End of the year stuff: 2015

In the past when this blog ran like a well-oiled machine end of the year posts were a thing. Mostly random musings (are there any other kind, btw?) and lists of books, TV shows and movies: typical end of the year fare.

So coming at you from 35000 feet (yeah I am in a plane above an undisclosed location - not because I am secretive but because I really have no clue where I am) 2015 in summary.

What happened this year? Well I dicked around in lab. A lot. I think there might have been times where my undergrad worked more than I did. If you want to know whether a man can browse reddit for six hours straight I am your guy (the answer is yes, in case you were wondering). A decent number of people I started med school with are residents now, meaning there is a good chance some of them will supervise me when I am a lowly clueless  third year med student (is there any other kind?). Other than that the year just flew by, not unlike an F-22 at a college bowl game (sorry). Oh and I became a coffee and a scotch snob. Good times.


The four best books I read in 2015:

4. Dresden Files by Jim Butcher:

Kinda cheating here since this is a series of not one, not two, not three, but FIFTEEN books with more in the works. Even for a fantasy series this is quite an achievement. I not a fantasy fanatic by any means but Jim Butcher has created a great world here. If you were to split hairs (how thin would your ax need to be for that?), DF falls under what those in the know call 'urban contemporary fantasy', seeing as it is set in modern day Chicago. Basic premise of the series is that magic and supernatural coexist in our world and our protagonist Harry Dresden is a private investigator making his living solving petty magical mysteries. As the series progresses he finds himself caught up in epic magical wars that have been raging for millenia. Brisk pacing, witty banter and a well-developed magical system make this a fantastic series.
3. The Martian by Andy Weir:
By now we have all seen Matt Damon play The Martian, growing potatoes using his own shit as fertilizer. As is often the case, the book is far superior to the movie. Andy Weir infuses the right amount of suspense, believable science, and dark humor to make this an enormously entertaining novel. There are some pacing issues with the plot, but that is understandable seeing how the book was originally serialized on the web by Weir.
2. America's Game by Michael MacCambridge:
I may not be a fantasy fanatic but I sure am a football fanatic, specifically the NFL (college football is a waste of time). Every Sunday I have games on multiple screens as well as couple devices monitoring twitter feeds. Hell, I think I could call the game better than Phil Simms does. My love for the game is why I absolutely cherished this sweeping history of the NFL. MacCambridge does a masterful job of tracing the origins of professional football, its trials and tribulations through the 1950s and its thorough dominance of the sports scene from 1960 on. He traces lineages of the most storied NFL franchises and gives brief bios of some of its most colorful characters (Lamar Hunt, Al Davis, Pete Rozelle etc.) The cover image alone makes this a book worth buying.
*Drum roll*

1. The Alchemists by Neil Irwin:
Not to be confused with Paulo Coelho's shitpiece, this is a book that does the impossible:make central banking look sexy. As a result of the financial meltdown of 2007 central bankers have become celebrities of sort. People like Bernanke and Yellen have found themselves thrust into the limelight, sometimes glaringly so. Here Irwin traces the origins of the concept of central banking, the creation of the Federal Reserve system in the US and the creation of the Euro before launching into a chronological account of the steps three major central banks (the Fed, Bank of England and European Central Bank) took to douse the raging fires of 07-08. He quotes speeches, memos and meeting notes to diligently explain the reasoning behind this complicated series of maneuvers. I came away wiser and more enlightened than before (which I understand isn't a tall order, but still).
I am not going to do a thing for TV shows because I didn't follow that many this year to justify a list, but I will put a plug in (though it hardly needs one at this time) for Fargo. Stop what you're doing, stop reading this damn blog and go binge watch both seasons 1 and 2. I know it's become a cliche to say we live in a golden age of television, but shows like this are making it harder and harder not to believe that moniker.

Have a happy 2016 everybody.

The magnificent beard of Andrew Luck

As many people around these parts know, I am a fanatic of the NFL. And no, before you ask, I don't root for or support or cheer for one particular team. I am a fan (hey here's something I just noticed - 'fanatic' has 'fan' built right into it! Coincidence? I THINK NOT) of this beautiful, intricate game as a whole. The parity in the league, the superstars who entertain us consistently, the intensely contested games week in and week out - this all makes for an enthralling experience.

Three years ago I would blog a lot about the NFL. Every week I published an update. I stopped doing that eventually because the internet doesn't need yet another NFL blog. But I have to make an exception here. As you may (or may not) know it's playoffs time [insert obligatory Jim Mora playoffs?! rant here]. Some crazy shit went down last week in the wild-card round. In comparison yesterday's games were a tad tame. One thing stood out to me, however: the magnificent beard of Andrew Luck. Now I can grow and successfully rock a mean beard myself, but Luck's beard makes me feel inadequate. I can stare at that thing for hours, mesmerized and in utter awe of its magnificence.

This season Andrew Luck played like a beast. Despite throwing three potentially game breaking picks last week against the Chiefs, he engineered an epic comeback (the stuff that transforms men into legends), making for a scintillating viewing experience (probably not for Chiefs fans). Yes he got bulldozed by the Patriots run game (!) yesterday, but his beard made everything alright.

Take a look for yourself:

FEAR THE NEARD

Random thoughts

Happy thanksgiving to you all. Quick hits to keep you going through this holiday break.

1. Survived what seemed like the flight from hell on Tuesday from St. Louis to LAX. Got stuck in the dreaded middle seat, was only two seats behind a wailing toddler and right next to a dude with a tiny dog in what looked like an oversized lunch bag. On top of that the plane just sat there, just chilling, on the runway for eternity. On the plus side I blazed through a novel during the flight. This one: Sense of an Ending .

    Pretty great (and short) read. I like novels that effortlessly blend philosophy with literature and this one succeeds at that.  Difficult for me to explain the "plot" because it doesn't really have one. It's just this dude Tony Webster who is looking back at his life reminiscing about the nature of memory and history and friendship and relationships. He ruminates about how one seemingly trivial decision on his part ended up changing the lives of four people irrevocably. If you are into literary awards (and scour literary blogs to check out the nominees every once in a while, like me), this one won the Booker prize.

2. Couple weeks ago I whined about how my friends forced me to buy a bicycle helmet and how it would spell the end of my days as a rebel bike rider. Well turns out I was wrong. The helmet is pretty awesome. When I walk around holding it, I feel like a goddamn football player. The closest I will ever get to that feeling, I suppose. Plus it keeps me warm when I fit it snugly over my beanie.

3. Speaking of football, thanksgiving offered some exciting football. The Jets embarrassed themselves in royal fashion in front of a massive national audience. This gif of Mark "The Sanchize" Sanchez fumbling the ball after running headfirst into his lineman's ass sums it up:

4. For the heck of it, here is one of my favorite paintings. It's called Wanderer above the sea of fog by Casper David Friedrich. Enjoy:

UG Sports: Then there were three

The first four weeks of this NFL season were so crazy that the only way I can do justice to the craziness is to upend the modifier 'batshit' to crazy. Everyone and everyone's grandmother has written/ranted/spewed froth about 'Golden-gate', aka 'the one that was stolen from Green Bay', so I won't talk about the replacement refs at all. They are gone now. Let us all have the same poise as Packers coach Mike McCarthy, who phoned the guy who botched the call and left him a nice voicemail, telling him that although he didn't agree with the call (obviously), he thought the ref handled the issue with class. I will leave you with this parting gift, however. Too priceless to pass up:

Besides, there is plenty of other craziness to talk about.

UG Sports: Football's here!!!!

Aaaaah. That time of the year again. The air is thick with the stench of premature exams (I am glaring at you pharmacology) and failed experiments in lab. But then I pause, lean back, and take in the simpler pleasures of life. Rain, overcast skies, autumn. And FOOTBALL.

Two years ago, when this blog was still in its infancy and was still learning not to put toys in its mouth, I ran a weekly segment highlight major sports events. Did not keep up with that last year. But that's all about to change.

After a highly eventful offseason that saw the titillating  (Peyton Manning becoming the most coveted free agent in the history of football) to the droll (beast back MJD refusing to show up to work until a couple days ago) to the LOL (the Sanchize-Tebow circus is in town everybody!), the richest and the most badass sport in the world is ready to flex its biceps. Let this obstreperous (I'll wait for you to look it up) gentleman tell you all about it:



Now normally kickoff happens on Thursday. That's mandated in the constitution. But El Presidente is holding a party in Charlotte this week and is giving a speech on Thursday night. So the all powerful Emperor league commissioner Roger Goodell deferred, and with a wave of his wand declared Wednesday season opener.

Updates from under the pile

My last post was more than a month and bucketfuls of optimism ago. Back then I believed I would be able to keep up with this on a very regular basis, both because it is relaxing to post stuff on this blog and because I thought I would have time to think of new and creative things to talk about. Like many times before, I was wrong.

I got buried under a pile of schoolwork. Anatomy (as I indicated in my previous posts) took up the most time. But of course I can't abandon this blog. So here are a few rapid fire updates of my non-spectacular life over the last month or so:

• One of the coolest things I learned in anatomy was the organization, function and innervation of muscles in the upper and lower limbs. While I knew the basic outline of the major muscles (biceps, triceps etc.), it was very neat to learn about the muscles that move the hand (wrist, thumbs, fingers). There are about 50 muscles in the upper limb, and an astonishing 28 of them work to move some part of the hand. Finer movements of the hand are very important to our day to day life and allow us to perform many amazing feats that other animals cannot (think about Hendrix plucking the string of a guitar or van Gogh painting one of his many masterpieces) These are movements you are not even conscious of performing. Like for instance, just now, I typed out a sentence of the laptop without even realizing I used, among others,(I am gonna show off a bit now) the lumbricals, abductor pollicis longus, opponens pollicis, and a whole bunch of flexors and extensors. 

•  I have taken up cubing. If you are going "huh?", cubing is a sport (any activity that has a word organization to regulate it is a sport) that involves solving the Rubik's cube (allegedly the best selling puzzle of all time, and the lazy film writer's prop of choice to depict nerddom).I was a bit into those cubes about 5-6 years ago and was able to solve them by following algorithms, but never really bothered to memorize them. Now I am determined to memorize the algorithms. Solving the cube is not that hard, really. The simplest method probably involves memorizing just about 6 algorithms. That's it. You could probably solve it in about 3 minutes with the simplest method. To get fast at it, now that's a whole different game. That takes amazing pattern recognition skills, very nimble fingers (there's those pesky muscles again!) and superhuman spatial skills. The world record currently is 5.66 seconds. People who can solve the cube in less than 25 seconds typically memorize about 60-80 algorithms. I am currently working on an intermediate method that involves only 15 algs. Will gradually progress to more advanced methods to improve my time. 

• A year ago, the Niners were the laughingstock. In a otherwise shitty NFC West, they were the champions of shit. They unceremoniously sacked their coach mid-season, (one of) their quarterbacks had a spectacular meltdown on the sidelines, and they looked like a cause very much lost. And look at them now. 8-1 and sitting at the top of the freakin' world. On the flip side, the Eagles were supposed to be legit superbowl contenders this season: a string of high-profile off-season acquisitions, an explosive quarterback aided by eager receivers, they had it all. They are 3-6 now, and will be incredibly lucky even to win a wild card spot. 

Finally, a word about this blog. I seriously intend to keep it going, and while I can't promise daily updates, I can promise this: I will post something substantial at least twice a week. Look out for at least one more post later this week.

UG sports - 10: Let me smoke a pack of steel

What a crazy, whacky football season this has been. If this season were a rollercoaster, it would be the most attractive ride at a Six Flags. Actually, Six Flags is bankrupt, so let me amend that analogy by substituting Paramount Great America for Six Flags.

Ok moving on. How unpredictable has this season actually been? Well, remember when the Cowboys were supposed to play the superbowl on their home turf? Or how Shanahan and Shanahan were going to take the Redskins to the playoffs?

Instead we got a season where the Jags almost won the AFC South, old man Favre became The God of Small Things, and Rex Ryan made himself the foot of a ton of jokes.

Now we are down to two teams. The Steelers are no strangers to superbowl. The Packers aren't either (a certain Vince Lombardi made sure they got thoroughly acquainted with it), but they went through considerably more to get here. While the Steelers sat back and enjoyed their status at the second seed, they had to work against the tide each week as the sixth seed wildcard.

And I could yap on and on, but I think others have been doing a ton of analysis. So I won't bore you anymore.

Here is my take on the game: Packers will win it, because Aaron Rodgers has been consistently better than Big Ben in the homestretch games (remember how the Steelers almost lost to the Ravens and Ben got sacked a bunch of times?). And although the Troy-powered defense will pose a tough challenge, the Packers have energy and boisterous enthusiasm on their side.

Either way, this should be a fun superbowl.

UG Sports - 9: Three birds and a bear walked into the divisional playoffs

Three birds, one animal and four nouns: that's your playoffs picture for this weekend, folks. Seriously though, this has to be an unprecedented number of birds in one playoff (if only the cardinals had made it...). I was pretty seriously wrong with my predictions last week (1 out of 4), but since when has being wrong stopped anyone from doing anything in this world?

So here we go:

Ravens vs. Steelers: I think it's about time we inducted this rivalry into the rivalry hall of fame. You know, alongside England-France in the dark ages, Yankees-Red Sox, Pepsi-Coca Cola, Heidi-Lauren from the Hills...
The Ravens were brutal last week as they flattened the hapless Chiefs with remarkable ease (so much for the perceived home-field advantage for the Chiefs). But the Steelers are no Chiefs. Troy "the zen master" Polandabcradabramalu can turn games around faster than you can blink and although Big Ben has looked shaky at times, there is a reason they call him Big Ben. The football nerds have been calling this a battle of safeties: Ed Reed from the Ravens and Troy from the Steelers. This one is tough to call, but my vote goes to the Ravens.

Falcons vs. Packers: It's here folks. The Falcons and Mattie Ryan have been virtually indestructible inside the Georgia Dome and the experts can't stop raving about this x factor. The Packers, on the other hand, are looking very dangerous every week. Their defense made Michael Vick look absolutely pedestrian last week, and Clay Matthews (the stringy, vaguely Steve Tyler look-alike) is the x factor on their side. Football runs in his blood, literally. He is the fourth generation of Matthews to play at the pro levels. The Saints made the Falcons look surprisingly mediocre in their MNF game in the regular season, so I think they are going to be
shaky. I am going to be grinning with Green Bay when then win.

Jets vs. Patriots: Boy that Rex Ryan simply won't shut up. This time he really put his foot in his mouth. Or shot himself in the foot (my goal here is to reach a hundred foot jokes before the end of postseason). After saying their game against the Colts was personal, Ryan has now called this game personal as well. Seems like he has a fetish for making things personal. You know what I think? Those who can't win talk. And talk. You never see Tom Brady yapping away. The patriots have been relentless this season and they seem to have an unlimited supply of Wide Receivers and Tight Ends that Brady can throw to. This one is easy: Patriots are kick the Jets out with their feet.

Seahawks vs. da Bears: I think it's time da Bears roll out the superbowl shuffle. No one expected the hawks to make it this far, and I certainly don't expect them to make it past this week. Marshawn Lynch can't roll around like a battering ram each week. Bears.

Now go place your bets, people. 

UG Sports - 8: playoff predictions

It's playoffs babby!!! Wildcard games on Saturday and Sunday.


Since everyone and his grandmother are going to be out on the streets making predictions, UG Sports has decided it will do the same. And we are providing this service free of cost. A pretty freaking good deal, I gotta say. Here are the predictions, in no particular order:


Colts - Jets: Although Indianapolis is missing several key players(Collie, Clark, Manning's magical arms) I don't expect the Jets to win. You see, Mark Sanchez is pretty overrated. And most of the Jets' wins this season were in tight games that could have gone either way. They were destroyed by the Patriots and lost again  - can you believe it - Miami. For the NY Jets, the luck stops here.   

Ravens - Chiefs: I will admit, I didn't get to watch the Chiefs play much this season, mostly because our local channels preferred to show other, more important games and also because..well they are the Chiefs. But lo and behold, after going 4-12 in 2009, the Chiefs upped their game dramatically and won their division.
Eh who am I kidding? The Ravens, although a bit wobbly at times, are still very very formidable. Plus they have my favorite Asian (ok ok half-Asian) player T.J. Houshmanzadeh. Ravin' bout the Ravens.

Saints-Seahawks:  The incredible Bucs and even the error-prone but still earnest Giants got stranded as the playoffs bus took off. Not these seahawks. They limped in. Proudly too. The defending champs are in an unfamiliar position here. Last year, they rolled through regular season and the playoffs like a Sherman tank. This year, it will be a slow march for them, like a buffalo wading through molasses. Reggie Bush can spontaneously create wormholes and warp spacetime to run faster than the speed of light AND he can clone himself. The buck stops here for Seattle.

Packers - Eagles: Easily the most explosive and most exciting game of the weekend. Anybody who knows a thing or two about football knows the Michael Vick express is steaming through stations (here at UG, we still operate steam engines) and although the Bears and the lowly Vikings stopped it, lightning doesn't strike thrice. You may have heard of DeSean Jackson too. The Packers are on a roll, but by Newton's laws anything that rolls has to stop sometime. Eagles will be 'Vick'torious. And I even made it without making a single bad pun about Vick...oh wait.




                                             
Blogger's disclaimer: All views delineated here - outrageous, moderate or otherwise - are solely the property of the blogger. He/she/it claims no responsibility for your remorse, frustration, guilt trips or large losses on foolish bets, nor can he/she/it guarantee any results. What, you thought this was a snuggie informercial? Read with a grain of salt.

UG Sports - 7: Playoffs

An hour before I scramble to my first class of this brand new quarter (Human Genetics - very fascinating, right?), I want to rattle off this post.

Yesterday was the last day of the NFL regular season. Today is bloody [or insert gruesome epithet of your choice] Monday, when coaches and other errant souls will be terminated mercilessly. With the end of regular season, the playoff picture is LED clear in both conferences.

NFC:
1. Atlanta "take that Vick" Falcons
2. Chicago Bears
3. Philadelphia Beagles Eagles (sorry for the horrible pun)
4. Seattle Seahawks (with a proud 7-9 record)
5. New Orleans Saints
6. Green Bay Packers

• Seattle won the yawnfest against St. Louis Rams in such an unspectacular fashion that I think the Saints effectively will have a bye next week.
• The Seahawks are the first team in NFL history to enter the playoffs with a losing record. Strut around, Whitehurst. 
• How absurd is it that the New York Giants, with a 10-6 record, were eliminated but Seattle got in?
• No more stagings of Hamlet: With their loss to Detroit Lions, the Minnesota Vikings ended up at the bottom of NFC north, like tea dredges, effectively ending Brett Favre's career. T.S. Eliot had it right: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper."

AFC:
1. New England Patriots
2. New England Patriots
3. New England Patriots
4...
5...
6...

Nah just kidding:
1. Patriots
2. Pittsburgh Steelers
3. Indy Colts
4. KC Chiefs
5. B'more Ravens
6. NY Jets (who hop-footed into the playoffs)

• Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? The Carolina Panthers finished with a 2-14 record. Brady Bunch mirrored that with 14-2. The previous three times they did this, they made it to the Super Bowl. The first time they did this, they ended up meeting the Panthers in Super Bowl 38. Weird.
• The chiefs??! Wow. I guess that will teach the Chargers not to slack off.
• After the Jets made it to the playoffs, boisterous Rex Ryan immediately proclaimed that his team will win it all. Somebody should tell him that repeating something a million times doesn't make it true.

Meanwhile in the NBA, the Lakers lost (yet again). Kobe Bryant, who fell asleep in the first half, woke up irritated in the second, but alas that wasn't enough. 

UG Sports - 6: Punday football edition

Freshly back from a weekend trip to Northern California, I am all ready and excited to do a roundup of sorts of today's ever-important football games.

• Freshly back from a concussion, Packers superman Aaron Rodgers put up mighty fine numbers to send the Giants packing home (except a snowstorm forced them to spend an extra night in the town). Eli Manning now leads the league in total interceptions - a giant problem indeed. Somewhat incredulously, the Giants can still make the playoffs and salvage their ship from sinking in the bay if they win next week and a few others thing happen.

• Although the New York Jets crash landed today and had to bear a tough loss to Chicago, they easily flew into the playoffs because the Redskins beat the Jaguars. I guess the Jets have a "foot" in the door after all. 

• With Peyton efficiently manning the reins, the Colts galloped to a victory over the Oakland, which was obviously not prepared to withstand the raid.

• Meanwhile in the garbage dump NFC West, San Francisco was rammed against the wall by Sam Bradford and company and was eliminated from playoff contention. Their coach Mike Singletary was singled out by the top brass for dismissal as well. 

Some other stuff happened as well (e.g. Brady threw a gazillion passes w/o an interception; his hair joined the fray by throwing a few passes as well.)but I am all punned out for now. Lame. 

Happy Immaculate Reception Day

The Pittsburgh Steelers are playing the Carolina "worse than the Bills" Panthers as I write this. Let's take this opportunity to talk about a really memorable playoff game involving the Steelers that took place exactly 38 years ago.


The Steelers played Oakland Raiders in the AFC divisional playoff game.
With only 22 seconds left on the clock, Oakland was leading 7-6. Pittsburgh was at its wit's ends, 4th and 10 on its own 40. In desperation, QB Terry Bradshaw threw the ball to RB Francis Fuqua, but before he could catch it he collided with Raiders' Tatum. The ball deflected due to this collision, and that was it...except not really. Out of nowhere, Pittsburgh RB Franco Harris caught the ball and ran for a touchdown, winning Pittsburgh the game. With that "immaculate reception" (the name is obviously a play on the Catholic dogma of Immaculate Conception), Harris made a place for himself in the hearts of Steelers fans (and on the most wanted list of Raiders fans).

Like any play, this one was enormously controversial. Did the ball touch the ground before Harris picked it up? Did it bounce off Fuqua only? 

Harris is really really important to the city of Pittsburgh, because there is a statue of him making the catch in Pittsburgh airport, right next to a statue of noted founding father George Washington.

When I visited Pittsburgh in September, I took a picture of that statue:

Harris: grinning all the way to the endzone

Here's a youtube clip of that play:

Whacky statistics

It's finals week here so my roommate and I are finding creative ways to deal with the humdrum of studying for exams. Now he is taking a statistics class this quarter, which surprisingly gave him some great ammo for some lame jokes (if you haven't figured it out yet, I am a sucker for lame jokes).

We (mostly he) put our talents to good use and came up with some very outrageous statistical predictions: (Just a fair bit of warning: using these will likely lead to you instantly flunking out of Stats):

• People who wear sweaters are more likely to fall sick. How so? Well, think about it: when do people wear sweaters the most? Winter. And when do they fall sick the most? Winter. Aha!

• People who hire lawyers are more likely to go to jail. 

• People who fly are more likely to get medical school interviews.

• People who read are more likely to read.

Oh and get ready for the "Game of the century" of the season as the Jets and Patriots clash tonight.