farmdoc's blog post number 672

Last Friday I read a Hobart neurosurgeon’s medical report. He ended by writing that among four medical specialists (including him and me) the majority of opinion was contrary to mine. I responded by writing that being in the medical minority bothers me not – as adjudication on the matter at issue will turn on a detailed analysis of the relevant evidence, and not on how many doctors draw whatever conclusions. No doubt the majority opinion can be wrong. But according to James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds, a group of people collectively make wise and accurate decisions; and the bigger the crowd, the better the decision. This article in last Friday’s Age helped me join the dots. In it, Mad Men’s writer, producer and director Matthew Weiner (pictured) is cited as one of the men who are helping to define a new golden age of TV drama’. Of the TV series mentioned, I agree that Mad Men and The Wire are part of this new golden age. (I haven’t seen any of the others. I’m surprised Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing isn’t mentioned, though). I don’t know if the golden age and the men who are creating it, is collective crowd wisdom; or just the view of the article’s writer Debbi Enker. Or perhaps the editor is the journalist’s reality checker. Anyway the neurosurgeon’s 4-person crowd is far too small to reach a wise and accurate decision. In due course, either he’ll be proven right, or I’ll be. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 579

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Regarding lists, a strange thing happened this week. Actually two strange things happened. On Saturday, I received an email from my friend Mark in Canada: ‘Just came across this and immediately thought of you’, followed by a link. Then yesterday darling Meg put a comment on this Farmdoc’s Blog post: ‘An interesting take on lists here’. Clicking on Meg’s link brought up the same webpage as Mark’s link did. Of the billions of web pages out there, Mark and Meg sent me the link to the same one. Amazing. Weird. What a profound interview with Umberto Eco (pictured). He’s given me a new take on lists. And it rings true with me: creating order, toying with anarchy, creating culture, interacting with an irresistible magic, and making infinity comprehensible. I especially like his statement that ‘We like lists because we don’t want to die’. I haven’t read any of Eco’s work, but I’ve added The Vertigo of Lists to my reading list. Thank you, Mark and Meg.
So you won’t accuse me of philosophising about lists whilst not sharing any with you, here are three for this week: The Top 10 Best Ever Celebrity Viral Ads [1], CNET TV’s Best Five Free Software Downloads [2] and People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive 2009 list [3]. I don’t know why Umberto Eco – who’s been one of the world’s great scholars – isn’t on the Sexiest Man Alive list. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 558

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Counting today there are 62 days to go until the end of 2009. Yet already ‘best of 2009’ lists are starting to appear. That’s weird, since almost 17% of 2009 remains. But it’s great for a list-man like I am. And especially for one who devotes a blog post each week to a list. Today’s list is PC World’s 100 Best Products of 2009. My first reaction to this list is that it’s selected by the Editorial Team of PC World – who aren’t your average Joes when it comes to technical knowledge of electronics products. So the hardware, software and service products they choose almost certainly won’t coincide with a list compiled by the ‘wisdom of crowds’. And who knows what inducements Editorial Team members received to get an item put in the list. Or if not that, to have it tested/reviewed by PC World during the year. So whilst taking the list’s methodology with a pinch (if not a grain) of salt, it’s still interesting to see what’s on it. Number one is the iPhone App Store. Apple coined the word app, and set up an online store that stocks 85,000 free or inexpensive apps, and moved 2 billion units in 16 months. That’s 4.15 million each day. So while I’m not an iPhone owner, I have no issue with the list’s number one item. The remaining 99? Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 537

Sorry, folks. But I’ve been slack. Lax. Because it’s been exactly two months since I wrote a post about a list [1]. So here goes: If people have ability, strength, integrity and surety, then we have confidence in them. We can rely on them. We trust them. Reader’s Digest, in its July 2009 issue, published its fifth annual list of ‘Australia’s Most Trusted People’. The preamble says ‘When times are tough, people everywhere look for security and certainty, and Australians are no different. In our fifth annual Most Trusted poll the results are striking: when it comes to trustworthy people, it’s the “rocks of society” – the humble, honest and truly helpful – who we consistently turn to’. The methodology? A representative sample of 750 Australian adults was asked to rate – on a scale of one to ten – 100 well-known people. I don’t like this method because it’s not zero-based, i.e. the list of 100 was selected by who-knows-who before the surveying began. Here is the list. Numero uno’s burns specialist Dr Fiona Wood (pictured). The highest politician’s the prime minister – at lowly number 65. Ho hum. And the list contains some shockers including Bindi Irwin, Alan Jones, Kyle Sandilands, Shane Warne, Marcus Einfeld, Ben Cousins and David Hicks. ‘Rocks of society’? How bizarre. But the wisdom of crowds is rarely wrong. And I already know I’m a sheep man in cattle country. Starting today I’m making each Friday a list day on Farmdoc’s Blog. So until next Friday…

farmdoc's blog post number 472

In times gone by, social trends were fairly hard to determine. Finding out about them required expensive and complex instruments including surveys, focus groups and diaries. However nowadays it’s much easier. And free of charge. Courtesy of Google. Of course. Who else? In the USA, a massive 75% of the 10 billion internet searches each month, occur via google.com [1] That’s 750 billion Google searches; only in the USA; and only in a month. So it’s not a giant leap of faith to a conclusion that Google searches reflect society reasonably accurately. With this in mind, I’m fascinated by this 28 July Age item providing, in each of seven categories, Google Australia’s top ten fastest rising searches for 2009 so far. See what you think about the results. To me it confirms my theory that swine flu’s a scare mongering beat-up. But I can’t understand Australians’ pre-occupation with Susan Boyle (pictured) and Masterchef. And I find it incredible that the fastest rising website search is for the Australian Tax Office’s. One of the common criticisms of social inquiry is that it’s a waste of time because it’s all commonsense anyway. Well maybe. And perhaps too, the fastest rising Google search categories are of no practical use. But to me as a list-man, these lists are of curious interest. If nothing more. And they drive home to me that in this 2009 world, I’m a sheep man in cattle country. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 470

Unequivocally, invariably and clearly, the greatest joy in my life is Sweetheart Vivienne. Coming second, is our four wonderful daughters. Of the four, Meg is the most internet savvy. I don’t think her sisters would disagree. How Meg finds what she finds on the internet continually amazes me. It’s astounding what she comes up with, as readers of her blog well know and appreciate. I’m extra lucky, because she sends me links and snippets she knows will interest me. Sometimes I think she knows me better than I know myself. Last Friday she sent me this link. It plays to my love of lists, to me being a dad who’s at a life stage where there’s a fair bit of reflection happening, and to me doing my best in this modern age but increasingly feeling like a sheep man in cattle country. For example I’ve owned a mobile phone since March, and I’ve made only one call to a stored number. So it’s comforting to know there’s lots of stuff I know that my children don’t. And never will. Geekdad is fun – even though I have absolutely no idea what ‘Geek Generation 2.0’ is. But at least I know what a geek is (and that I’m not one). That ‘Geek Generation 2.0’ follows ‘Geek Generation 1.0’. And that I’m lucky to be the father, and friend, and link recipient, of my darling Meg.

farmdoc's blog post number 293

Here’s another blog post from the list-man. The last time I was in an operating theatre as a non-patient was in 1971. What struck me was the clarity of purpose, the complexity of process, the slim margin for error, and if error occurred the gravity of its consequence. In theatre, as elsewhere, things can go wrong. And do. Always have, always will. The reasons why they do are legion. Some are preventable, some not. The aim is no error or mistake; optimum outcome in every case. It’ll never happen. But it must remain the aim. This paper, in the 29 January 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reports on the use of this 19-item checklist in eight hospitals on several continents, on 3,955 surgical patients with 3,733 surgical patient controls. The death rate and complication rate were both reduced – to a highly statistically significant degree – after the checklist’s introduction. This elegant study produced an important result which is cost-effective in terms of both human and financial cost. But it has broader implication because it shows how complex problems are amenable to simple solutions. In other words, complex problems don’t always require complex solutions. Data suggest that at least 50% of surgical complications are avoidable. Eliminating that 50% is the first objective. Eliminating the unavoidable 50% will take longer!

farmdoc's blog post number 171

As I’m a list-man with more than a passing preoccupation with my death – the very first Farmdoc’s Blog post concerned death – naturally I loved the film The Bucket List which I watched last Saturday night. Add to the recipe two top-rate actors – Jack Nicholson (age 71 ) and Morgan Freeman (age 71 ) and you’ll understand why I rated it five stars out of five. Nicholson plays a billionaire tycoon, and Freeman a motor mechanic with Barry Jones-like general knowledge. Both have cancer, and they meet when sharing a 2-bed hospital room. Each has a prognosis of 6-12 months, jointly they construct an eponymous list of things they want to do before they kick the bucket, and together they set out to do, then cross off, each list item. The forgettable storyline is overwhelmed by the growing bond of friendship between the two men, and how Nicholson’s character, who has money but little else, is changed by Freeman’s character, who has profound self-understanding despite his menial job and comparative poverty. But for me the film’s highlight is Freeman’s voice-over narration. He’s a master at it – indeed I can’t think of anyone better. The Shawshank Redemption and Million Dollar Baby come quickly to mind. I’m sure there’ve been others, and I hope there’ll be more to come. Bravissimi, old guys. You’re an inspiration.

farmdoc's blog post number 26

When I was half my present age, I was a junior staff member of Melbourne University’s medical faculty. The juniors were saddled with the work nobody else wanted, and so it became my lot to give lectures on medical statistics, of all things, to 200 first-year medical students. After the panic attacks subsided, I saw I wasn’t going to be able to offload this burden. What would I do? Well I decided to make a list of topics – a long list so I wouldn’t have to know much about each one or talk about it for very long. That approach has worked for me time and again in the decades since then. Whenever I face a task which seems overwhelming, I break it down into small pieces, and immediately it becomes less daunting. A by-product is the automatic production of a list whose items I can cross off when done. Just about every morning I make a list which I prioritise and sequence, then allocate to each item an estimated duration. Doing this increases my productivity and reduces the number of tasks I forget to do. And it feels oh so good to cross off that final item. I don’t look back on my lecturing days fondly, but without them I may never have become a list-man.