Profile

unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Most Popular Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

October 31st, 2006

unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 10:58 am

...since my current primary care physician is in South Nashua, 20 miles away now.  Dartmouth Hitchcock has a family practice facility right here in Merrimack, and my podiatrist is already part of the Dartmouth Hitchcock system.  On top of that, it turns out one of the doctors at the Merrimack family practice center is an osteopath, which might well mean I'd be able to find more effective care for my back problems.  (I think half the reason chiropractic treatment is viewed with such suspicion in the US is because it's so hard to find a chiropractor who isn't, frankly, a complete quack.)

Well, so much for the theory.  The practice is that the osteopath isn't accepting new patients, and the only doctor there who IS accepting new patients is currently booking appointments in early January.  This suggests that the facility is so overloaded going there might be a bad idea anyway.  I wouldn't be able to get any of my referrals transferred until after a new-patient appointment, and then there'd be the queue lead for the specialists, so the upshot of it seems to be that if I switch to a PCP at Dartmouth Hitchcock Merrimack, it's going to be five to six months before I can get any care from any of my specialists again.  (And frankly, I think I need to get my right knee cleaned up the same as the left knee as soon as I can.  The crunching noises are starting to get really unsettling.)

It's at times like this that I reflect on how screwed-up the US medical care system is.  The whole "all your referrals reset if you change doctors" thing is a pain, and when it's so hard to find a doctor who's accepting new patients and isn't totally swamped, what do you do?

Half the problem, I suspect, is the number of doctors who've retired or gone into other lines of work because they can't afford malpractice insurance rates driven by frivolous malpractice suits (parents suing their obstetrician because their child was born with a congenital defect, for instance¹).  Unfortunately, that's not going to change as long as the perception of a career in law as a get-rich-quick license endures.

This country needs twice as many doctors and engineers, and a quarter as many lawyers.

[1]  This isn't a hypothetical example.  I've read of several cases in which a child was born with what was unquestionably a congenital defect, but the parents sued the obstetrician anyway, and the obstetrician's medical insurance settled out of court because "We all know this is a congenital defect and there's not a thing you could have done to prevent it, but the instant a jury sees those photos, we've lost the case."

Tags:
unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 11:54 am

Since 2004, the world's tallest building has been the Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taipei City, Taiwan, at 1,670 feet (508m), which took the lead from the 1,483 foot (452m) Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, completed in 1998.  Neither of them is the world's tallest structure; that title goes to the 1,815-foot (553m) Canadian National Tower in Toronto, which has been the world's tallest free-standing tower¹ since 1975.  The title of world's tallest tower is scheduled to be stripped from the CN Tower by 2010, the expected completion date of Japan's planned New Tokyo Tower, planned to be 1,970 feet (about 600m) tall when completed in 2010.

The New Tokyo Tower, though, won't get to set any record but "tallest freestanding tower" for even a day.  Two years before its scheduled completion, the Burj Dubai is planned to become both the world's tallest skyscraper AND the world's tallest structure of any kind, free-standing or otherwise.  The exact planned height of the building, being constructed by Samsung, has not been publicly disclosed, but the promoter and developer of the tower says it will be "more than 700 meters (2,296 feet) and more than 160 stories", overtopping the New Tokyo Tower by 100 meters and Taipei 101 by 200 meters.

Think about that for a moment.  A building 700 meters tall.  That's almost half a mile.  I don't know about you, but I think the race for one kilometer is on.

Here's another thing to think about:  When the World Trade Center was completed in 1977, it stood just over a quarter mile (not counting the rooftop antenna spire).  It took 11 years to build (construction began in 1966).  The Burj Dubai will be almost twice as tall, yet is projected to be completed after only four years (construction began in 2004).

[1]  There are higher non-free-standing masts; the KTHI-TV Tower in North Dakota is 629 meters tall, but it is cable-guyed.

unixronin: Very, very silly. (Goonish)
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 01:27 pm

[livejournal.com profile] shadowcat48li posted this movie meme.  The instructions say that if you have seen more than 70 of the listed movies all the way through, you have no life.

I scored exactly 35.  Does this mean I have a half-life?

Tags: