rants « blog.bradybouchard.ca

rants

medicine / rants — No Comments
14
Oct 09

‘Twas the Week Before Med Exams

A fantastic poem by a medical student at UQ who goes by ‘alisa’:

‘Twas the week before med exams
And all through PBL,
Some unshaven creatures
Are acquiring the smell

Of sobered up students
Eating things out of cans,
Tired yet driven
To excel at exams.

Saleem told us to study
Why did we not listen?
As we crack open our books
Some so new they still glisten.

Gone are PBL triggers
And the comic relief
From our dear PBL groups -
Whom we part from in grief.

Locked inside as we study
While summer doth fall
Waking from the best nap
Upon Guyton & Hall.

To Matt Devine we will pray,
For his knowledge and skill
As we cram everything in
To prepare for the kill.

Exam 1 will come soon -
EBM is the devil.
We’ll stagger out in the end
Looking doubly dishevelled.

Hold off on the beers
Don’t forget Exam 2.
One more night of lockdown
‘Till sweet freedom for you.

When it’s all handed in,
We’re one fourth through the race!
Ask Santa for a Seven,
Now please go shave your face.

Onwards we will march,
To electives we go!
Then apprehensively, many
Will return to the snow.

Congratulations to us -
We survived our first year!
Happy Drinking to all -
And to all a cold beer!

random / rants — No Comments
29
Jul 09

Insignificant

Each of us, so caught up in the everyday. God gave us the stars to remind us of our own insignificance – our lives as given to us are no bigger or consequential than a single atom in the tears streaming down your cheek.

We can take heart in knowing that each of us has been given the tools we need to make in impact in this life. Everyone unique, every toolbox handcrafted by chance and by God – some are compassionate, some relentless, some musical, artistic, or scientific. Don’t let the little roadblocks in life stop you from achieving what God put you here to do.

random / rants — No Comments
22
Jul 09

Fake Steve Jobs on Chinese Manufacturing

Even though he might be “fake”, Fake Steve Jobs, a.k.a. Daniel Lyons, former senior editor at Forbes magazine, tells it like it is:

We all know that there’s no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we’re paying for them. There’s no way we get all this stuff and everything is done fair and square and everyone gets treated right. No way. And don’t be confused — what we’re talking about here is our way of life. Our standard of living. You want to “fix things in China,” well, it’s gonna cost you. Because everything you own, it’s all done on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can’t even begin to imagine them, people who will do anything to get a life that is a tiny bit better than the shitty one they were born into, people who get exploited and treated like shit and, in the worst of all cases, pay with their lives.

(via fakestevejobs).

politics / rants — No Comments
11
Jul 09

The Slow, Painful, Unionized Death of GM

Quoting this in full, because it’s absolutely excellent:

GM is apparently emerging from bankruptcy. It will have the same (though fewer) managers, employees, and assembly plants. It will have the same product designers, marketers, strategists, and planners. It will have roughly the same organization systems, the same culture, and the same history. Though it was able to shed some plants and employees, it will have most of the same stifling work rules on the shop floor. It did, however, manage to shed a lot of interest payments to creditors who entrusted their money to GM in return for claims on GM assets, only to be given the shaft by the Obama administration.

The main difference in the new GM is that it will have an ownership group whose primary concerns are NOT the financial success of the company. The UAW will be primarily concerned with keeping union members employed and happy and not shifting any manufacturing to lower-cost venues. The US Government will be primarily concerned with making sure the UAW is happy and promoting a number of its own goals, like “sustainable” plants and smaller cars, irrespective of whether these goals make business sense. It will be a company more concerned with whether plants have recycling programs and workers with American passports rather than cost or quality. Both the UAW and the US government can pursue such non-business goals secure in the knowledge that financial success is virtually irrelevant, as the US taxpayer can be counted on to make up any shortfalls.

(via tjic)

random / rants / reviews — No Comments
22
Mar 09

How to Ruin Four Years of Great Writing

I thought the final episode of Battlestar Galactica was far and away the worst episode of the entire series. To help me explain my point of view, I’ve unwittingly recruited “aeryn_sunn” from slashdot:

I hated the ending. The unilateral decision to get rid of all technology for everybody was both absurd, short-sighted, and just plain stupid. Why not give people a choice at least? And why the hell would the humans decide to live like cavemen on a strange planet without at least medical technology? There are probably viruses, bacteria, and parasites that would wipe out the colonials. So are we to believe that simple non-life threatening infections now all of a sudden become deadly because of the basic lack of antibiotics?

And what about food? With farming and all what happens during a drought? Hell, what about simple things like books to read, pencils and pens to write with? The whole premise that the colonials all, all off a sudden decide to become essentially Amish after living with technology all their lives is just catastrophically asinine. Fuck, why not at least not destroy the ships in orbit, leave one Raptor on Earth so that the different settlements can be checked in on from time-to-time. Hell, what happened to the sense of wonder and awe of the colonials in that why wouldn’t they at least search for other inhabitable planets just in case Earth like gets hit by a comet or asteroid or some other natural disaster befalls Earth and the Colonials need to get the hell outta there.

Ug, what an unbelievably crappy ass implausible ending to an otherwise awesome series.

australia / rants — No Comments
17
Jan 09

Okay, So Not Everything is “Peachy”

I will refer you to my partner-in-crime’s blog post:
http://blog.eh-team.net/2009/01/16/the-death-and-resurrection-of-the-destroyer/

random / rants — No Comments
6
Sep 08

God Help Us

I’ve had the same reaction as I assume most people have had to the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Republican Vice-Presidential Candidate – “who?”. After reading as much as I can about her background, her politics and beliefs, I would like to share a letter I stumbled upon recently from a resident of Wasilla, Alaska, hometown of Mrs. Palin. The letter in it’s entirety is hosted at snopes.com. Some excerpts:

… Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,00 residents. …

… McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President. …

… While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. …

I don’t support the Republicans for other reasons than this, but this makes me scared of the very real possibility that Sarah Palin might be President of the United States of America in the next few years.

rants — No Comments
2
Jul 08

Mismanaging the American Economic Downturn

… It would allow many troubled borrowers to exchange their unaffordable loans for new mortgages guaranteed by the federal government.

By “guaranteed by the federal government”, you really mean “guaranteed by those of us who work hard and pay a lot of taxes”, right?

Because there’s really no such thing as a federal government that can pay for things – there’s just taxpayers.

What he said. You should read the whole thing.

geekery / rants — No Comments
1
Jul 08

Rogers Has Some Balls

UPDATE: Apparently Rogers had a typo, and the cancellation fee is $100, not $1100. Thank goodness.

Jamie just let me know about the Rogers Terms & Conditions for the iPhone, and they are so, so ridiculous that I just had to quote them on here.

“… An Early Cancellation Fee (EECF) applies if, for any reason, your service is terminated prior to the end of the service agreement. The ECF is the greater of (ii) $1100 or (iii) $220 per month remaining in the service agreement, to a maximum of 400 (plus applicable taxes), and applies on each line in the plan that is terminated.”

Emphasis mine.