It Pays to Play

     It is a strange thing to sit at the end of a very long, very intense road that is training to be a physician and take a look back on the winding, arduous road I took to get here.  I am now endeavoring to prove I have done all of it by gathering documentation of the past 15 years of my life in excruciating detail.  With just one final test to go, my neurology boards,  I have become an absolute master at the ubiquitous modern knowledge measuring tool, namely I can fill bubbles on a scan sheet in completely, inside the lines with a no. 2 pencil, choosing only one answer and always guessing if I don’t know.

   It is amazing how standardized tests have become the mainstay of education these days.  Colleges and medical schools use them to differentiate students, nations use them to compare their system to other nations, and No Child Left Behind uses them to set minimum standards for funding our schools.   We use them to prove we can drive in most states.  We use them to measure IQ’s all over the internet.  We use them to poll current public opinion.  We use them to test marketing for the latest breakfast sandwich.  Mensa and the triple nine society determine your eligibility for geniushood by these tests.  Everyone can be boiled down to how they fill out these neat little bubbles. 

Points of Interest, vol2, #2

    Well, I’ve done it.  I’ve shook off the winter blahs long enough to find all that is praiseworthy and of good report in the blogosphere specifically as it pertains to the mind, soul, and body.  I am excited to announce I have a real doctor job this summer, but I am afraid this has meant I just can’t seem to focus on blogging.  At the very least you can count on me to find elsewhere to focus on for you, the reader.

Points of Interest, #36

The long awaited end to the hiatus is here, at least temporarily.  I break it in the way you may have come to expect, by sharing all the stuff I would have written myself, if only I were bright and talented enough with lots more free time.  So I present, especially for my faithful readers, both of you, the very best of the internet I could find over the past while or so

Perfection-the good, the bad, the ugly

” Be ye Therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.”

Matthew 5:48

    We love and adore that which is perfect in our society.  Hollywood is built on the premise that the beautiful people can sell movies, models are airbrushed to perfection to sell magazines.  The Olympic games is going on currently with its motto, “Bigger, stronger, faster.”

    As the records fall, it seems these athletes do live up to the motto.  Just look at Michael Phelps, the epitome of the bigger, stronger, faster ideal.

 

Michael Phelps, olympic swimmer has a very real chance at an unprecedented eight gold medals this Olympics.

 

    Sadly, as recent scandals in Baseball and Bicycling have revealed, the push to be bigger, faster, and stronger can lead to the use of steroids, amphetamines, or other substances with very real consequences for an athletes long term health and well being.  When does the drive to perform cross the line into madness.  In my day, Michael Jordan was celebrated worldwide as the greatest ever, even carrying his team to victory over my beloved Utah Jazz in one game in the finals with Forty some odd point and the flu.  Today, it is Tiger Woods held in much the same esteem, having just won the US open with a severe knee injury in a playoff he counts as his greatest victory ever.  My question is, at what point does this single minded devotion turn into madness.