Complications, How Animals Have Sex, and The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

The book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science reminded me why I will never, ever be a surgeon. I've been working on not getting grossed out by stuff, but nothing like a first person description of cutting someone open and putting in a central line to put me back in my place. This is one of those books that having read it I question if I'd be better off not having read it. Not that it wasn't well written and very informative, just I like to think of doctors as infallible superhumans without lives of their own to distract them or a need to practice on real patients. One of the messages that I do not think Atul was necessarily going for but that I took from the book is: don't be obese. There is a whole section on gastric-bypass, but what struck me was how often he would mention the weight of a patient as a complicating factor in surgery (it also sounded like being too skinny and frail is also bad but I have less concerns about that one). There are some much more interesting and important points that he brings up but it's my blog so I'll concentrate on whatever silly little detail I want.

Well, I would guess that as my brother recently pointed out about fart jokes, you either find animal sex intrinsically funny or you don't. If you do then you gotta read How Animals Have Sex. Even if you just flip through it at a bookstore. It's a quick read, and while it could probably go all 129 pages just off pictures of animals having sex and the intrinsic humor, the book goes above and beyond and doesn't entirely rely on the idea of animals doing it to be funny. Plus after you read it you can have a picture book of animals having sex on your desk.

Ok, the book about animals having sex and this next one don't really count as books, but figured I'd write about them anyway. The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint doesn't count because it is about 25 pages long. But it has caused me to try and avoid using powerpoint and write short technical memos using mathcad instead (to all the MITers who say why mathcad instead of matlab - try making a good looking report in matlab - go on - I dare you). To summarize this one: Powerpoint makes your presentations worse than if you just stood up and talked and slide style presentations are why the Challenger blew up. Ok, I exaggerated its message a little (but just a little).