Cheered up by 'The Australian Medical Dictionary'

Subculture. thefreedictionary.com defines it as ‘a cultural subgroup differentiated by…factors that functionally unify the group and act collectively on each member’ [1]. According to this definition, the medical profession’s a subculture – even though it’s not on Wikipedia’s list of subcultures [2]. One factor delineating a subculture’s a unique vocabulary. Medicine has one. Well, two actually. One’s the official one comprising orthodox medical terminology. And the other’s an unofficial one – that’s known to medical practitioners but not to non-medical people. In general its words, phrases and acronyms are irreverent at best, insulting at worst, and non politically correct always. Also funny. Very funny. Here’s a BBC article from 2003 explaining what I mean [3]. Segueing slightly on from there, is a list of words published in the April 2011 issue of Australian Medicine. Titled ‘The Australian Medical Dictionary’, it comprises definitions of medical terms [4]. But these definitions are funny. No – they’re hilarious. To me, anyway. I wish I had the wit to compose definitions like these. After the week I had last week, ‘The Australian Medical Dictionary’ has helped cheer me up. That’s for sure.

List: 'Top Ten World tallest skyscrapers'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Sweetheart Vivienne and I share many likes. Including Freudian theory (even though nowadays its popularity’s waning). So when we see a man driving a big car, we pontificate about the size of his – er, how shall I put it – male member. I’ve no idea if size is everything. And I don’t care. But I suspect size matters to lots of people. And, I dare surmise, most of them are men. And so to today’s list: from thetoptenlist.net it’s ‘Top Ten World [sic] tallest skyscrapers’ [1]. Wikipedia says there’s no accepted definition of a skyscraper; to be a skyscraper a building has to be habitable; and. interestingly, the word ‘skyscraper’ was originally a nautical term [2]. It’s instructive to contemplate that from 1873 to 1974, 15 skyscrapers were sequentially the world’s tallest. And all 15 were in the USA [3]. Since then all the successive world’s tallests have been in Asia or the Middle East. The current number one (pictured), in Dubai UAE, is a massive 828 metres (2,717 feet) tall [4]. In other words, over half a mile high. And almost 10% of Mt Everest’s height. Man’s ingenuity building a skyscraper that high is awe-inspiring. Moreso as it’s a massive 319 metres (i.e. 62%) higher than its predecessor. Of the nine other contemporary tallest in the list, five are in China, two are elsewhere in Asia, and two are in the US. I don’t know how many of the ten were conceived and designed by men. My guess? All of them. Ho hum.

List: '7th International Housing Affordability Survey'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. The Australian Dream. Wikipedia defines it as ‘a belief that in Australia, home ownership can lead to a better life and is an expression of success and security’ [1]. It says the Australian Dream dates back to the reconstruction period following WWII, and it flowered in the 1950s and 1960s. But though more recently it’s declined – for various reasons. One of these reasons – perhaps the main one – is rising house prices. Which brings me to the topic of housing affordability. It doesn’t have a universal definition, but it can be defined as the ratio of median house price to median gross income. Demographia [2] is an organisation I know nothing about. And I can’t find anything on the internet. But it’s just published a report on its 7th Annual International Housing Affordability Survey [3]. Covering 325 ‘markets’ in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the US. On a national level, Hong Kong’s the least affordable, and Australia’s the second least. Of the 325 ‘markets’, Melbourne’s International Affordability Rank’s 321 (i.e. the fifth least affordable); Sydney’s is 324. Even London is more affordable than Geelong [4]. The report’s author, US-based geographer and author Joel Kotkin, said ‘…Australia, once the exemplar of modestly priced, high-quality, middle-class housing…[is]…now the most unaffordable housing market in the English-speaking world’. Despite this, many observers still consider home ownership’s important to many Australians even if they can’t achieve it. Isn’t that the essence of a dream? Ho hum.

List: '10 things the modern bogan loves'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. The word ‘charitable’. My dictionary defines it as ‘giving, generous, kind, lenient’. I see myself as a reasonably charitable fellow. More so as I’ve gotten older. I’ve come to see, and appreciate, that by and large people do the best they can, given their background and their resources. And so to bogans. Wikipedia says bogan (which rhymes with ‘slogan’) is Australian and New Zealand slang, of unknown origin, usually pejorative or self-deprecating, for a person who’s perceived to be from a lower class background, or someone whose limited education, speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour exemplifies such a background [1]. An Age article last Monday [2], titled ‘How to spot a bogan’, contains a list of ‘10 things the modern bogan loves’. It seems that non-bogans as well as bogans are fascinated by boganism: Monday’s Age article’s a promo for a new book titled Things bogans like [3] which stems from a blog of the same name [4] which includes a list of (up to now) 184 such things [5]. And several other blogs are devoted to boganism [6, 7, 8]. On one level it’s kind of funny. But taking a charitable view, the bogan subculture’s no more idiosyncratic than other subcultures including, say, the corporate subculture which is generally not considered pejorative. Ho hum.

h/t. What meaneth it?

The posts of some blogs I read, often end with h/t preceding the name of a person or another blog. I’ve wondered about h/t but been unable to decode it. Intrigued, I did some google research. Turns out an extensive blog glossary exists – called, what else, a Blogossary [1]. And in the blogossary is the answer to my question: h/t (or HT) is an abbreviation of hat tip – defined as ‘an acknowledgement to someone (or a website) for bringing something to the blogger’s attention’ [2]. Wikipedia says a hat tip, or doff, is ‘a cultural expression of recognition, respect, gratitude, greeting, or simple salutation and acknowledgement between two persons; and in Western societies in the 19th and early 20th centuries it was a common non-verbal greeting between friends or acquintances [3]. An erstwhile bareheaded imitation of a hat tip was a forelock tug. And the military salute probably substituted for a hat tip – because repeated hat raising was impractical when a heavy helmet was worn [4]. The original reason for hat tipping’s lost in the mists of time. But maybe it signified respect akin to removing one’s hat on entering a church. Whatever its origin, its technique’s well recognised [5]. It should be done with the right hand. To signify, perhaps, that the right hand’s empty and thus not carrying a weapon. Nowadays the physical gesture of hat tipping’s all but extinct. But I’m chuffed that abstract hat tipping continues – via the blogosphere. Ho hum.

List: 'Meet 10 of the World’s Most Famous Trees'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Wikipedia says the Anne Frank tree was a 150-170-year-old horse-chestnut tree in Amsterdam’s city centre; and it’s mentioned three times in Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl [1]. For the past several years it’d been infested with moths and a fungus. In November 2007 the municipal authority condemned it as unsafe and declared it should be cut down. But the next day an injunction was issued to stop its removal. Despite subsequent remedial activity, 11 days ago – on 23 August – it was blown down by high winds that broke it off a metre above ground level [2, 3]. Though dead, its legacy lives on via several saplings that are thriving in various corners of the world – just as Anne Frank’s legacy lives on via her Diary, museum and garden. Also via the Anne Frank virtual tree [4]. Today’s list, appropriately enough, is from treehugger.com. It’s title’s self explanatory: ‘Meet 10 of the World’s Most Famous Trees’[5]. Posted on treehugger on 17 August, the slideshow it includes the Anne Frank tree which it says ‘still stands’. Me? I’ve seen only two of the 10: Pebble Beach’s Lone Cypress, and a Drive-Thru Californian Redwood. But I think every single tree in the world is famous – by using up CO2 and so doing its best to mitigate global warming and climate change.

List: 'Top Ten List of Worst Oil Spills'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. List Fridays have been a regular item on Farmdoc’s Blog for months. But it’s taken until today for me to mention toptenz.net [1]. As its name suggests, toptenz is a website devoted to ‘top ten lists’. Its homepage header shows the broad categories of its lists. It also has a podcast, quizzes, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and an RSS feed. Indeed all the paraphernalia of modern communication. Its lists, it seems, are submitted by anyone who wants to. As some ‘top ten’ lists are subjective, their items can’t be checked. I don’t know if the facts in the factual lists are checked before toptenz publishes them. Anyway I decided today’s list would be a factual one. Last 6 June I wrote of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (aka the BP Oil Spill, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill) that began last 20 April [2]. toptenz places it number 2 on its ‘Top Ten List of Worst Oil Spills’. (I think it means largest rather than worst.) And it says it was finally stopped on 3 August, and its final size was 172M barrels [3]. In contrast, Wikipedia says it’s the world’s number one oil spill, and when it ended on July 15, its size was 205M gallons [4]. All of which goes to show that when all’s done and dusted, a fact’s not really a fact. Despite this, the Deepwater Horizon spill was bloody big, bloody expensive, and environmentally bloody disastrous. Ho hum.

The Cupertino Effect

Cupertino [1]. It’s a city of 55,000 people 45 miles south east of San Francisco [2] – towards the southern end of what’s called Silicon Valley. Wikipedia says it’s named after St Joseph of Cupertino who in turn was named after the Italian town of Copertino [3]. These days Cupertino’s best known as the location of the world-wide headquarters of Apple Inc (pictured). Today I write of it in another, but still computer-related context, i.e. the Cupertino Effect [4]. Though the CE appeared and was named years ago, I became aware of it only 1-2 weeks – via the intro to a Radiolab podcast [5]. What is the CE? A computer spellchecker’s tendency to suggest inappropriate words to replace misspelt words. The CE originated due to older spellcheckers changing the word ‘cooperation’ to ‘Cupertino’ – as their dictionaries contained only the hyphenated form, i.e. co-operation. Users sometimes clicked ‘Change All’ without checking the spellchecker’s suggestion, resulting in even official documents with phrases like ‘valuable experience in international Cupertino’ and ‘presentation on African-German Cupertino’. Whilst modern spellcheckers have all but eliminated the ‘cooperation’ to ‘Cupertino’ error, other incorrect word substitutions ensure the CE’s continuing existence. Following on from yesterday’s Farmdoc’s Blog post, the CE – only a short segue from misspelt signs – may be a nice topic for Jeff Deck’s next project. Ho hum.

Mole Creek: only 114 years behind the times

Wikipedia tell us a post box (or mailbox) is a physical box that collects outgoing mail from the public; and the first mail box began service in Paris in 1653 [1]. Different post box designs have different names, e.g. a wall box is set into a wall [2], a pillar box stands on the ground and has a cylindrical (i.e. pillar) shape [3], and a lamp box (which is the smallest post box used in the UK and the Commonwealth of Nations) was named because it was designed to be affixed to lamp posts though it may sit on its own pole [4]. The first lamp box appeared in London in 1896 on a trial basis as inexpensive alternative to the pillar box [5]. Until last week, the Mole Creek Post Office had a wall box, i.e. essentially a lost set into the post office’s wall. Then last week, out of the blue (or rather, the red) appeared the pictured post box. If you’ve paid attention to the foregoing, you’ll know what type of post box it is. Sorry, no prizes. The postmaster told me the change is because Australia Post considers wall boxes safety risks, i.e. a burning item placed in a wall box will do more damage than one placed in a lamp box. Oops, I’ve let the cat out of the bag – or the box. Anyway Mole Creek’s only 114 years behind the times. That’s one of the things I love about the place.

No-dig gardening. Its inventor’s unclear. Wikipedia mentions [1] Japanese Masanobu Fukuoka, American Ruth Stout, and Australian Esther Dean [sic, Deans]. For reasons unclear, I’m an inveterate tiller. But last Sunday Sweetheart Vivienne and I began our first ‘no-dig’ garden bed. Or more precisely, its derivative called ‘sheet mulching’ [2]. We started our new garden bed in our orchard where there’s some spare space protected from possums, wallabies and wombats. First we laid down, straight on the grass, a thick cover of newspaper. It should have been wetted first, but with two inches (49mm) of rain in the prior 24 hours, the ground was wet already. Then on top of the newspaper we spread a thick layer of hay. Actually it was the hay from our round bales [3] that the sheep and goats had left because they’d trampled it and pissed and shat on it. The trampling and piss and shit make it perfect for sheet mulching. We want to extend the new bed three times the length of last Sunday’s tranche. We’ll leave it to mature for 6-8 weeks. Hopefully it’ll stay wet courtesy of late winter and early spring rain. Then we’ll enrich it with some compost and maybe some Dynamic Lifter too. We haven’t finally decided what to plant there yet. But we’re tending towards potatoes and pumpkins. It feels great to be using newspaper and waste hay in this way. This is a work-in-progress, folks. Stay tuned.

Eh? Things I don't understand

Coldplay (pictured). Until I researched today’s Farmdoc’s Blog post I’d never heard of them. (I’m sure darling Emily, who’s a music aficionado, has. I hope she doesn’t think any the worse of me for not.) Wikipedia says Coldplay’s a world-famous English alternative rock band formed in 1997 [1]. One of their songs is ‘Things I Don’t Understand’ [2, 3]. Me? I think what I do understand’s miniscule compared with what I don’t. Here are two examples:

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD]. Wikipedia defines it as ‘a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma’ [4]. The Mayo Clinic’s definition’s similar: ‘a type of anxiety disorder that’s triggered by a traumatic event. You can develop post-traumatic stress disorder when you experience or witness an event that causes intense fear, helplessness or horror [5]’. Yet I’ve seen PTSD diagnosed in people who’ve no memory of an event and its antecedents and aftermath – due to loss of consciousness, retrograde amnesia and post-traumatic amnesia respectively. Eh? How can this be?

Last Wednesday’s Age carried this story [6]. It’s a horrid tale of lesbian paedophilia. But my main interest is that the 33-year-old reportedly cannot read or write, yet it’s alleged she met the 14-year-old over the internet. Eh? How can this be?

I don’t understand. I just don’t.

TED, Tom & the Marshmallow Challenge.

TED. Wikipedia tells us it’s short for Technology, Entertainment, Design [1]. TED’s a US private non-profit foundation established in 1984. It’s best known for its conferences (the first was in 1990) in the US and later Europe and Asia, devoted to ‘ideas worth spreading’. Its lectures, aka TED Talks, are a maximum 18-minute length, and are available on-line. Two weeks ago I resolved to watch all TED Talks shorter than 10 minutes. Since then I’ve watched 20 or so, and today I write of my favourite so far.

Tom Wujec [2] (pictured) is a Fellow at Autodesk, the makers of design software for engineers, filmmakers, designers. He helps companies work in the emerging field of business visualization, i.e. the art of using images, sketches and infographics to help teams solve complex problems as a group. His 6 minute 52 second Ted Talk titled ‘Build a tower, build a team’ concerns the ‘Marshmallow Challenge’ – a team-building exercise. The aim’s to use 20 sticks of spaghetti, a yard of tape, a yard of string and a marshmallow to build as tall a tower as possible in 18 minutes, with the marshmallow on its top. One surprising group always beats the average. Can you guess which group? And why? Watch the Talk to find out [3]. Then check out the Marshmallow Challenge website [4].

The Police Chief's bullets and the Rule of Law

The Rule of Law [1, 2, 3]. As I have no legal qualification I’m no expert on its ins and outs. But I take it to mean, in essence, that the law applies equally to everyone. That is, no-one’s above the law. Thus it’s a safeguard against the arbitrary exercise of power. And so to Victoria Police’s Chief Commissioner Simon Overland (pictured). As per this Age story [4], last Thursday he was detected carrying three live bullets on a Qantas domestic flight. Carrying dangerous goods on an aircraft without permission is a breach of s.23 of the Civil Aviation Act 1988. It can result in a maximum 7-year jail term if the breach was intended, or a 2-year jail term if unintended. Mr Overland said his carrying bullets on the flight was a mistake and a genuine oversight. A spokeswoman for Victorian Police Minister Cameron said he was satisfied with the police chief’s explanation. A statement by the federal Office of Transport Security said Mr Overland would be reprimanded over the incident. Not nearly good enough, methinks. The law is the law – for everyone, including a police chief. Both the Age article and one in the Australian [5] quote others who agree. If you or I committed the same offence, we’d get more than a reprimand. No doubt. I eagerly await further developments in this case. Wikipedia calls the Rule of Law a ‘foundation of a civilised society’. We’re about to find out how civilised our society is. Stay tuned.

farmdoc's blog post number 683

Randy Cohen (pictured). He’s an interesting fellow. Wikipedia says that after obtaining an Arts degree majoring in music, he spent several years writing humour pieces, essays, and stories for leading US newspapers and magazines. For seven years from 1991 he was a writer on 950 episodes of Late Night with David Letterman, winning three Emmy Awards along the way. His fourth Emmy was for his work on TV Nation. Since 1999 he’s written ‘The Ethicist’ column in the New York Times Magazine. I subscribe to, and love, his weekly Ethicist podcasts. They’re succinct, fast-moving, and highly thought provoking. Nowadays, when I come across situations – in my life or in the news – with ethical connotations, I ask myself ‘What would Randy say?’ Two recent examples are: What would I have done had I, like Messrs Briggs and Jones, found $125,000 cash in a handbag in a supermarket carpark? And what would my reaction have been had my passport data been used by one of the team who bumped off Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January? Sweetheart Vivienne and I discussed these two questions over dinner last night. I can predict fairly accurately what Randy would’ve said about the money. But his response to the passport matter’s less certain. You see, he received his fifth Emmy Award as a result of a clerical error. And he kept it. So how could I not add him to my list of favourite journalists [1, 2]. Keep it coming, Randy.

farmdoc's blog post number 620

The last day of each year’s never a happy day for me. Because on this date, my darling Mum died. Fourteen years later, I still miss her dreadfully. To my shame, I didn’t mention her in last year’s 31 December blog post. I resolved not to do that again. So far, so good. Also each 31 December I’m conscious, increasingly so each year, that my own end nears. I don’t know how many years I have left. But I’m always glad to make it to the end of another one. The big year-end topic that’s fascinated me this year, is whether or not tonight’s moon is a blue moon. Wikipedia mentions several definitions of a blue moon. Colour has nothing to do with any of them. One definition is two full moons in the same calendar month. The previous full moon was on 2 December. The question is whether there’s another one tonight. Last Monday’s Age said yes. But Tuesday’s SMH said no. The SMH is correct: Geoscience Australia’s website tells us the full moon’s on 31 December at 7:13 p.m. UTC (i.e. Greenwich Mean Time) which equates to 6:13 a.m. on 1 January eastern Australia daylight saving time. Anyway that’s for the purists. I can tell you two things: first, when you look at the New Year’s Eve sky tonight you’ll see a full moon; and second, only once in a blue moon is someone lucky enough to have a Mum as wonderful as mine.

farmdoc's blog post number 383

Sweetheart Vivienne’s been a New Yorker subscriber for many years. Apart from the superb writing and interesting content, something setting the New Yorker well above its competitors is its fact checking. Its fact checking quality’s legendary. The gold standard. It’s so easy to assume all other published work’s been fact checked to the New Yorker standard. But doing so’s stupid. Wikipedia, for example, is the world’s largest encyclopaedia freely accessible on the world’s fourth most popular website. But its content’s not invariably fact checked, and it’s open to amendment by people with less than altruistic motives. This article, reporting on the recent Wikipedia Academy 2009 Conference’ in Israel, describes several examples of Wikipedia inaccuracy. These include the repeated removal of reference to Iranian President Ahmadinejad as a Holocaust denier, and the citation of David Irving as an historian. But Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia, said she was “quite comfortable” with Wikipedia’s mistakes which merely reflect fluctuating public discourse. That’s a copout, Ms Gardner. Horse shit. And as for your comment that “I know that more or less the same mistakes can be found in the New York Times”, it’s obvious why your exemplar publication is not the New Yorker. So from now on, I’ll be more circumspect about Wikipedia’s content. Much more.