Medical Chatter

I was reading through medical trends, and oddly....this fact stuck out.  To be in the path of trans....to X or Y.....your entire life is connected to pharmacies being open, and having a regular stock of HRT and testosterone.

If the local shop has delayed shipments, or the manufacture company has issues....you start to de-transition. 

So five to eight years into your plan....if anything happens to your drugs or manufacturing....a lot of stress and frustration are going to occur overnight.

If you ask me....it's a risk factor on my index of 1-to-10....of a '10'.   

Just having some idiot science folks to say HRT/testosterone cause a 200-percent chance of cancer....would create a national mental health situation.  

Five Things I Tend To Believe

 1.  Bitcoin, for the rage that exists about it today....has a problem in assigning true value.  There's no true audit or capability of saying it's worth 'x'.

2. If you'd took life savings in 1990 (say $14k) and bought two shares of Berkshire-Hathaway....you'd have two shares today and a value $1.2-million.  The rise in the years?  2,750-percent.

3.  30,000 migrants 'caught' over past 2 weeks....crossing the border of Arizona.  Folks they didn't catch?  Unknown....might be 30k folks....might be 60k folks.

4.  Just my impression....but virtually every single movie made before 1970s....probably needs a 'trigger-warning'.  Even 'Cool Hand Luke'....might disturb some folks.  

5.  Just odd....this guy who stabbed former cop Derek Chauvin (guilty party who killed George Floyd) in prison....was actually a former FBI informant.  Probably not working for them presently....but it's just odd.   

My PhD Story

 I worked with a guy who was helping his Fortune-500 company win a DoD contract.  One of the stipulations in the contract....from the hundred-odd people that his company would provide to support the 'need'....three of them had to be PhD-level scientists (of sort).  

He looked over the requirement in the bidding and told the government this was an enormous waste of skill and manpower (adding over a million a year in extra costs).  The response was....at times, to argue facts or bogus things....you needed some guy/gal with 'doctor' and PhD behind their name.   Requirement stood.

So he bid....getting the contract for the company.

He then went out to recruit and hire the 97-odd regular folks.  This was not a problem.

The three PhD-level folks?  Well....that took a while.  One gal said fine, but she wanted the company to professionally move her horse (figure in the $3,000 range) for the two-day trip.

Another PhD person asked for a personal secretary (of their choosing).  This was not stipulated in the gov't contract....so it was going to cost money out of the profit margin (big negative).

Another candidate owned a antique car, and wanted the company to move their car as part of the relocation move.

One candidate wanted a travel allowance (in the $20k range each year) as part of his deal....but could not explain where they'd be going.

My associate ended up hiring three PhD folks to fill the role, and assessed the work-space situation next.  Each PhD person wanted a private office, and square footage became an issue because the three private offices weren't precisely the same amount.  He had to work with what the gov't gave him.

In the end, over the three years that he managed this program....it became a daily task to just keep the 97-odd folks away from the PhD folks.  

Certain projects had to be signed with the three, and that was the only real value in the end.  

All of this made me wonder....across the entire US government....how many welfare-hire situations exist....where a PhD guy is hired with no real purpose in life?  Ten-thousand?  

Austin Story

To be honest about this story....it's not on my top 500 list, but I sat and pondered upon it.

So we have the Secretary of Defense (Lloyd Austin) who quietly (for a minimum of 3 days) got sent to a hospital on 1 Jan...."due to complications following a recent elective medical procedure.” 

Telling the President?  Well....you'd think this would be one of those key things that someone would convey to your boss.  But as the story goes....President Biden wasn't told until around the 4th day.

What was the elective medical procedure?  That part is left to you guess upon.  Wart removal?  Well....I doubt it.  

Removing tonsils?  Hernia repair?  Cosmetic surgery?  

There's probably a list of three-hundred things that would be a day of 'repair' and then check-out by 5 PM.  So you are left to guess this.  I'm guessing....hernia issues, and the surgery didn't go as planned.

A big deal?  No....if you asked a hundred guys who've had modern-era hernia situation...99 will say it went as the doctor described, and one guy will say that he spent a night or two in the hospital.

How many folks go and have this done on 1 January?  Well....I just can't think of many doctors who do elective surgery on a holiday.  If you really wanted to hide the issue....I agree....maybe on the 26th of December, I would have had this done and been back at work by the 2nd of January.

People wanting privacy on their medical situation?  That's really the big issue.  There are certain people who would blab to ten-thousand folks about having such-and-such medical business....wanting sympathy or gossip.  I doubt that Austin wanted any chatter about his situation and figured not mentioning this to Biden was legit.  

Just Observations

 1.  My take on this Harvard plagiarism deal with Claudine Gay?

First, it's a private school that 99.9-percent of Americans would never attend (mostly because of cost).....so none of this discussion should matter.

But, they went to hire someone with a PhD (apparently you can't be the Chancellor there without such a degree), and never went to double-check the thesis written 20 years ago for problems.  Once someone did and found a number of citation errors, the board never stepped up to do a survey.  

If you were talking about one single paragraph....lifted off someone's book/study...it's probably not a big deal.  Five or six screw-ups?  Yeah, you'd have to assume they knew what they were doing.  

Some board ought to exist....that reads over problems like this and yanks your degree if you screwed-up that bad.

2.  Maybe it's just me, but I get this impression that Nicki Haley (candidate) never got past the 9th grade.  

3.  I'd say there are six weeks of DeSantis activity left, before he runs out of funds.

4.  I expect it to be common by the end of 2024....that over half the movies produced (ever)....will require some kind of warning at the beginning that you might be 'triggered'.

5.  It is conceivable that we may reach election day in November....having Trump on the 50 state ballots, and at least ten states refusing to 'read' or count the votes.  If you thought things were crazy now....it just gets worse.