When I’m driving I sometimes watch other swiveling heads perched over their windows. Their horizontal turning subtends an angle of about 120 degrees. With help from mirrors and other devices, human heads survey the autoscape in front their eyes, computing positions and trajectories of other cars in their little world. This has been the scheme…

As a neurologist I take keen interest in the Zika virus. Zika is a superspecialist that attacks the nervous system. We had good evidence by the time an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed serious abnormalities in 29% of Zika positive women tested by ultrasound. The World Health Organization has declared…

I’m captivated when my plane lands, of making out the individual things on the ground, the trees, buildings and cars individually coming into focus. Before the plane landed I either didn’t know about them or I can even imagine they did not exist, a little like the tree falling in the forest and no one…

Patients benefit when we follow protocols. Judgement gets in the way of best practice. Writings of Atul Gawande, MD and others have cemented the importance of protocols in the mind of the physicians and non-physicians alike, enough for us to ask if there is any role at all for clinical expertise. Everyone says you are…

I just saw Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera. I am always blown away by the music and the sets, especially in a project of this magnitude coordinating of hundreds of individuals of talent. Running a hospital is a similar task but childsplay compared with that.  The premise of this incredibly beautiful production,  is that real men…

I grew up around dogs always owned by individuals. Dogs I knew were always attached to an owner primarily following him or her and strongly integrated into a human family.  As dogs live much shorter lives, men generally outlive them and there is bereavement that comes at the death of an animal which is where…

Ever since I took my intro anthropology course in college I’ve been counting the ways humans differ from other animals. Tool making was the big issue of that time. Even then, we noticed that other animals make tools. The message was human differ from animals only in degree. Sure animals make tools but they ordinarily…

As a lover of orchestral music I’m always wanting to conduct. Loving to listen to music especially what I call big music with an orchestra as large as possible along with choral forces and soloists, music as big as it gets (don’t get me wrong I do like intimate  chamber music,  not as much) like…

hummingbird8152015backyard When my wife set up bird feeders in our backyard we got visits from hummingbirds. When she added  a hummingbird attractor with sugar water, one particular beautiful green variety came around. I found out what remarkable animals these tiny fellows are. As a hospital  clinician have been interested in what can be learnt from…

Seems nuts to say this in the season of Republican debates, but I steer clear of political commentary. That doesn’t mean I’m not opinionated. It’s not about politics. I was always quick to launch my opinions and their passionate defense which too often, on reflection,  I might have been wrong.  Besides I’ve found that type…