We're all incels now! Or at least those of us in Washington are.
- Those of us who've been home-office warriors for, say, a couple of decades will have less difficulty adapting to semiquarantining and semiisolation than will, say, cubicle drones. Not none — just less. But at least we know a lot of things not to try because they don't work for us! In my case, that includes video games… but then, I've been a nerd outside of nerd stereotyping my entire life.
- Twenty-three years wasn't enough in one very critical sense: A twenty-three-year prison sentence (even if it is fully served), plus "probation" and registration as a sex offender, can't get back what he took from his victims. <SARCASM> Nor can it bring back what he took from the rest of us, like at least a decade of film output from each of Annabella Sciorra, Chloe Sevigny, and Mira Sorvino, whom he blacklisted to varying degrees following (at least attempts to) brutalize them — and that's just three prominent examples from the letter S. </SARCASM>
Unfortunately, one of the other bits of collateral damage from his reign of terror is going to be continued refusal to acknowledge (let alone confront) his other abusive, bullying business tactics. The general mistreatment of others. The misappropriation of intellectual property. The financial chicanery. Sorry, Harvey, you'll never eat lunch in that town again, but how's the Riker's Island meatloaf?
- Here's some food for thought for the bar examiners, hiding a little bit deeper under the headlines: The first phase of medical-school-testing-based physician licensing is going pass/fail. It's the secondary implications that really matter, though.
First, and perhaps most obvious, this is a basic-knowledge exam given during medical school with coverage pretty damned close to that of the bar exam (at least by analogy). That says a lot about when the bar exam — if there is one, that is — should be offered and taken… and whether it should be a purely uniform national examination.
If, that is, the actual purpose of the bar exam is to ensure an adequate basis of knowledge and not to perpetuate preexisting social/familial traditions. One of the obvious corollaries of Rangarajan's musings on the cost of medical-school education, and its relationship to students' original position (without ever using that term… which is implicated, at least indirectly, in the author's name!) is the frantic search for summer internships — especially high-paying ones. Which, I might add from personal experience, is rather discriminatory against parents and against "nontraditional" students (and, for that matter, against those with military reserve obligations), most of whom are still under 40 and therefore such discrimination is not unlawful per se. But who am I to argue against the-greatest-good-for-the-greatest-number-of-our-children nobility-and-medieval-guild-like transmission of privilege? Wait a minute…
Most important of all, though, is what Rangarajan does not quite reach in this article, primarily because that's not the purpose of this opinion piece rather than through any actual neglect (or scholarly malpractice…). Being a physician — or lawyer, or any other kind of professional — is not just about the ability to regurgitate by rote "facts" one learned in class/from a book. (If it was, there wouldn't be any need for annual casebook and statutory supplements, would there?) It is about integrating information and skills learned across a curriculum into evaluation of a patient's/client's needs, formation of an appropriate plan of action, and implementing that plan of action. And that often takes more time to do than within a single course, or year. Whether "initial presentation" is in an ER, urgent care clinic, or routine physical exam; jail cell, corporate board room, or office consultation; however any other licensed professional first encounters the client — pukin' back book larnin' is not a sufficient response. (If it was, that-wiki-thingy would be enough legal research, and some medical-information sites would have their own licenses!) It's about lab technique, stupid. But then, the bar examiners — and organized bar in general — couldn't spell "critical student laboratory experience" if spotted the first thirty letters or so, because they never had any themselves as either undergraduates or law students (unlike medical boards and doctors!).