Perspective
I have just been informed of another delay—thanks to Covid—in getting a much-needed surgery. The details aren't important. What's important is that if my personal Covid Pandemic Story turns out to be that I had a semi-elective surgery delayed by a month because of...
On Improving My Use of Verbs
Strong verbs create action, save words, and reveal the players.Roy Peter Clark—Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies For Every Writer I dedicate the rest of this month to active verbs! How? During my first draft editing, I'll identify every verb as active, passive,...
Culture: A Red-Flag Word For Me
Here’s a definition of culture I recently read in Nietzsche’s essay David Strauss, the confessor and the writer: Culture is, above all, unity of artistic style in all expressions of the life of a people.Nietzsche Here’s one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s...
Wittgenstein, Mountains, And Rivers
I just received the book Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations via Amazon. (Thank you Amazon!) It's recommended reading for the one-day course An Introduction to Wittgenstein: Games, Pictures, Rules, and Therapies which I will be taking this May through Oxford’s...
Microsoft, Nuance, and Emotional Analysis via AI and Voice Data
Microsoft recently purchased the speech recognition software company Nuance (Microsoft completes acquisition of Nuance, ushering in a new era of outcomes-based AI) for 16 billion dollars. At first glance, this looks like a good thing for both healthcare and...
EHRs and Data Harvesting
I am not necessarily opposed to a healthcare institution acquiring high volumes of data from my electronic health record (EHR), even without my explicit consent. Data harvesting often results in public health benefits and sometimes results in patient population...
Stress, Creativity, And Neural Networks
For me, stress is the enemy of creativity. For example, in preparation for my tax visit in two weeks, I discovered a significant error on my bank’s tax form (it didn't list several significant tax transactions). I believed this was going to be a hassle to correct, and...
Evolving
About two years ago, my 4-month old kitten Roo used to play “fetch.” I threw my wife’s ponytail hairband down the hallway, and Roo would run after it, put it in his mouth, and bring it back to me. We played this game dozens and dozens of times. But after about a month...
Creativity and Kant’s Togetherness Principle
Here is Kant’s “Togetherness Principle”: Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.Kant Although this is usually considered part of Kant’s theory of cognitive dualism about sensibility and understanding, I think it also has something to...
A Self-Check System for Running (and Writing?)
When I used to run marathons and half-marathons, I performed 4-5 periodic self-checks during the race. I would start from my toes and feet, making sure the shoes felt right, I didn't have any injuries in my feet, and I wasn’t developing blisters. I would then work my...