I wished I had
But since I've not done these things yet, I have to relax.
New Year
New hopes
New dreams
Old self?
I just started reading Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think. 1st ed. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007. . (1st ed. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.)    I remember with some fondness "Eyes Wide Open," an essay from 2007 in The New Yorker.  I picked this book up in hopes of learning how to better deal with doctors, a skill that would come in useful in both mundane and life and death situations.
From what I've gleaned so far, Groopman is focused on the type of misdiagnoses made by doctors, which he writes is dominated by cognitive errors:
In one study of misdiagnoses that caused serious harm to patients, some 80 percent could be accounted for by a cascade of cognitive errors, like the one in Anne Dodge's case, putting her into a narrow frame and ignoring information that contradicted a fixed notion. Another study of one hundred incorrect diagnoses found that inadequate medical knowledge was the reason in only four instances. The doctors didn't stumble because of their ignorance of clinical facts; rather, they missed diagnoses because they fell into cognitive traps. Such errors produced a distressingly high rate of misdiagnosis. As many as 15 percent of all diagnoses are inaccurate, according to a 1995 report in which doctors assessed written descriptions of patient's symptoms and examined actors simulating patients with various diseases. These findings match classical research, based on autopsies, which shows that 10 percent to 15 percent of all diagnoses are wrong. (p. 24)
Presumably, I'll find out from Groopman how I as a patient can help steer my doctors away from cognitive pitfalls that might bring great harm to me and my loved ones.  That's what I get from:
Different doctors, as we will see in later chapters, achieve competency in remarkably similar ways, despite working in disparate fields. Primarily, they recognize and remember their mistakes and misjudgments, and incorporate those memories into their thinking. Studies show that expertise is largely acquired not only by sustained practice but by receiving feedback that helps you understand your technical errors and misguided decisions. (p. 21)
Although reviews of this book have been extremely positive overall on amazon.com, I often turn to critical comments to get a sense of what the book is like. One I found particularly useful is Amazon.com: R. Albin's review of How Doctors Think:
Even more disappointing is Groopman's attitude towards the most serious effort to rectify this kind of problem, the evidence-based medicine movement. For example, Groopman makes several dismissive remarks about the introduction of Bayesian reasoning in diagnosis and management.
Let's see how well Groopman does with analyzing the role of evidence-based medicine
At the beginning of each new year I'm always drawn to the practice of reading the Bible in a year through the help of a daily Bible reading plan.  I might try using YouVersion | 1 Year Bible Reading Plan -- though I am loath to put too many personal reflections into the Web application, not so much because of privacy concerns, but more because of data lock-in. In other words, I don't want all the writing I have stuck in youversion.com. (Note: there is the promise of a public API in the new year.)
Besides getting angry, what can one do in response to the outrageous behavior of irresponsible people in the financial services sector -- which was well dissected by Krugman in The Madoff Economy:
Is any way to get reform enacted to keep the Wall Street fat cats from driving the system off the cliff again, often still collecting bonuses they didn't deserve? Or am I just unfairly singling out bankers for something we all share collective responsibility? That's the argument put forth recently by Henry Blodget in The Atlantic Online Why Wall Street Always Blows It?:
But most bubbles are the product of more than just bad faith, or incompetence, or rank stupidity; the interaction of human psychology with a market economy practically ensures that they will form. In this sense, bubbles are perfectly rational—or at least they’re a rational and unavoidable by-product of capitalism (which, as Winston Churchill might have said, is the worst economic system on the planet except for all the others). Technology and circumstances change, but the human animal doesn’t. And markets are ultimately about people.
Should I stop dealing with banks? pull my money out of the stock market? treat bankers with disdain? How should I put my anger to productive use instead of just ranting against the fat cats who were supposed to know what they were doing?
An interesting coincidence this morning: as I was reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers, skimming through The New York Times and struggling to focus my attention on important things, I came across David Brooks' latest column on Gladwell and the topic of focus, which includes the following key excerpt:
Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. This individual power leads to others. It leads to self-control, the ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses. If forced to choose, we would all rather our children be poor with self-control than rich without it.
It leads to resilience, the ability to persevere with an idea even when all the influences in the world say it can’t be done. A common story among entrepreneurs is that people told them they were too stupid to do something, and they set out to prove the jerks wrong.
It leads to creativity. Individuals who can focus attention have the ability to hold a subject or problem in their mind long enough to see it anew.
It should be noted that Gladwell argues that successful people are products of their environment to a greater degree than commonly acknowledged in Western society....
As spotted at a children's Christmas pageant at church: a girl in sheep's clothing – running rogue – brings a smile to the Good Shepherd.
Infinity plus one is still infinity.
Yet You let not one sheep fall into the abyss.
Are You less than infinite -- or yet more?
I'm starting to read the Bible by following a lectionary. I must admit that I'm still confused about how various lectionaries fit together and how much of the Bible any given lectionary cycle covers. A website I've looked at before is The Lectionary Page. (Something that seems new to me are the links to Revised Common Lectionary.
Another place for me to start is with daily readings provided by the PCUSA. Today's reading is found at PC(USA) - Devotions.
Snow, like oyster sauce, covers many sins.