Is the 80-hour Rule Ruining Medicine?

Comparing our system to itself isn't going to answer the question, of course things get worse when you cut the hours and continue to do things the same way. European medicine as outcomes as good as ours, and much more reasonable training hours. How do THEY do it.
I spent 6 weeks as a medical student in a French hospital. The only things I have to suggest is that there seemed to be more direct attending to resident time, and fewer residents per attending. There wasn't this endless cloud of residents talking to each other. (I have just put this together. I am going to think about this some more.)

Eating with the Men in Black

Envy of Angels by Matt Wallace was a a digital-only novella released October 2015.  There is another author on Amazon with the same name, but I believe Envy of Angels to be this author's first book.  I liked it.  The idea of a catering company that works for the Men in Black is fun.  Although the non-humans here include more than aliens.  

This is the first book in the series and introduces a largish number of characters.  I have three criticisms, none serious, all of which I think stem from it being a first book with a lot of ground to cover.

The last sections of the book rocked, and rocked hard, I laughed a bunch and wasn't sure what would happen next.  I enjoyed the mix of mass culture with the arcane in a new way.

• The boss' decision to fully embrace the new employees who serve as the audience surrogate along with how he incorporates them both into some of the early action seems forced.  Another reviewer commented how the male half of this duo seems particularly limp as a character.
• We are informed early that one of the characters is gay.   This fact plays no role in the plot and we are not told the sexuality of ANY OTHER CHARACTER, so it feels forced.
• The very end is slightly over written.  It underestimates the intelligence of the reader.

These issues did not keep me from enjoying the story, and I have already pre-ordered the next one.

Maine Game Wardens

...or Why I'm Not Worried About Going to Hell


I have a very good friend who is worried that I am going to hell. Sweet woman, never lived more than 100 miles from where she was born. I don't think she knows well anyone besides me who is not a Christian. So I tell this story, which I am copying from a review of the book:

It was a cold, rainy November day. The wardens had found the body of the suicide, and the Reverend was speaking to the victim's brother. He looked solemn for a minute, then asked if the church would bury his sister, since she had just been told in church that suicide was a sin that God could never forgive. Her answer was basically this:

"The game wardens have been walking through the freezing rain all day trying to find your sister. If they hadn't found her, they would have looked all day tomorrow and the next day, in the cold, in the rain, so they could bring her home to you. If there is one thing I am sure of, it is that God is no less kind, committed, or merciful than a Maine game warden."

~Kate Braestrup Here if you Need Me

If there is a god, I believe that he will forgive my lack of faith, and be pleased by my attempts to serve his creation. I also have no interest in a god who would be petty, mean or wasteful. Eternal damnation is a silly idea.

Vermont and Guns and My Man Bernie.

Bernie Sanders is my candidate.  According to a poll I took, I agree with him on 95% of things. However today he said something stupid, and it breaks my heart, yet I understand.  Bernie is an old white guy, a transplant to second whitest state in the country.  It is also the second least populated.  (Only Maine is whiter and only Wyoming as fewer people.)  I was born in one of these states and grew up in another, I am intimately familiar with the well-intentioned "not getting it" we can have.  I was painfully schooled by some very smart black people and now I mostly keep my mouth shut.

There's not a lot of gun control in Vermont, but there are more deaths than the Senator realizes.  In 2011, for the first time, there were more gun deaths than motor vehicle deaths.  This summer Vermont suffered a quadruple homicide, and it was not the first in the state's  history.  According to the Vermont State Police that was a mentally unbalanced service man in 1945, who apparently shot to death a family of four.  There was another one in 2001, a man attempted to sell a gun and when rebuffed shot four members of the same family.

These are great examples of why everyone, including Vermont, needs better gun control.  Alright, maybe not the 1945 murder, but interestingly, mentally unbalanced white man, just sayin'.

But my man Bernie went on about how Vermont was "different" from Chicago and Los Angeles.   There are two immediate issues here:

1. I suspect many perceived Chicago and Los Angeles as coded talk about non-white people.
2.  These mass shootings aren't happening just in urban places.  They happen everywhere.   Almost exclusively perpetrated by white men.

I love Bernie, I would like to see him get better knowledge about racial issues.  I have no doubt that he means well....