Update on Sourdough

The sourdough bread culture: Doing great! After watching Dr. Strangeloaf episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats, I realized that by following Mark Bittman's recipe, I had in fact violated the cardinal principle of sourdough; my sin being the innocent innoculation of my starter culture with active dry yeast, rather than allowing the local yeast-lactobacilli flora and fauna to take hold, thereby providing that particular East Georgia Flare of which we are so well known. Irregardless, I will press on with the current culture. It is bubbling nicely, being stirred each day, and is gradually, gradually developing the pleasant/unpleasant odor of sourdough bread. Here is the full-episode of Dr. Strangeloaf. I recommend watching this show often, and this particular episode immediately.

Sourdough, The Legend Begins

Upon a reflection of my recent posting, which have been myriad and varied, I noticed one might get the impression that my sole interests are 1) bitching about my religion, 2) watching weird youtube videos. While those two things do take up a good deal of my intellectual time, I would say that it does not reflect my time best spent, and most enjoyably spent. So in order to give a more complete picture of the kove behind the blog, as well as to "blog about the things you (I) love," I want to expand this blog to my other interests as well.

Best of: Infomericals, Part II

There is a strain of infomercial I like to call the fauxlanthromercial (a conglomeration of faux, philanthropic, and -mercial), which usually follows the formula of fake interview/newscast, where the interviewee hocks his wares: debt cures, weight loss cures, cancer cures, you name it. So let's first discuss a few issues here.

Leg Holster!

I went ahead and ripped a Leg Holster for you from Enter the Dragon. There are better scenes than this, but I have work to do, so I'll leave that compilation for another day. You're welcome.

Kung-POW!

Yesterday at the gym, while moving in an elliptical fashion, I watched Enter the Dragon. That is an awesome movie, but that goes without saying. I love kung-fu sounds, and people getting their melons kicked off their shoulders, and Kareem Abdul Jabar. But my most favorite part is when Bruce Lee holds his leg out at you, aims it, panning, ready to fire off a head-busting Kee-YAH!, and then slowly holsters it, with a look that says, "Watch your nuts, cause they're about to get smashed into oblivion."
I searched for a youtube video that has the leg-reload in it, but alas, I could not find it. If any of my faithful readers can locate said scene, you will be thoroughly rewarded. In the meantime, feast your eyes on this tasty lick of 10 awesome moments from Enter the Dragon.

Best Of: Informercials, Part I

I would like to start a new (first) series on this blog, called Best Informercials. The reason for this is single fold: I LOVE informercials. I don't know what it is about them, either its the cheesy hucksters, the glorification of crap you don't need (and perhaps that's more like it, because for that same reason I also will read the skymall cover-to-cover given the opportunity). One of my most memorable past times is watching and mocking informercials with BenPoodi. So here are two of my favorites, one old, one newly discovered.

Other Great Nature Clips

I so much enjoyed looking through Planet Earth videos for yesterday's Cordyceps Fungus post, that I am now posting my two favorite clips from Planet Earth here.
If you haven't watched this entire documentire documentary seriesentary series, stop what you are doing now, and commence viewing.

I like the first one because of how it speaks of the human condition. In the end, we expend so much of our energies in trying to impress a mate: be it a woman, a family member, a boss, even our own egos.





This second video is perhaps my most favorite in the whole series. I like it because it is brutal, and scary, and real.





I changed the aspect ratio for this last video, but if you click on it you can watch it on youtube in it's true widescreen format.

Molestation of Power

So I just heard/read about a new skandal. Apparently Rav Motti Elon, a venerated and respected Da'ati-Leumi (religious-nationalist) Israeli Rabbi has been accused by a rabbinical oversight board of "inappropriate sexual conduct" with his students. So what the shit is going on in the Orthodox Community in specific, and the Jewish Community as a whole?

And the Fungi Shall Inherit the Earth...

Fungi are the scariest best living things on earth. They are everywhere. In fact, the largest single organism on Earth is a fungus, whose mycelium spans several miles of a forest floor in Oregon. In the future, it will not be the meek, but the fungi, that inherit the Earth. I wrote a previous post a while back about mycelia as a basis for cellular intelligence, using a slime mold as a paradigm for a primitive neural network. This could help tie up some loose ends in our current understanding of evolution. My good friend Justin Michael FlimFlam sent me this article today about how sick ants will abandon the nest to die, thereby preventing infection of the entire colony. I was reminded of a, for lack of a better term, fucking awesome Planet Earth scene, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, who I want to narrate my entire life. The quote I find most interesting is:

"The parasites do play a role in preventing any one species from gaining an upperhand. The more numerous a species becomes, the more likely it is to be attacked by a Cordyceps Fungus." 

Now humans number in the billions, but that pales in comparison to the numerousness of the arthropods. But perhaps it is only a matter of time until we become susceptible to the great equalizer cordyceps fungus. You are probably saying, "Nah dawg, we got fluconazole for that shizz." And I answer, in the words of Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park: "Nature, uh, finds a way [also don't forget this]." Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a great equalizer in the growing MRSA, resistant TB, resistant-whatever-you-want strains that have jumped from mere nosocomial infection to community acquired deadliness. And the fungi shall inherit the earth...

Behold, the might of the Cordyceps Fungus!

Ben Ferencz is Awesome

Ben Ferencz was the chief prosecutor for the US at the Nuremberg Trials. I remember seeing his speech to the American Bar Association a while ago (I logged alot of daytime CSPAN-time when I had a job "working from home" before medical school. And by working from home, I mean fishing and playing

You's a HHO! Alternative Fuel and You!

Here's an interesting clip via Ben Poody:

So according to wikipedia, my definitive source on everything, what's happening here is water is being

Obama Lil Mama

Bald Eagles!

It's movie night here at The Blogkove, it seems, with post after post of youtube clips, ad infinitum. ad nausem. ad hitlerum.

Bald Eagles are the shiz.biz. Below is a sweet HD video of them on the Hudson River, NY, just a brief

Blast from the Past: Uncut!

I had an unhealthy relationship with this video for 6-8 months. From my understanding, it is Ducktales in

Avarice Fulfilled

I would like to publicly thank my father, the good Dr. Lefkove, for buying me the Cardio III and the Welch-Allyn Diagnostic Set, 2 out 4 of the avarice-items, but definately the most important and useful of the lot.  THANK YOU DAD!

Mercurial Vaccine Beliefs

A few weeks ago, I had a large debate with a fellow classmate about vaccines vis-a-vis their dangerous properties or lack thereof. He posited that the current vaccine scheduling in general, and the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine in specific, are plausible causes of the increasing rate of Autism

Yellow Line to Awesomeness

I live for this shit.

Apparently, some Asian-American relations group in Atlanta is PO-ed that the new MARTA line running into Chambodia (an amalgamation of Chamblee and foreign-odia that I appropriated from Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full. That's right, I'm smug, and I just made a literary reference). Obviously, its ridiculous. Yellow is just a color, and the line happens to run through asian-town, ATL. However, there's tons of mexicans and Yeshiva Atlanta there also. So let it go. MARTA is not calling Asians yellers.

This reminds me of the old Po Folks Scandal, of which I cannot find a reliable article (In short, Po' Folks had to change its name to Folks because folks didn't like the "Po'" part).

And in summary, here is a tribute to MARTA, that I try to mention wherever possible:

Retraction

Ok, I will publicly retract some statements from the post about Israeli Healthcare. It is wrong to make a blanket assumption about Israeli doctors, clearly it stems form some xenophobia. However, still, to my understanding, and my comfort level, there is a lack over there. So I want to apologize to Israel, for speaking Loshon Hara about it.

Stay Tuned as the blogkove takes on vaccination-autism myths!

3rd World Healthcare

Ok, enough fluffy-nice stuff, back to vitriol.

Here is a story about a boy from Atlanta, from my very own high school and community, albeit a good deal younger. He got Hodgkin's Lymphoma while studying in Yeshiva in Israel. So he goes to the highly paternalistic Israeli doctors, here is an excerpt:

“By the l6th blood test on the fifth day, they said, ‘We see something in your blood,’” Khandadash said. “Now to give you a behind the scenes view, the doctors there would not tell you anything. It’s not like in America where you have a right to know everything. They literally would not tell you anything. I was like, ‘Maybe they think I’m a kid?’” 

Two things:
1) 5 days to get to a HL diagnosis?! Earlier reading of the article puts HL up on the list: age, persistent respiratory illness, fevers, night sweats. A positive CXR! I did relatively average on the heme/onc test, and I can tell you this kid has B-symptoms written all over him. What a bunch of quacks!
2) I know that I've been force fed like a veal-to-be the line about patient and family centered care, which is a buzzword, but it's also real. Patients aren't a piece of meat, nor are they simply patrons who come to the grand wizard for his almighty opinion. Clearly they mismanaged his case, and he might have been more forgiving had they not been royal D-Bags about the whole thing. If I've learned one thing in medical school, it's that as much as we do know, we really don't know, and modesty is good as gold in this profession.

So moving along, he realizes that the gig is up, and he purchases for himself private insurance. And the insurance co. immediately drops him once they find out it's HL. Now I feel awful that this young man got sick, but this is total pre-existing condition, and he bought insurance only after realizing, "oh wait, this isn't good." It's irresponsible not to have some sort of coverage. Insurance is not for if you get sick, it's for when you get sick. Now, the greater issue is insurance companies doing this at all, and this illustrates the serious flaws of 3rd party payer managed care. Of course, Israel has a socialized system which still has the downfalls of point 1, but he didn't have access to the social system regardless.

So he goes to his American doctor at Scottish Rite. A good hospital:

Khandadash then thought to himself what the Israeli doctors told him, that his lungs looked fine on the x-ray he saw overseas. He informed his doctor what he was previously told.

Doctor: “Are you serious?”
Khandadash: “Yeah, this is what I saw in Israel.”
Doctor: “They didn’t catch anything in Israel?”
Khandadash: “No.”
Doctor: “Well, you see this?” The doctor points to outlines of two objects.
Khandadash: “Yeah, my lungs.”
Doctor: “You see these two big things over here and over here? Those aren’t supposed to be there.”

 Like I said before, a bunch of quacks over there. his doctors were displaying some quackery, it seems. (Disclaimer: Not all Israeli doctors are quacks, but his seemed to be, based on this article. Maybe BennyPoo can calm down now).

Thankfully, HL generally has a good prognosis. Imagine this kid walked in with something more serious that they completely overlooked in Israel. He could be way worse off at this point. I've heard lots of people, particularly family members, defend Israeli Healthcare to the hilt (possibly due to their religious-zionist bias swinging them away from objectivity [but aren't we all swung that way?]), as if its this perfect system. But I know, based on my experience there as well as the anecdotes of others, that its all-around better over here. Not to say that you don't deal with loads of bullcrap from doctors over here. Trust me, I know the people in my class, the future dotors of America. But still, we can, and will, and do, do it better.

Avarice

You, dear reader, are probably wondering: Ben! you've got a test on cardiology tomorrow, why, at 2:27 pm, the day before your test, are you at home, blogging, avoiding learning about diuretics?
Well, I'm glad you asked. I am procrastinating.
Regardless, I want now to post some material items I desire:

1. Welch-Allyn Diagnostic Kit. 

I know that switching from my current dinky travel-set, borrowed from Zach Lane, will confirm my manliness to all alpha males on the wards. Nothing says Big Package like a thick lithium battery stick on your panopticon opthlamascope

2. Asus UL30A-X5.      

My "friend" from school just bought one. I covet my neighbor's laptop, commandment be damned. It has facial recognition for login, a separate linux OS for rapid booting into a web browser, and good guts all around. And not too expensive either...
Not that my current Dell Vostro 1000, given to me for the price of...on the house...by EK, is not a good workhorse. It is. But that's what silly materialism is, wanting something you don't need. 


3. The Littman Cardio III.

Smooth Elegance. Refined Beauty. Double Barrel. I know that this is not only required for me to be a successful doctor, but that without it, 500 children will immediately die. I will auscultate the shit out of someone with this thing. Currently, I am using Nehama's (inferior) Littman boring-edition. Some nights I wake up in a cold sweat, thinking I hear the Cardio III calling out to me...



4. The Complete Works of John Steinbeck.

Not only will this provide me with ample reading of my most favorite author, but I also want a leather-bound book. And an office that smells of rich mahogany wood. Perhaps a pipe as well, a free-standing globe, friends, henchmen, political savvy, status, status updates on facebook, and a deep voice.


That's all for now. The wild world of cardiology beckons. As loyal readers, please see to it that all of these items appear at my house in the near-term.

Baboon-a-rific!

I love baboons. and chimps. and great apes. I've read 2 Jane Goodall books. I like chimps because they are our nearest ancestor, sharing 98% of our genome. Their behaviors and lives are very similar to ours, yet also very different. So its a good comparison, chimp to human, to see maybe where the roots of some of our motives lay. Maybe its the humanzee in me. More on this later.

Here's an awesome video featuring a baboon, sent to me by TaniP

Hamas TV Funhouse

Two best lines:
"Old Man Hitler!"
and
"We had to cancel it after the guy who played sheigele went back to dental school."

Oh, anti-semitic cartoons, when will you fall out of favor....

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Story Hole - Children's Cartoons From Hamas
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Fame, Finally

I am pleased to announce that The Blogkove (formerly benbeel.blogspot.com) has ascended to google greatness, and has fulfilled point 5 of its 14 point plan...
Thank you, Mark Wahlberg

behold, #2!!!!

Forgive me Father, for I have 'Zinn'ed

This is a response to this article, sent to me by my dear ol' dad.

I took an American History class at GSU one summer, and the textbook for the class was Zinn's "Peoples' HIstory..." I was taken aback, to say the least. I had two history teachers in high school.. One was Dr. Coolick, a purple-heart winning Vietnam vet, who spent 15-20 years in the CIA, with a PhD in Western Military History, and a fierce patriotic love. He described the French, in class, as "Cheese-Eating surrender monkeys." He was intelligent, a seasoned patriot in every sense of the world. My best class in High School, possibly ever, was the constitutional law class, where he went through 15 monumental supreme court cases that shaped american law. All of his teaching ended in, "America is progressing to a better place (in contrast with the shitty negativity you get from the media nowadays)."

My other teacher was Mr. McKay, a much-less-seasoned veteran of the US' operations in Panama, with some Airborne Unit. He talked a huge game, and ate a huge game (he easily tipped the scales at 300+ lbs). His history was much less tempered and "intelligent-ey" than Coolicks: We knew it, he knew it. He was 100% sure (this was spring 2001) that the US would return to armed conflict with Korea, boots on the ground, within 3 years. I guess he, along with the US intelligence community, did not "see it coming." He encouraged us to all enlist, so as the be able to choose our unit as opposed to getting shoved in a crappy unit when we are (inevitably) drafted; me personally, he felt the US Army Rangers would particularly suit my energy level. I was a rowdy kid in highschool, and he more than once had me doing pushups before the class. McKay had a particular fetish with the Civil War, wrote some books on the matter, and presented what could be called, "The Rebel's History of the Civil War." Our military history class with him consisted mostly of field-trips to little pidgen hill, chickaumauga, and kennesaw mountain, where we saw first-hand the ploys of Northern Aggression, as well as his attraction to Wes' mom. Oh, our joy at seeing the jovial, obese man, sweat dripping from his pits, haul his fat ass up mountains that once ran red with union blood, now running white with tears of laughter. McKay is a good man, who, like alot of high school teachers, got a lot of undeserved flack from his students.

My knowledge of history, particularly of civil war history, I felt, was strong, stronger than most of my peers', at least. What I read in Zinn's book was really new to me, shocking. Columbus was a hero, dammit! Lincoln, well McKay would say he's a fucker, Coolick would say he led us to a better and more complete union. But Zinn basically rejected all of our hagiography. Thankfully, my fellow students at GSU were so uninterested and under-educated, that Zinn's message was fired way over their heads. But I never felt the same after. I felt like either Zinn was a liar, but I couldn't reject his thick bibliography. On the other hand, perhaps our leaders weren't as golden then as they are now. I recalled the words of my first class at YU, with Moshe Bernstein, the mousy, bitchy biblical scholar, when referencing Judaism's current view of the sadducees and karaites  (who told me, "Ben, there is no way you will pass this class with your current reading abilities." I took a W, bastard!): "The Winners write the history books." Could Rabbinic Orthodox Judaism, that shrine I [once] held so sacred, be subject to the same human fallicies of corruption, coercion, censorship, and not be handed down directly "Mi Pi El"?! Ah, the downfall and corruption begins...
But in that vane, perhaps America's manifest destiny was, additionally, not handed down from Gods lips, but only on the backs on all the people who stood in her way to the top. Perhaps then, the net good outweighs all the evil that undubitably follows it?

These are the questions, largely unanswered and unanswerable. But despite Zinn's uber-negativity and pessimism, which I reject, he filled an important seat: self-reflection. While he took the tack of never acknowledging all the good of the country--including the right to write such mean things about the very people who guaranteed him the very right to write such very mean things--exposing young minds to "the other side," is helpful.

I'll conclude with a story from Ben Poodiack, told to me not hours ago. In one of his classes at GSU (what's the deal with that place?), they were having a discussion about separation of church and state, vis-a-vis prayer in school. The punch-line of the story was a young lass proclaiming, "like, um, I don't get what the problem is. If I were jewish, and I wanted to take off for ramadan, I could just talk to my boss and he would let me." [sound of hand slapping forehead]. But what shocked poody about this whole class, was how the Average Joe American Protestant Christian consistently seemed unable to put themselves in the perspective of "them other people." Jews. Hindus. Muslims. It baffles them why a morning classroom prayer to Jesus would feel awkward to a Jew, yet how very strange would they feel bowing on a prayer rug in the mornings, or lighting some incense to Ganesh (that was a made-up ritual by me, but you get the point). So Zinn's view, "the other side," is important, even if rejected, hopefully, by those who know better.

Chee-Chicken

Excellent video. Featuring daffy duck choking on a kazoo! [gizmodo]

You Decide

Dumpling...or Bicuspid Aortic Valve???? You decide!

Final Jeopardy

Dork-tasticness of the day:
Final Jeopardy Topic: Medicine
(To Whit, Nehama and I simultaneously, synchronously exclaimed, "YES!....Finally!" Ah, the benefits of a  hive-brain.)

final jeopardy question: this organism's gene are 2 parts pig, 1 part bird, and 1 part human.

answer: H1N1

H1N1 is a virus. Viruses are not alive, and are therefore not organisms. Suck it, Trebeck!

Organisms can loosely be described as, "Any living structure, such as a plant, animal, fungus or bacterium, capable of growth and reproduction." Source, Wikipedia.

The loosely-accepted 7 rules of life are:

1. Homeostasis 
2. Organization 
3. Metabolism
4. Growth
5. Adaptation
6. Response to stimuli
7. Reproduction

Viruses arguably satisfy several of these requirement, but certainly not all. For instance, their ability to reproduce is solely reliant on host machinery: truly a non-autonomous being. Secondly, they do not possess a true chemotactic response to stimuli: they will bind receptors, but that is all they will do. Viruses do not "move." they have no propellant ability. They do not grow, but rather are assembled from component parts within the host, and expelled full-formed, much like athena from the head of zeus. Only this athena causes AIDS.

That is a short take on it. Viruses are pseudo-life, perhaps even proto-life. They exist in a realm intertwined with living species, but not autonomous living entities. Like I've said before: suck it, Trebek.

Regardless, I will quote the following blog, from which I obtained this picture, with the help of my friend google.

"Alex Trebek is a game show host. He doesn’t know the answers to the questions he asks. Instead, he reads the knowledge off cards, cards handed to him by a sweating fat man in a small, small suit who gives him his lies in the darkness. Profane, undying darkness."

Technorati Tags: alex trebek, jeopardy, H1N1, lies, organisms

Phrase o' the day

Been learning about EKG interpretation all day. And one of the steps in interpreting an EKG is determining if the rhythm is sinus or ventricular. And all I hear, all day, is "Jah! Sinus Riddim!!!"

Here's a picture I made, of Dr. Jah-Stein, diagnosing "Sinus Riddim"



Technorati Tags: rastafari, sinus rhythm, riddim