Matthew's Blog
The Word “Hesitancy”
Whenever I run across controversies around words, a common occurrence now thanks to social media, I tend not to weigh in too quickly, if at all; rather, I like to start with the basics—the word’s etymology and dictionary definition. Take the word hesitancy. In the...
How I Capture Ideas For My Blog
For my blog, idea capture is not one of my weaknesses. I have a running list of over one hundred ideas for blog topics at any given time (117 as of this morning), which I can dive into whenever I want. Whenever I have an idea for a blog topic I activate Siri on my...
Anti-Stuff vs. My Montblanc Pens And Pencil
I don't like most “stuff”. Stuff costs money, clutters up space, and, worst of all, expends both energy and time. Heck, for me, the more stuff I have, the poorer I am. However, there are exceptions. There is some stuff which I like—stuff which I use every day, stuff...
The Cost of Virtual Visits, and Healthcare’s Low-Hanging Fruit
One thing I like about blueberries is that they are easy to pick. Why? Because they are low-hanging fruit. But when large healthcare institutions use combinations of AI and virtual visits to pick off the low hanging fruit of healthcare (such things as sore throats,...
Narrow Technical Expertise in AI and AI Ethics Committees
To develop deep technical expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) requires years of study and practice. It requires a solid background in mathematics and experience with programming, and it requires practical experience (and time) using these skills with large data...
Sloppiness – My Writing Habit Easiest to Fix
I have strengths and weaknesses as a writer. I won’t write about my strengths; it comes across as arrogant and self-serving. However, I will occasionally share my weaknesses, especially as a try to tackle them. And my weakness which is most easily? corrected? Sloppy...
Going Fungal
As I have discussed before (Herodotus and Why should Physicians Should Avoid “Going Viral”), I am no fan of professionals—especially physicians—going viral. But I do like the idea of “going fungal”. It’s a slow, steady, and consistent growth strategy, relatively...
Is #Phoetry My Hashtag Creation? Nope.
This week, on my drive home after my Saturday morning photoshoot (where I took the above photograph), I came up with what I thought was a new, super-cool hashtag: #Phoetry: A photograph-inspired poem. To my surprise—and momentary dismay—when I got home I found this...
Affect, Effect, And Impact
Although, like most physicians, I fancy myself a writer, I will never fancy myself a good writer until I have mastered the table above, and have forever excised the verb form of the word impact from my writing for everything other than boxing matches and car crashes.