A couple unconnected thoughts

After church today, Andy and I grabbed a cup of coffee before he heads back to the United Arab Emirates for several more weeks of his job. Although the temperature is just above freezing today, the sun was shining brightly so we sat on a bench on the Columbia campus to enjoy the hot coffee. When I asked if he was working for the government there, his reply was rather vague: "I cannot confirm that." Of course, he didn't deny it either. Since he's flying business class, he'll be picked up in a Lincoln Town Car and whisked to JFK airport for his nonstop flight tonight. Seems much more civilized than my usual trek on the M60 bus to LaGuardia and the economy-class cattle-car.


What caught my attention after this, however, was the elevator ride up from the subway station to the hospital where I will soon begin working on my presentation. The MTA employee who sits in the elevator to push one of two buttons (upper level or lower level) had a portable radiator for warmth situated behind the three-foot-high divider which separates him from the commuters. But more notably, he had a little boombox which was playing opera. Not just any opera, but the loud, grand finale to something that sounded Verdian. There was something very funny about the whole scene. Something that had to do with how the music was none too subtle, and noting people's reactions to the music as they stepped onto the elevator.

Ah, well, I've procrastinated long enough for the day. Time to get back to z-scores and logistic regressions. I couldn't find a picture of the subway's elevator on Google Images, so instead the photo is the interior of a circa 1949 subway car housed at the New York Transit Museum.

My head is swimming

Sorry, the formatting is kinda wacky on this post, and I can't seem to correct it.

I'm scheduled to give chief rounds this coming Friday. Although I don't procrastinate as much as, say, I did when writing papers in college, I still feel a lot of pressure to get this thing done. Being in college is one thing, but in residency one looses a bit of control over his schedule. (No skipping work to add finishing touches on the presentation!)

Chief rounds are informal lectures given by residents during the noon hour. Typically around 15 other residents attend as well as several faculty members. Recent topics have included pacemakers, acute respiratory distress syndrome, postoperative nausea and vomiting, and anesthesia in the super-obese. For some reason, I had the creative idea of doing something different: biostatistics. Yes, the whole field of biostatistics, in one 45 minute lecture. Stupid.

For one thing I don't really have a strong background in statistics. My math education was cut abruptly and tragically short after barely pulling an "A" in Dr Tidmore's Calculus III in college. (What was I, a liberal arts major, doing in there anyway?) Secondly, the topic is so broad that's it's hard to hone in on the relevant parts. And thirdly, there's great potential to pour hours into preparing a solid lecture with appropriate scope that will bore people to death.

I've overcome the first obstacle by shear force of will and also with the help of an easy-to-read primer in biostatistics lent to me by my faculty advisor. As far as the second difficulty, I plan to use a couple sample articles that present well-designed studies and use them as a launching point to discuss pertinent stastistical analyses. And for the third hurdle: yes, the topic is bone dry, but with proper preparation and a smattering of creativity, humor, and wit, I think I can hold the crowd's attention for thirty minutes.

What isn't helping, however, is paragraphs like this that I'm wading through: "Baseline medical characteristics were compared statistically (Table 1). The effect of the drugs on outcome was assessed with the use of multivariable logistic regression and propensity-score adjustment. Initially, 97 perioperative risk factors were evaluated for univariate association with outcome (two-tailed P less than 0.20) and then entered stepwise (backward and forward) into multivariable logistic models, blah blah blah..."

New paws at home

Here's a picture of my parents' new puppy. I think her name is Joy, in keeping with my parents' tradition of naming animals (livestock, cattle, etc.) after matriarchal family members. The black dog, of course, is Shacor.

My mom and the mujahedin

Reader's Digest this month featured an article by Lynn Roselli called "Cybersleuth Mom" about Shannon Rossmiller, a woman from Montana who assumes alter egos online and uses the information she gains about al Qaeda networks to tip off the FBI.

While her actions are valient, to be sure, and patriotic, there was still an inherent comedy in picturing what this woman has done. A couple sample paragraphs illustrate the point:

"One night, she dared herself to post a message on a Saudi Arabian Internet forum known for its violent anti-American content. Within a few months, Rossmiller had begun to establish contacts among the mujahedin, the brotherhood fighting for jihad. She could entice would-be terrorists into e-mail "conversations," she realized, by promising money and weapons to support jihad. Maybe her efforts could even foil their plans and lead to their capture.

"In August 2002, she convinced a Pakistani arms dealer that she was interested in buying weapons. When he offered to sell her U.S. Stinger missiles, she turned the information over to the FBI."

Savvy as my own mother is with things like eBay and internet research, I still have a hard time picturing her brokering a black-market arms deal with terrorists from Pakistan. Then again, she has been lobbying for a faster internet connection lately...

A slushy day in NYC

This year, evidently, has been unusual for very little snowfall in New York City. Last night as I walked to the fitness center at Columbia (of which I'm a new "guest" member), a "wintry mix" fell lightly from the sky. This continued through the night and during the day, so by the time I left work today at 5:30, snow was piled on the sidewalks and the streets were full of a wet, brown slush. I thought it was fun to wade across the small drifts.

On the agenda for Valentine's Day evening were a couple possibilities: a violin recital at Juilliard, or laundry. Sexy though it is not, laundry won out. However, it is hard to beat padding around the apartment in scrub-pants, socks, and tee-shirt with a cup of hot tea.

I found the picture above recently. It's an aerial view of Union Theological Seminary in New York City (where Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught last century) with Riverside Church in the background. My church meets in a chapel at the seminary.

One more thing of note: I bought "Loving shepherd of thy sheep" on iTunes. Highly recommended.