this week i

bit my nails.

exhaled.

became a better person thanks to the hirshhorn after hours.

learned of spring's arrival without the dumb groundhog.

spotted an amharic metro psa..

found the bronzed massachusetts 54th corps at nga..

..then some bones of a massachusetts 54th corpse at walter reed's amazing museum of health and medicine..

..as well as 19th century amputation surgery prep,

anatomical artwork




arterial chinese finger traps

and the bullet that killed lincoln.

read that my own walt whitman high school now offers rebellion against god 101. also agreed with the lancet.

fell in love with marcia angell. for this and this and this.

4/2/09

this week i

gave thumbs down for chipotle's removal of free lime wedges, up for muhammad ali underwater.

toured national geographic's birds of north america exhibit, fascinating migration maps.

chatted with a friend about her work on reservations in the southwest. not a solution, but this helps to explain the history of the problem...tack on marvin harris' hypothesis that the absence of domesticated megafauna (beasts of burden) in the americas slowed agricultural development (relative to farming across the oceans). so no horses/oxen meant fewer dense cities meant no need to purify water through fermentation meant no need to build resistance to alcoholism means genetic descendants suffer today... ? amazing anthropology, i've added cannibals & kings to my reading list.

hoped for more of this.

recommend the burmese fish soup.

dropped by the folger shakespeare library for the dreams exhibit..
..350 year-old books on well-deserved pedestals..
..but too much touchscreen digression.
museum curation requires linear storytelling, not just plaques + security.

dropped by the bach's birthday organ pump, just to say hi.


3/26/09

this week i

picked up our $10 wizards tickets (msrp $40) at the will-call window, threw my id into the ticket envelope, then stairmastered up four escalators to our seats. the nba has perfected timeout entertainment: jumbotron kiss cam/dance cam/air guitar cam, trampoline slam dunk contest, half-court free-pizza-for-everyone shot, multiple dance troupes, and a truly impressive two-man cirque du soleil-style halftime show. too bad washington stinks at basketball. fingers crossed for the human slinky next time.

tuned into jon stewart's pulverization of cnbc, on par with his previous crossfire dismemberment.

showed up at reagan airport, opened my wallet, couldn't find my driver's license, boarded the atlanta-bound plane with a passport, paced through the catacombs between short- and long-term memory to realize i'd thrown out that ticket envelope at the concession stand. made car rental tricky..


..but not impossible.

drank coffee. felt immortal.

fled west to tuskeegee, alabama: famous for awesome airmen..


a pilgrimage to increase my public health cred.

downtown's pretty.

duh music causes dancing causes shoe wear duh

spent the night at a friend's parents' home in auburn, a great way to turn one friend into three friends.

hooray our sports team won let's kill trees

loved gk's prairie home companion annual jokes show.

visited an old friend in jonesboro. got an invitation to visit haiti also. accepted.

forgive the camerawoman. she's six.

read nassim taleb's arguments that knowledge derived from statistical observation becomes derailed by unpredictable events too often to make mathematical modeling a valuable or honest pursuit. instead of presenting a series of disjoint anecdotes, i would've been more convinced if he had fought fire with fire and quantified distances between, say, the price of medicare in 2008 and the price of medicare in 2008 as predicted in 1990. he had a few good points about our species' disinclination to appropriately reward successful prevention (as opposed to finding antidotes after symptoms attack), but i wasn't sold on his thesis that the problem of induction was grounds for an overhaul in social science methods.

3/19/09

this week i

assembled county-level data from census' american community survey. we'd like the capacity to attach county of residence-wide information to any data source with a county or zip code identifier. our first use will be to add a "population density of the patient's county of residence" variable to the medicare current beneficiary survey data set, so we can include pop. density in our logistic regression of medicare advantage enrollment. in other words, is privately-administered medicare coverage more common among urban dwellers?

ate delicious peruvian fare, then made a midnight showing of jurassic park. $8 to see a lawyer eaten by a t-rex on the big screen, yes please.

repeated visits to the kennedy center's arabesque series. though a free show of the sudanese aretha franklin had its charm, we definitely got our money's worth at the modern egyptian dance.

preferred these wedding dresses to boring old white.

browsed the textile museum, lots of nomadic tribes' rugs, who knew? javanese batik my favorite.

made our fashion statement at imax u2 3d.

saw a capitol steps concert, my hometown bannockburn spring shows are better.


3/12/09

this week i

examined differences between medicare advantage (private) plans and traditional (fee-for-service) medicare by demographics, preventive services, access, quality, cost, and prescription drug coverage. medicare for-profit insurers have moved to the center of the congressional debate, we're hoping to contribute something to that conversation.

updated my word 2003 spell check dictionary.

started reading huffington post more, i've read drudge for years. it's fascinating to watch this battle of interpretation.

couldn't believe the survey of consumer finances still uses ascii for its instrument documentation, ayfk me?

skied to work through blizzard of the season #2. one candidate for public institution decision-making transparency? weather closings. this arbitrary is-the-superintendent-in-a-hot-cocoa-mood crap ain't gonna fly when i'm king. seriously, get a measurement cup and write some rules.

3/5/09