Number

You may argue the votes are blinded, and any electorate can say one thing but do another.

Very true. Nonetheless, normal human psychology states that most people cannot lie – they would merely be evasive and say they don’t know, don’t understand, or don’t remember.

(In fact, it is an extraordinary capability to deliberately lie in the public. These people will go far.)

***************************

You may say my discussion above is truth of the Sunday school.

Yes, but, let’s consider this: Why is it a game of positive reinforcement?

Exactly because the choice of an electorate is not without consequence.

Then, why's it not without consequence?

Because the number of electorate is small. As a result, it doesn't take too much effort for the winner to thank those who voted for him, or, if he prefers, work out some consequence for those who voted otherwise. If there is a huge number of electorate (for example, in the case of a general election), such a thank-or-penalize system would hardly work, and, that's the only circumstance when the voting could really be blinded, and electorates could choose the one they like (which, I remind you, is the cardinal principle of voting and democracy) rather than everyone going for the likely winner.

Go read The Art of Strategy.

Electorate

For obvious reasons my vote didn’t count. The genuine election took place soon afterwards, and the result was what everyone predicted.

Two interesting observations, however, were hotly discussed afterwards – from the morning paper to our lunch table:

1. Why did so many people suddenly become fans of the wolf (including previous supporters of the pig, as well as many of the representatives of our own profession)?
2. Why did most of the electorates speak out for whom they vote?

The gem is, the two questions are actually different manifestations of the same problem.

Don’t you comprehend? It goes like this: The game at hand is a positive reinforcement exercise. If one of the candidates will clearly win, and if the choice of an electorate is not without consequence (which may either be positive – some may want to become a government secretary or bid for a good piece of land – or negative – that is, to avoid some less than favorable happenings after autumn), it is natural to vote for the winner. In other words, an electorate does not vote for a candidate that they want, but for someone whom they believe would win.

In that case, the inevitable problem to follow is: How could electorates tell the winner that they have voted desirably?

Alas, that’s why they have to speak it out!

Vote

Shortly after I discussed leadership with S, I voted on-line for a hot topic of our city.

I announced it on my Facebook, and, to my surprise, I received some two dozens of Likes within one day – a record of all my status updates.

But, my friends, don’t be too excited. What if I tell you I voted for CY?

I really should – for very good reasons.

To begin with, I am probably against general election, and I suppose CY will try his best and prevent it from happening. (As to my reasons for not supporting a general election, please refer to http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2010/05/vote.html and related blog entries.)

Second, I believe we need someone from the Communist Party to take charge. In that case we do not have to worry whether a government policy is in line with the higher opinion, because our CE is one of them. (Isn’t that the reason why so many people support another Mr. Tsang to run for the election?)

PS. It is immaterial whom I actually voted. To me, the sobering truth is, even in the setting of general election and a bias towards young and liberal voters, the Pigeon Party lost badly, and that Mr. Ho did not even attempt to win the virtual game.

As Confucius said: 赤也為之小，敦能為之大？

Please

(My conversation with S continued.)

“I appreciate your kind words,” S smiled, “But that doesn’t really solve the problem: How should I live on another planet while keeping in touch with the Earth?”

“I’m afraid you’ve asked the wrong person,” I murmured, “Nonetheless, while talking to you, an old saying keeps flashing through my mind: You can fool all people for a short while, you can also fool a few persons forever, but you cannot fool all people forever.”

“What’s that to do with administration?” S was puzzled.

“An administrator can please all people for a short while – usually by giving away candies,” I explained, “One can also please a few persons forever by discrimination and biased policies – look what our government did for the Li’s family. Although it is impossible – and in fact self defeating – to please everyone forever, my friend, when you become a real administrator, I hope you could please the maximum number of people for the longest period of time. True, you may upset a few and jeopardize their benefit, but that’s the leader we need!”

PS. In retrospect, I should suggest my friend to read The Prince of Niccolo Machiavelli.

Well, as an ordinary citizen, maybe not.

Adaptation

While I was enjoying an uncommon boring hour in my office, S – a good friend of mine who emigrated to another planet recently – called at my office. (I shouldn’t really say emigrated. If that planet is running the American system, S just got the green card.)

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked – my friend did not appear very well.

“Dizzy, and a bit of nausea,” S put up a bitter smile, “Alas, I just had two back to back meetings with some extraterrestrials, and you know what these creatures are! I must say I couldn’t make the head and tail of what they think – or how they could think in their specific way. It really looks as if they are from another universe that has a different set of rules for logic!”

“But, my friend, this is your job, or what your salary is now paying you for,” I tried to show some empathy, “In a sense you should secretly feel happy if you feel unhappy after those meetings – and you find creatures around are a horrible gang of extra-terrestrials, aliens, vampires, monsters, mollusks, and prematurely discharged subjects from the psychiatric ward – because, in that case, you are still your good old self and not one of them!”

PS. The black humour of our health care system is we do not have enough hospital beds for patients with psychiatric diseases, so much so many of them could only stay in the hospital by taking up administrative posts.

Year

After spending a whole morning in that gorgeous playground, Euterpe and Alder were as hungry as they could.

We were a bit late for lunch, and the Hong Kong Observatory was correct – it was freezing and raining. We managed to find a small ramen shop in a mall nearby. After settling ourselves on the comfy chairs and made the order, I realized we’d picked the right place.

The television in the restaurant was turned to a Japanese channel.

Naturally I watched. It was showing an outdoor ceremony. A grey-hair man was making a speech. He appeared upset and serious.

In no time I recognized who he was, “Oh my god! This is Emperor Akihito!”

Vivian looked up and said, “Of course! Today is eleventh of March! Time flies. It’s already one year.”

We were both speechless.

悟彼下泉人，喟然傷心肝。

Science

It was Euterpe’s birthday. Like what we did in the past years, Vivian and I decided to bring our daughters to a local theme park for celebration.

But we gave up the idea very soon. The weather forecast predicted that it would be a cold and rainy weekend, and it is no fun to spend our day queueing up outdoor in a chilling temperature, waiting for one game after another.

Alas, then, where should we go?

My wife and I considered a few options, and, at the end of the day, we decided to go to the Science Museum.

You may ask: How could a 5-year-old girl have sufficient interest in science and enjoy such a trip? (Not to say her younger sister, who is merely 18 months in age.)

In fact, before we set off, I had the same question.

Nonetheless, when we left the museum for lunch, I asked my princess, “Sweetheart, how do you find this place?”

“Why! It’s a gorgeous playground!”

Entropy

“Well, I agree with your examples, but they don’t exclude the possibility that there are ways having a net positive effect.” I said.

“Unfortunately, no. And I can give you a water-tight proof,” my friend said quietly, “The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy goes up with all activities.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean human beings follow the laws of thermodynamics, and all human activities - or you can all them economic activities - lead to an increase in the degree of disorder in this universe. Pollution, when you come to think of it, is the sociologists' term for entropy.”

"Alas, I begin to see what you are getting at," I murmured, "If we take outdated newspapers and old books as the disordered state, the recycled products are in a better order. The process of conversion, therefore, always involves something that creates more disorderliness running in parallel. In other words, some other form of pollution must happens."

"Unfortunately, we are not alchemists. The world we are living is different from that of Edward Elric, and exchange is never equivalent. Any attempt of generating orderliness, or recycling if you like, would have an overall effect of creating more pollution - often in an area that we hardly notice."

Cost

(Our discussion continued.)

“You may be going too far, my friend. For sure there are people working on paper recycle, solar energy, or similar kinds of things. They do help our environment!” I remained unconvinced.

“Alas, too simple, and sometimes naïve,” L was suddenly playing the old Jimmy, “Yes, it sounds great to see old books and expired journals turning into boxes and tissue papers. But, have you ever thought of the process of that conversion? It takes energy – which means electricity and consumption of more fossil fuel – clean water, and a whole lot of chemicals – detergent, bleach, and a handful of others. If you sweep all these under the carpet, yes, this black-box magic does help our planet.”

My mouth was wide open; I’d never thought of this.

“Even if we consider your solar energy,” he continued, “Clean and healthy as it seems, the construction of a solar energy plant is a different ball game. To build a photovoltaic power system that converts sunlight to electricity requires specific metals and minerals – notably silicon and cadmium – and the production of solar cells would offset any benefit of solar energy on the environment – and we have not considered the opportunistic cost of using up valuable places that we'd better plant trees!”

Economy

My friend was obviously in a good mood. While I was still pondering about his suggestion of monitoring treatment complications, he continued with his speech.

“We can consider the problem from a wider perspective. It is silly to monitor clinical activity and give money accordingly because medical professionals are good at generating useless activities. In fact, it is no wiser to monitor all forms of economic activity, and I consider it an obsessive disorder of the modern society to insist on a continual economic growth!”

“Why?” I seemed kept asking the same question that evening.

“Alas, because economic activities, whether being measured by GDP or whatever, reflects how much resource we exploit on this planet – or the amount of pollution we generate.”

“Not necessarily,” I retorted, “We have environment-friendly industries, and there are a whole lot of companies and people make their livings on recycling or other means to cut down pollution.”

“Alas, you think so?” L was laughing, “To me, environment-friendly industry is the modern version of the Holy Roman Empire – despite of its name, it was not holy, it had very little to do with Roman, and it was not an empire!”

Amount

(Our conversation continued.)

After a moment of silence, L cleared his throat and said:

 “The voucher system would only work for school children because the demand of education for each kid is relatively fixed. In other words, if a child is studying in one school, it is quite impossible for him to go for another one  at the same time. Educational voucher is therefore a built-in rewarding system for schools that perform well and could attract many students. In contrast, paying a hospital – or a doctor – by the amount of clinical activity is distinctly dangerous, because the amount of medical treatment that a patient could receive is practically endless. Doctors and hospitals would be tempted to create more work for themselves and offer useless treatments.”

I saw what he meant – and was forced to agree. There are a handful of places on earth that are really running this silly system.

“Alas, my friend, I shall not be too confident with myself,” L smiled, “While I am talking to you, a brilliant idea just come through my mind – We may be able to monitor some parameters for budget allocation.”

“Really?” I was surprise.

“As you mentioned in your blog a few days ago, we should hire house officers who have a track record of AIRS. Following the same logic, we should decide the budget of each unit by its number of complications,” my friend went on, half-jokingly, “You will have more complications if you work harder and have more patients – or if you have more difficult patients. And, the beauty of this system is, the temptation of boosting up your budget would be minimal!”

For a moment, I was not sure if my friend was serious or being even more cynical than his usual - if that's at all possible.

Allocation

 “Your argument may be right in real life,” I said after a moment of consideration, “But, if we take aside all human factor and consider the problem from a purely scientific point of view, I’m afraid you are on the wrong and there are ways to quantify medical service and allocate the resource accordingly.”

“Your proposed problem is largely a philosophical one,” my friend smiled, “Nonetheless, since you are obsessive with science, let me tell you this: There are two areas that an administrator could monitor a clinical unit – the amount of work done, and the result of performance.”

“I can understand that,” I said, “When you talked about the dilemma of awarding a good unit versus helping a bad one, you were referring to the intrinsic problem of monitoring the clinical performance. But, how about giving money according to the amount of work we do?”

“Alas, in that case I would still insist on my original opinion – we shouldn’t allocate resource to a unit by the amount of service it delivers.”

“Why? For example, as a fans of market economy, I’m sure you support the system of educational voucher for resource allocation amongst schools. Why can’t we do the same for hospitals?” I asked.

L was silent. He looked at me in my eyes; his curious expression seemed to say I had overlooked a simple problem.

Resource

I was silent for a moment because I remained uneasy with what my friend said. Finally, I saw light.

“My friend, extra-terrestrials need the information – for resource allocation I suppose.”

“Front line staff on earth are sent to hell exactly for that idea of all those mollusk outside the solar system. To the latter, data could be generated without any effort. But, my friend, the real point is, diagnosis coding could not be used for resource allocation." L suddenly became serious, "Within the same hospital and amongst different departments, how can you compare the complexity of a patient with a complicated heart problem to another with a rare cancer? If you are talking about budget decision amongst hospitals, how could you tell a unit that performs more complex surgery is having more difficult patients, but the problems are not created by the surgeons themselves? In fact, by the law of physics, any objective measurement of clinical activity could not be used for resource allocation!”

“Why on earth?” I could not believe my ears.

“Because each coin has two sides,” he said slowly, “Should we award more resources to a unit that performs well so that it excels, or give more money to another department that has a whole lot of problems so that it could improve? The irony is, when it comes to money, all problems become political - not economic - ones."

Coding

“You are too cynical,” I read the story L showed me (which I put up on my blog in the past two days) and smiled.

“Maybe, but there’s certain truth in it,” my friend appeared serious, “The point is, why do we need to provide such an elaborated data for the diagnosis code for the hospital computer system?”

“That’s silly. We can better treat our patient when we have accurate and detailed information,” I replied.

“Can we? No, that’s not my question. What I really want to ask is: If the diagnosis code is in such a great detail, isn’t it another case summary?” L said.

“Your point doesn’t affect my argument. With more information, we can do our job better.” I insisted.

“Not necessarily, my friend. Since you are so fond of economy, I suppose you know the principles of diminishing marginal return and opportunistic cost? The more the detail, the smaller the benefit you gain by having another additional point – take aside the real happenings of garbage-in-and-garbage-out. And you lose the time that could be better spent on your patient.”

“What you mean is, as Albert Einstein said, things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” I said quietly.

Name

(The interview continued.)

After a brief moment of silence, the middle age manager resumed his frozen smile. He stood up, lean forward, and passed the tiny yellow object in his hand to K.

"Well, what do you make out of this?" The manager asked.

K turned the plastic bird over and looked at it from another angle. In no time he took a deep breathe and exclaimed, "Why! It is a pencil sharpener!"

"Good. Is it your verdict?" M pushed again.

"Yes...?" K was puzzled.

"No," the manager suddenly became serious, "Gentleman, we are happy to have you as one of us. But, in order to conform to our system, you must learn to call this object - and anything else - properly."

"And, what is the proper way?" The interviewee asked.

"You can refer to this guide," M gave the young man a five-inch-thick volume, "For that little object in your hand, when you fill up the form for our department, you have to state it is a pencil sharpener, dash plastic, dash duckling, and, then, in the check box of auxiliary function, click yes, and then choose toy."

The young man collapsed on to the floor and had a seizure.

What

(In a job interview.)

“Good morning. Please sit down.” The middle age manager gave the young man a polite smile, “Your name is K, right? You can call me M.”

K quickly took a seat on the other side of the desk. In no time, M picked out something small and yellow from his pocket and began, “Let’s start. What’s it?”

The young man tried to look at it from several angles, as if it were a precious stone from Mars. He hesitated for a while, and, soon he pulled himself together again. He cleared his throat and said in a calm voice, “It’s a bird.”

“You are not wrong – but not quite right either,” the smile on M’s face did not change. (Or, had it frozen?) He pushed further, “What is it exactly?”

“Em…” K was obviously thinking of a better term to describe what he saw, “It is … a duck.”

“That’s better.” The manager made a grin. (Oh, his face could move!) “But, what is it really?”

For a moment, the interviewee was at a lost. Thank goodness he read enough Edward de Bono when he was in the College, and he quickly knew what was expected, “It is a toy – yes, it is a plastic toy duck.”

“Very well. Is that your tentative diagnosis?” M asked.

K was forced to nod – now he came to realize he was talking to an extra-terrestrial.

(To be continued.)

Absent

(Our discussion continued.)

“You really shouldn’t be to critical with the extra-terrestrials,” LS said, “Even if there are no elective students from the alternative universe, the situation would continue to get worse in the coming years.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we shall have more medical students!” My friend rose her eyebrows, “And, I’m sure you know, we are not expecting more academic staff to shoulder our workload.”

Of course I know – and I know the official reason. Some brilliant chap said that since the number of academic staff was not trimmed down during the economic downturn a few years ago, we are already having a surplus of professors, and, for that reason, there is no reason to employ more despite we are going to have more students. I believe that wicked genius  is the same person who declared that agricultural product of our country could be increased indefinitely by will power.

Seeing that I was lost in my thought, LS added, “The real problem is, for a tutorial attended by eight students nowadays, we shall have twelve a few years later.”

“You shouldn’t be too worried,” I regained by consciousness and replied, “Our students are very good at skipping lessons – especially when they realize that the environment is not pleasant and there’s not much to learn!”

“Alas, in that case we should really encourage them to skip our lessons,” LS smiled, “In the old days, we took attendance to make sure students do attend the tutorial – and there might be consequence for those who disappeared often. In the future, we shall have to do it the other way round – if a student does not attend our tutorial, we shall give them a bonus score in the final examination!”

Bedside

“Haven’t seen PS for a long time. Where’s our endocrinologist?” I asked LS during another casual lunch time conversation.

“She’s working on the microarray of our universe,” our professor of rheumatology smiled, “I mean, she is trying to fix up the teaching timetable of our medical students in the coming months – JC delegated the task to her.”

“Isn’t that quite fixed already? After all, the academic year is half way through.” I was puzzled.

“Yes, but there are a dozen of ad hoc elective students from the other universe – they just come by the order of an extra-terrestrial committee and no one on earth really seems to know from where they emerge. The simple fact is, our professor of endocrinology was asked to fit them into the existing student rota.” LS sighed.

“To our friends living outside the solar system, there’s no difficulty what-so-ever,” I murmured, “In their opinion, a student would loss nothing if there are six rather than four classmates attending his bedside tutorial, and, therefore, there should not be a difference when a few more students chip in – that’s how they end up with having a “bedside” demonstration of the whole class of nearly 180 students! Seriously I cannot imagine how many students could really get to the side of the bed, or how big the bed is – unless the patient at hand is a tyrannosaur!”

Nicotine

For those who are not familiar with detective stories and toxicology, nicotine is an ideal drug to poison your adversary for several reasons:

First, nicotine is highly poisonous. For someone who never smokes, 60 mg of nicotine (the amount in about 30 to 40 cigarettes) is lethal - by weight, it is 100 times more toxic than cocaine.

Second, it could be absorbed by almost every means of administration - including topical. Spilling an extremely high concentration of nicotine onto the skin could cause intoxication or even death. (For that reason, the spiky weapon that killed Harley Longstreet was a silly device; the malicious stock broker could easily be wiped off by simply spraying the poisonous droplets on his skin.)

Finally, nicotine is readily available. There is no difficulty to get tobacco leaves, and, nicotine-based insecticides are still being widely used in the America and Canada - although their use is barred in Europe. For the latter, the concentration of nicotine is quite high to begin with, and you can get an enriched product by using a low-temperature distillation to evaporate off the (alcohol-based) solvent. Rumor says that if you slowly cook a large pan of tobacco leaves in ethanol (in a set up similar to how we melt chocolate chips in our kitchen), you can also get a highly concentrated nicotine extract.

Oh, by the way, don't try the last method at home. The alcohol vapor from the boiling pot is also full of nicotine, and you would probably poison everyone in your house before you could harm your adversary. 

And, more importantly, I don't really think it works.

Poisoning

“You know, SF was recently being poisoned.” During our casual coffee chat, CB suddenly came up with this horrifying statement.

(SF is a very senior nephrologist who emigrated outside the solar system at the turn of the millennium. He always calls himself a sclerotic glomeruli.)

“What’s that all about?” I was puzzled. Although I may not get on very well with extra-terrestrials, I don’t think anyone on earth would have a strong enough intention to knock him out – well, the only potential one had recently stepped down from his chair over the other side of the harbour.

“Oh, you may call it an accident,” my friend explained, “He and a few others dined at that famous restaurant, and, a few hours afterwards, almost all of them became paralyzed – some were so weak that they nearly stopped breathing!”

“Why?” I remained incredulous.

“It was the dessert,” CB went on, “The chef was putting up a new dish, which, in short, had a good dose of minced cigar leaves – as kind of a herb or whatever. The dish was served for a couple of times previously, and the amount of cigar leaf is within the safety limit – well, according to the chef later, safe at least for white people.”

“Gosh! It’s nicotine poisoning!?” KM pursed his lips.

For a moment, the story of Harley Longstreet in The Tragedy of X flashed through my mind.

Fork

While looking at my box of spaghetti, I could not stop thinking about the history of that missing instrument for my lunch.

As a kitchen utensil, fork is generally believed to be originated from the Roman Empire, while the personal table fork probably began in the Byzantine Empire. Around the turn from the first to second millennium, the use of dinning fork spread the Middle East and then back to the southern Europe. Nonetheless, it became popular on the dining table of Italians only by the 14th century – shortly after Marco Polo returned from the Yuan Empire and noodles evolved to become spaghetti .

(Without chopsticks, fork is obviously a better instrument than spoon when pasta is served.)

By the way, fork did not become common in northern Europe until the 18th century, and was not common in North America another one hundred years later. In fact, if you have the opportunity to visit the dining room of Nash's House of Shakespeare at Stratford, you would find only knife and spoon on the table – fork had not yet crossed the English Channel at 1616.

PS. As almost everything, there is a remarkable difference across the Atlantic in the way people hold the dinning fork. In short, food can be lifted by holding it on top of the tines, which are often curved slightly; Americans generally hold the fork with tines curving up, while Europeans hold it the other way round.

Spaghetti

Attended a lunch time meeting on some business matter.

The discussion was, as expected, curative for insomnia. The rare happening was I finished with my morning duty slightly early, and had time to study my lunch carefully.

It was a (take-away) box of spaghetti.

No, there’s nothing wrong with the Italian noodle – in fact, it was surprisingly tasty. I was, however, thoroughly impressed with the equipment provided for the consumption of my lunch.

It was a pair of chopsticks.

For a moment I had the paranoid idea that the manager of our hospital canteen was a regular visitor of this site and had read about my obsession of using that very pair of tiny ivory craftwork for eating rice (see http://ccszeto.blogspot.com/2011/11/chopstick.html).

PS. You may think I was picking bones from an egg; if I prefer eating chow mein by chopsticks, why on earth should I ask for a fork in the case of spaghetti?

Very true indeed. Nonetheless, I’m afraid this is the rare occasion where I agree respecting different cultures is a virtue.

Important

For those who are not familiar with the advise of Stephen Covey, I may well take this opportunity to explain a bit.

The idea is simple: Everything we got to handle in our life could be classified into four groups - urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither urgent nor important. In his books, Covey put them into a 2 × 2 Time Management Matrix.

The very idea of this classification is, we should work hard on important subjects although they are not urgent, and avoid the happening of urgent but unimportant matters. (In fact, we should also prevent the development of any urgent and important problem - for obvious reasons.)

You may wonder: How could one distinguish urgent matters from important ones? In reality, most of us do not have any problem in telling the difference of the two. The real difficulty is how to motivate yourself and work on important matters although they are not yet urgent.

I have no good answer either.

Progress

My personal way to keep track on multiple projects is by setting up a central record.

In short, it is a Microsoft Words document with nothing but a simple four-column table. Each project appears as a row, and I put down the name of the project, major collaborator, what next I have to do about it (or what I am waiting for), and the priority of the task. For the last item, I give a score from one (urgent and important) to four (neither) following the system outlined by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Next, I fix up a time every week to go through each row of the table and make necessary updates. (It’s generally Monday morning, after my regular morning study but before everything else.) The revised table is then printed out and pinned next to my desktop computer – it becomes the to-do list for me that week.

And, a row is deleted only if the project has come to an end – say, for a research project, after the paper is published.

You find my method familiar? It’s not my invention. For example, Rudy Giuliani used a similar system to manage the whole New York City when he was the Mayor.

Go read his Leadership.

Projects

While I was thinking of managing mailboxes, another related problem is how to keep track of one’s projects.

Well, if you allow, let me play around with words: Most of us have no problem what-so-ever to manage a project. We just work on it and make some notes to put down the plan and progress. In addition, there are no fewer than a dozen of free softwares dedicated for project management.

But, the problem becomes really grave when that very word is in plural – that is, when you have more than one project to take care of. The very nature of human brain is it’s not meant for multi-tasking, and most of us could focus on one thing at a time. Yes, a few gifted persons could split their attention and deal with two or even three matters simultaneously – without becoming (overtly) schizophrenic. Nonetheless, I don’t think you can easily find someone close to Windows 7 or Apple desktop and is able to run six or seven programs at a time.

And, we are all involved in so many projects. (At this moment, I have over sixty.) Even if I use a sophisticated software for their management, there would be close to a hundred pages (or files, depending on which program we are talking about) – some of them are inevitably put aside and soon be forgotten.

Iron

Well, let's have one more quote - recently re-told by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady.

Watch your thoughts, for they become your words.
Watch your words, for they become your actions.
Watch your actions, for they become your habits.
Watch your habits, for they become your character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

This quote was widely believed to be written by a man named Frank Outlaw - but nobody really seems to know who this Outlaw is.

The very phenomenon is, however, the entire argument can go the other way round and still holds:

Watch his destiny, for it reflects his character.
Consider his character, for it predicts his actions.
Watch his actions, for they reflect his thoughts.

I'm a bit too cynical, I know.

Rock

While quoting The Rock of TS Eliot, it seems a good idea to cite a bit more, which is not without interest to medical practitioners and clinical scientists.

Here you go:

************************

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

************************

Or, let me write a clumsy mimic:

Where is the friendship we have lost in communication?
Where is the communication we have lost in email?

Mailboxes

While talking about emails, I believe many of you would have a similar problem like me.

There are too many email accounts.

For example, at the moment I have a personal one under Google, another from my university, a third from the hospital, and yet one more from my domestic board band service provider. (That’s not very many. I used to have more.)

And, to keep things tidy, I use the Google account as the primary manager, to which all mails from other accounts are directed. For those who are not familiar with computer, there are two ways of doing it:

1. Set up an order in the other accounts so that they automatically forward all mails to the desired address.
2. Set up an order in the primary account so that it would regularly look for mails in the other accounts.

For historical reasons I am using the latter method – most people use the former because the turn around time is shorter.

Of course, a better strategy is to neglect most of the mails and do away with the exponential inflation of information. As TS Eliot said:
   Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
   Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Response

You may wonder how I could keep my inbox empty.

To me, that’s simple: I have an obsessive habit of responding to every mail as soon as I receive it, and then do away with it as an archive item.

For sure I always have a few emails that need elaborated response and I have to keep in a handy place. (Most of them are submitted research manuscripts that are sent back by the editors for revision.) As a rule I put them as the “star” items under Gmail – and the decision of putting up an asterisk is never taken lightly. I always try to do away with every star as soon as possible. (At this moment I have five.)

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Don’t get me wrong. I’m not implying my method of handling mail is superior. In fact it is quite the other way round. From a pragmatic point of view, most of the emails that we receive – even after filtering out spam – do not deserve any attention. The best strategy is, paradoxically, leaving them unopened in the inbox. The simple act of putting them into the trash takes up too much valuable time that could be better spent.

The great pioneer of this practice is GS, one of our professors of infra-diaphragmatic medicine. In short, he hardly ever replies to any email.

I call him a walking black hole of communication.

Inbox

Although I found the tardy response of my friend from Saturn remarkable, when I told the story to some colleagues of mine, they were less impressed.

“There’s nothing funny – I have the same problem.” KM said.

That may be true, but the scale of the problem is different – and it’s probably a log-scale actually. Nonetheless, I respected the introspection of our great teacher and asked, “In that case, why do you have such a problem?”

“The question should really be why could someone haven’t got such a problem. You simply lose track on some of the mails in your inbox.” My friend seemed talking about the weather or other natural phenomenon that needs no explanation.

“But, that can’t be true. Do you mean you keep mails in the inbox?” I was surprised.

My friend said nothing – he replied by a curious smile. In no time I realized I asked a wrong question. Obviously most people use their inbox as the filing cabinet – just like they put piles of documents and books on their desk. The rare exceptions, such as some malicious nephrologist, are known as the clear-desk man.

Well, maybe we should call them the clear inbox man in the era of AGAF.

PS. AGAF stands for Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Reply

Receive a email from H – a lovely creature who lives on Saturn, and I am amazed to find how slow that planet is moving.

The story goes like this: Some six weeks ago, a remote acquaintance of mine asked for my opinion on a personal medical matter, but the question was entirely out of my capability. For that reason, I wrote to H, who is supposed to be the world expert on that area.

And, in the following weeks, I heard nothing in return. For a moment I suspect Saturn is actually a black hole in disguise. Soon afterwards I realized there was a rebellion on that planet. Everyone was against the man who won the election but none would like to be the Prime Minister himself.

I came to the conclusion that a reply would never come.

And, then, here it is – in my Gmail inbox, carefully written in the font of Arial Compact size 8 – an excellent reflection of H’s profession as well as his personality.

That and there, I decided not to further complain all the other lower existence on that planet when they do not come to see our consultations on time.