Medical School for Everyone - Emergency Medicine - Great Courses

The Great Courses Medical School for Everyone: Emergency Medicine In each lesson, the viewer tries to figure out what is wrong with each person while attempting to triage multiple patients. The course is a good guide to practical problems solving and challenging initial assumptions. The tunnel vision that can result from making a diagnosis to early can have negative consequences for patient outcomes. 

People in the ER will lie or not tell the whole truth.  This makes it difficult for the doctor and nursing staff to properly diagnose and treat their patient.  The ER doctor does not usually have a long term relationship with the ER patient. They therefore need to follow a general protocol to assess the patient to assure that they get proper medical care.  

Medical School for Everyone: Emergency Medicine overview - 2 min. 

Crisis and Crashes: Lessons from a History of Financial Disasters

Crashes and Crises: Lessons from a History of Financial Disasters by professor Connel Fullenkamp Phd provides a detailed description of the most problematic financial disasters from the tulip mania of 1637 to the present. His background with the International Monetary Fund and finance allows him to give detailed descriptions of the financial missteps. His description of the conditions leading up to the sub-prime mortgage crisis is very lucid.

According to him all rogue traders are the same. Each one starts in the back office or oversight and then moves into the front office where the trading is initiated.  The trader uses their knowledge of the audit and oversight function to circumvent the safety features set up to reduce the risk of loss to the company. They all have hubris. They start out well and eventually flame out when a flaw is revealed in their strategy.

I am amazed at one common problem that many of these investment firms keep repeating. They will continue to follow the same investment strategy that usually works very well for a few years and then conditions change and and the losses are huge. I am also surprised that firms will adopt a single investment strategy and not diversify.

Leveraging (borrowing money to buy any investment product) increases the volatility of the investment. Its great when the status quo or things go as predicted but it multiplies the downside when the unpredicted happens.

People often have too much faith in risk assessment or quantitative models that predict the stock market movements.

Excerpt from Audiobook on Financial Disasters - 5 minutes

Mirrored Meditations by N.G. Carlson

The latest in a series of mirror image photography books from N.G. Carlson is now available in Mirrored Meditations -paperback and  Mirrored Meditations- Kindle from Amazon.

These indoor and outdoor mirrored photos from the cold and snowy Minnesota Winter of 2019 provide a visual guide for meditation. This includes outdoor images images from decks and parks and inside buildings with frozen pipes that burst when the polar vortex moved north. The New Bell Museum provides a visual delight with wholly mammoths and a close encounter with the sun. A brief trip to Walt Disney World in Florida provides a warm respite and a welcome change of scenery.

The video below uses some if the images from the book with further images inspired by the book.

Mirrored Meditations - 1 minute 46 seconds

Turning Points in American History - The Great Courses

The Turning Points in American History by Edward T. O'Donnell gave me a deeper understanding of the events that shaped this country. He notes that events are often unexpected and that action through agency of individuals not in leadership positions continues to shape history. The fall of the Soviet Union and the securing of the women's right to vote are two examples. In the middle 1980's, I recall talking to a man at the Minnesota State Fair at a political booth. The individual predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union based on his contacts with individuals in the Warsaw Pact. The other person and I thought he was nuts. We were wrong.

The evolution of the role of the Supreme Court weaves its way through many turning points. The precedent for judicial review allowed the court to assess the constitutionality of laws. The court in the reconstruction period after the war offered a very narrow view of the 13th and 14th Amendment seeing a limited Federal role. This allowed the establishment of the Jim Crow culture in the South and led to the Great Migration of African Americans at the beginning of the 20th Century. These same amendments reinterpreted by the court were later used to help secure civil rights.

Turning Points summary - 2 min. 

Why the Boston Tea Party is a turning point - audio - 29 minutes

Autobiography of Mark Twain Part 1

I listened to the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 after volume II. As his biography is not chronological it did not make a difference. Many people may have tried to get through part one of the written autobiography and gave up as the first 10% of this book covers the logistics of compiling the autobiography and the many aborted attempts to put the autobiography to paper. He often makes accurate predictions about which events of the day will be long remembered and others which will be long forgotten once his autobiography is published 100 years after his passing.

After the initial preliminaries, the book moves into interesting territory. His gripping description of the doomed 1866 voyage of the USS Hornet came from his interviews of the crew after they arrived in their lifeboat in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

His work with Ulysses S. Grant on his autobiography gave me a better appreciation for the Union General and President. The royalties from the autobiography provided funds to take care of the Grant family after his passing. Grant lost his fortune due to an unfortunate interactions with a financial swindler, Ferdinand Ward.

Mark Twain's daughter Suzy wrote a biography of her papa and Mark refers to it frequently in his stream of conscious autobiography. His daughter gives a refreshing assessment of her father and the people he encounters.

The biography contains gems of humor including Mark relating his wife's interaction with a German servant referred to as Wuthering Heights. His wife's determined attempts to offer constructive criticism were no match for the deft verbal parries of this confident chatterbox.

The last chapter includes Twain's encounter with Helen Keller (Open Culture.com). Mark came away impressed with her and made sure through his benefactor that her education would be taken care of. 

Adventures of Mark Twain - 44 minutes

About the autobiography of Mark Twain - 5 min.

Becoming Wise - Krista Tippett

I liked Krista Tippet's earlier book Speaking of Faith , so I was pleased to find Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living at my local library. Krista shares her life lessons and combines these with the vast experience of over 400 conversation partners from 2003 to 2015.

She separates her book into Words, Flesh, Love, Faith, and Hope. In the Word chapter she speaks out against forcing people to find consensus where none exists. Instead she advocates finding the crack where there can be an honest discussion about differences. She describes individuals working on opposite sides of the abortion debate honestly trying to understand each others position without being forced to agree.

In Love, she advocates agape love born out of compassion but not pity. One of her interview subjects describes Tonglen mediation without naming it. She develops compassion for others who are sharing her pain and sends out love to them with a deep shared understanding.

In Faith, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks talks about the surprising relevance of the prophet Isaiah to Martin Luther King. Words from over 2,700 years ago from Chapter 40 have the power move an individual. He also quotes W.H. Auden, "We must love one another or die." He is hopeful that the power to destroy each other over are difference can be held in check through the power of love.

With all of the different voices in this book I found it difficult to grab on to a specific idea. The diversity of thoughts and opinions make for a challenging read but worthwhile in the quest for wisdom.

Krista Tippet - Becoming Wise - 6 min. 

Tools for becoming wise - 6 min. 

An evening on being with Krista Tippet - 56 minutes

Chernobyl Herbarium - fragments of an exploded consciousness by Michael Marder and Anais Tondeur

Radiographic photos by Anais Tondeur from the book the Chernobyl Herbarium

Michael Marder and Anais Tondeur use words and photos to describe the aftermath of the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl in their short book, Chernobyl Herbarium - fragments of an exploded consciousness 

As a child, Mr Marder's parent moved him to a seaside resort near Chernobyl to improve his respiratory condition.  He spent time unaware of his exposure to radioactive fallout. The irony of the event and the years taken from him by this unfortunate circumstance fuels his writing.

He expresses anger at the Soviets for covering up the problem. He bemoans the scarring of the earth creating toxic zones to fuel the need for energy. He would like us to be more like plants, taking in energy from the sun and converting it for our use.

The hauntingly beautiful plant radiographs by Anais Tondeur form a real life example of Buddist Tonglen meditation as described by Michael Marder. The plants take in the pain of the world and breath out a beautiful radioactive light. 

Inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, researchers are observing this post apocalyptic experiment to determine if humans or radioactivity are more harmful to animal and plant life. Thirty years after the accident National Geographic reviewed the effects of the Chernobyl exclusion zone on wildlife.

Chernobyl Nature 30 year later - National Geographic - 3 min.

Jim Beasley Chernobyl Wildlife - TED talk - 15 min.

Chernobyl Zone - 30 years after the disaster - 25 min.