuesday. There's supposed to be a picnic tomorrow or Friday, but the social chairs seem very disorganized and I'm not sure what's really going to happen. Not that I'd probably be able to go anyway.

jews in Iran

A story about the Jewish community of Iran in Ynet News

The Princess Bride Sequel!

William Goldman is finally writing a sequel to his classic tale of adventure and romance! Giants! Swordfights! Evilest men! Bravest heroes! Truest love! "The Princess Bride" had it all. Goldman has so far only pubished some preview chapters. Iread them in the bookstore and I am sad to say that they seem very mediocre compared to the original. Hopefully, that is just because they were out of context. It would be terrible if Goldman ruined one of the greatest adventure storeis of all time with a lousy sequel.

Baltimore Pictures

A friendly stranger offerred to photograph us so you get double trouble with this one.

Dave and a tugboat.

Me and the habitat for humanity crab.

Dave
They had these crabs all over Baltimore. This one by the concert hall was quite nice, but many ofthe otehr sponsors didn't seem to get into the spirit. They were supposed to decorate the crab in a way that related to their business, but instead they just slapped a bunch of random glass on the front and didn't even bother to color the back. It made the good ones really stand out.

7 foot knoll lighthouse. They hauled this from the middle of the bay.

The Crawdaddies

Ahh fine dining at Baltimore's Inner harbor.

Me and Margie

Margie and Dave

Saturday, my parents and I came back to Philly to move all my stuff from my old apartment to the new apartment. Then I took the train down to Baltimore to visit Dave. We met up with Margie and had dinner at the Inner Mall. It was great to finally get to relax. We ate outside on the mall's balcony. The view of the bay was spectacular. We had a gentle sea breeze and music from the Crawdaddies public concert below. It was the most fun I'd had all summer. We were considering renting a movie, but I was just too beat.

The USMLE was an incredibly poorly written test. I can't actually give any details here, but many of the questions were incredibly stupid. A few of the questions were not merely easy, but did not actually require any medical knowledge whatsoever. Others were impossible no matter what you knew. Meanwhile the diagrams that were actually produced by the Board -instead of swiped from somebody else's book- looked like they were drawn by Middle schoolers on graphing calculators. Can't they hire a real illustrator? Or if they can't, just swipe it like the rest of their pictures. Ugh. When people told me that the USMLE doesn't test how good a doctor I would be, I had no idea how true it was. Not only don't they test clinical skills, they don't even competently test basic sciences. No wonder kaplan doesn't try to get real test questions. If they gave out questions like these, people would demand their money back. I blame this on the fact that the people who make the test have a guaranteed monopoly and are completely unaccountable. After all, writing good test questions is very hard and if everyone has to accept your test anyway there's no reason not to publish any old thing and knock off early. I'm still mystified why unlike every other electronic test it takes 6 weeks to get your scores back. Grading on a curve doesn't make much sense since it takes 6 weeks no matter when you take the test. If anyone has any idea e-mail me.

Me at the game.

Usmle is over! go yankees!

My Dad and i went to the Yankees Mets game afte the USMLE.

Shea came over to wish me luck on the USMlE.

USMLE Friday

I have the USMLE Friday. I have to say, I'm very nervous. Trying not to show it though.

Ben Frankling in a toga

Ben Franklin in a toga from the first public library in America.
PhillyMikec73e

Still studying for the USMLE

Still studying for the USMLE so here's some pictues of Krispy Kreme doughnuts being made.

PhillyMikec73e

PhillyMikec73e

Still studying for the USMLE so here are some photos of Krispy Kreme donuts being made. mmmmm.
PhillyMikec73e

Studying for the USMLE

Just studying for the USMLE today. So in lieu of a normal post, a picture of an unusual rock I found randomly on the ground.
PhillyMikec73e

And Eternal Springtime by Rodin.
PhillyMikec73e

Hi Dave

My brother has started a blog too. It's called Baltimore Tales.

Packed up

We started packing up today. I'll be taking the USMLE on Friday then moving over the weekend. I should have some more interesting posts then, when orientation starts.

Hi Dave

My twin, Dave, comes up to visit from Baltimore.

Fish of the Wissahickon

Graffiti on the Strawberry Mansion Bridge

Does that include responsibility for defacing public buildings? Just asking, y'know.

Not quite so upbeat.

.
PhillyMikec73e

You don't expect this scrawled on the underside of a bridge.

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More graffitti

Some Unusually upbeat graffiti on the Strawberry Mansion Bridge
Philly Rodin Museum

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More Riverine Reflecions

I like this one!

Schuykil Syzygy*

Here's a fortuitous pictures of 4 different boats crossing each other's paths at the same time.

*A syzygy is when 3 astronomical bodies line up in a straight line.** It's also a killer word for hangman.
**Dictionary.com claims that it only applies for the sun, earth and moon, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

Pickle Chips

All right! They've finally got Pickle flavored potato chips in the US. I had some of these up in Canada 5 or 6 years ago and they were the best chips I ever tasted, but I was never able to find them again. But today the local Rite-Aid got a whole case of them and now I can have pickle flavored chips to my hearts content.

Phillymikec73e

9am phone call

A man called a 9am this morning claiming tob a detective looking for a missing person, I hope he finds her,

Chance Meeting

I actually met two girls from Drexel main campus today. In the 3 years I've been going to Drexel Med, I actually hadn't met anyone from there. They actually noticed i was wearing my Drexel shirt and decided to say hi. They didn't notice the college of medicine part though. Next time I go to the bookstore I'll tell them that it needs to be bigger. We had agood conversation. They kept saying that they'd see me around campus and I kept having to say "No. Sorry. I haven't been on the main campus, yet." I had a good time. I'll definitely call them when boards are over.
Then to provide a coda this guy Bryce comes up to me and wants to know what I was talking about with them and was all "bitches" this and "bitches" that. What a jackass. Anyway, I ignored him, but now I'm wishing I had just told him off. After all someone's got to take a stand against that kind of crap. What do you think? Comments?

Fall

This picture is obviously from last fall.
I especially like the way the camera captured the mist in the background.
It makes the river look quite eerie.

3 Worlds

Hooray! My camera phone is working again. I don't know how long I've had this photo sitting on my phone.
Yes, the photo is right side up.
Actually since it's a picture of the water's surface I suppose it could go any way up even sideways.

Quote of the day

My dad always gives me the news of the day from the Wall Street Journal. Today, he had a quote that I really liked.

"No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up."

-Lily Tomlin

Ahhh, I love it.

Happy Shavuos everyone!

Dead baby bird on tree stump

I saw this while walking to school. It was even worse in real life. Very sad.

Aaargh

I got a tetanus shot a week ago and my shoulder is still just as sore as it was then, if not more so. Last year, when I got the flu shot my doctor showed me how to give a shot so the patient didn't feel it at all. He said the trick was to squeeze the area where you're giving the shot so the pressure sensation drowns out the pain. It worked perfectly on me. I wonder why no other doctor or nurse I've ever gone to did that.

needs 3 hands but otherwise simple.

complicated but easy
Philly Rodin Museum

a difficult puzzle

me

Well, just great! In my medical school malpractice class I was taught that you needed three things to lose.
1. negligence
2. proximate cause and
3. actual damage.

Now according to this case by the NJ supreme court step 2 is gone and its not neccessary to prove that what you did actually caused the harm. It just has to be vaguely related to what you did. I'm almost more mad at my school for wasting my time learning this legal theory crap when clearly malpractice judgments have absolutely nothing to do with it. For crying out loud if the supreme court doesn't even care about proximate cause, what laws would an ordinary jury care about. I'll tell you. None at all. [extreme bitterness]

Puzzles 2

Here are the puzzles.

Puzzles

I stopped at Walgreens today, and by sheer chance they had a set of 3-dimensional wooden of the type that I've been looking for for years. So I bought them. The 2 more complex looking ones are actually simple and just require a bit of dexterity and patience. I'm finding the 6 piece one fiendishly difficult. I have it almost solved, but not quite. Pictures tomorrow.

PhillyMikeC73E

Philly Rodin Museum
Philly Rodin Museum

Home again

I came home for the weekend. My brother, Lee, was home already. When I got home he was buying stones to mark the grave of our dog, Heidi, who died last week. I miss her a lot. The house is really different without her. Still studying for USMLE. PhillyMikeC73E

studying

studying for the USMLE. [sigh]