Observe

Having three elective students attached at the moment; two are second-year and another third-year.

They give up part of their summer holiday and come here, presumably to have some extra exposure to clinical medicine and see how it is practiced (badly) in real life.

I always believe they can hardly learn very much from a busy clinician. In contrast, JC is always a fans of attachment of this kind. "You don't have to teach them anything. They can just observe."

Yes, I still remember the story The Last Weapon in the Japanese comics Cobra by Buichi Terasawa (寺沢武一). When it first appeared, the last weapon was nothing but a stone with nondescript appearance - except there's an eye on it. The very point is, whenever it encounters another weapon, it would learn the function of - and evolve to become even better than - what it sees. Therefore, it would eventually become the best weapon on earth.

The sobering truth is, although many stones have eyes, images are projected to the retina and there's no cerebral cortex to integrate.

"You see, but you do not observe," says Sherlock Holmes.