Inter-professional pissing contest.

First and last time I'll ever engage in this conversation (I hope).


My friend @RGWooderson, sent me a link to a post by a physical therapist who has been in the profession a long time, and done a lot of cool stuff. You can read his CV on his website. He has been the CRO: Chief Revolutionary Officer since 2011 for a company he started - The Smart Life Project. Thank you Allen, for your insight into damned future of our profession. But who are you mad at? All I did was start applying to PT schools in 2008/2009.


You can read his post here: Was the DPT The Right Direction?


Here's the problem I have with it, more than anything. We're, as a profession, trying to elevate ourselves in the public's eyes and through legislation. Blog posts like his only hurt our profession. While he is spending an evening trying to start an interprofessional pissing contest (which I'm sure won't interest people in his "institute"), others among us will be working together to move forward.


Thomas Kuhn wrote a great book int he 60's and coined the term paradigm shift, discussing the history of science and how exactly competing ideologies came about, and came to die in the face of new world views. He quoted Max Plank (long story) in the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, saying "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."


The conversation over the presence of DPT in the profession ended a while ago (whenever, I don't know). Taking time away to engage people who have already made up their mind about a topic isn't going to do anything but stir the professional pot, if you will. He's an old guy. He's treated 10,000 patients! He, and the rest like him, will be out of the profession and dead before I can even afford to retire.


Have a great week.


-d

Freakonomics Repost...

Freakonomics is one of my favorite blogs.  This is a post about the new Danish fat tax and just how misguided policy makers were in creating this legislation...  This fat tax, as pointed out in the article by Steve Sexton, disadvantages the poor for being too poor to make healthy eating decisions.

This kind of legislation has proven marginally effective in the past with smoking cessation.  As a sin tax, smoking cessation is completely that unhealthy eating.  EVERYBODY HAS TO EAT.  And we can't all afford $5.00 - $9.00 for a red pepper at the Community No-Op.

Anyway, great article.  The answer isn't always just "live more like us healthy people!" Give it a read:

The Orwellian Efficiency of a “Being Fat” Tax



-d

Patriot Act

Someone had terrible gas in the airplane. Where's the patriot act when you need it?

Prepare the colon to return fire!

The whole plane sat on the tarmac for at least 15 minutes after we landed in Medford Oregon because the people in the Tower (a glorified term for the two drunks with binoculars in a hunting stand) on top of the airport (another 18 cent word I'm using to describe the shed the hunting stand was sitting on) had apparently smelled the fart on the plane and were otherwise too incapacitated to direct the pilot to one of the 3 available gates for de-boarding. The pilot, paralyzed by the open ended math problem facing him, decided the best course of action was to sit with all of the passengers and wait for the tower to wake up from their shit coma.

Plane A leaves Denver traveling west at 326 mph for 2 hours and 43 minutes, arrives with 59 normal passengers and 1 carrying a polluted payload. Plane A comes to a complete stand still at soon to be shit-stained airport. What is the difference between the captain's capacity for spatial reasoning and the passengers' perception of the passage of time as the limit of the passengers' tolerance for fecal math jokes approaches zero?

Shaking like a Rockstar

It's been 9 days since my last sip of a caffeinated drink. Prior to that (see my previous post) I was drinking a lot of coffee. Lots. Too much. I know that because my headache went away.

Today I was walking through Denver International Airport. My flight from Denver to SF was delayed an hour, which would have put me in a major crunch to get on my flight to Medford, OR. The airline gods are on my side today. 1 seat available on a direct flight to Medford? Check. After a satisfy interaction with the airplane guy behind the desk, I got to march a mile to the new gate. On my journey I stumbled across a ROCKSTAR energy drink.

It's hard to describe exactly how I felt about seeing this. I do not need energy to fly. In fact, I would rather drink a beer or two (or 6) and get on the plane and sleep for a couple hours. I'm not a particularly nervous flyer, but sometimes if I act that way I can get extra booze for free on the airplanes. Something different about today. The rockstar. I don't need any caffeine. I don't need energy, awareness, increase HR, shakes, or the diuretic effect of caffeine prior to boarding my flight.

It's calling my name. I bought it. Drank it. Now I'm sitting at my gate waiting (and now shaking). The feeling I got when I saw the drink (I'm bad at telling stories) was happiness. I know exactly what the physiological response to this drink is supposed to be. I know that I'm going to shake, and eventually crash. But all I can think, looking at the rockstar, is that drinking it is going to make me happy. Satisified? Thirst Quenched? Energetic? NAY. Looking at the Rockstar made me feel fucking euphoric.

Anyone know where I can score some cocaine?

I don't like ...

... it when someone doesn't say "thank you" when you serve them food.