Only certain people

A person who has over 3000 friends on Facebook saw no irony in posting the picture above in her status bar.

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--30--

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With 4646 blog posts dating back to August 2006, it's time to end this adventure. After over 9-1/2 years of almost daily output, I will cease adding new posts to this blog. Why? The main reason is that it is simply time to move on to other pursuits. The time and effort spent conceiving, researching, writing, and editing articles has pushed off other projects that I've had in mind for several years. I'd like to focus on those. I'm deeply appreciative of my loyal and engaged readers.  They commented directly on the blog over 22 thousand times, and many have also sent private emails with their observations.  The readers have been polite, respectful, attentive, and thoughtful, and I cherish the time we've spent together. I'm also grateful to members of the Fourth Estate with whom I have corresponded on many of the topics covered here.  Sometimes we have sourced one another, sometimes we have collaborated, and sometimes we have offered mutual support in the face of h...
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Serendipity is allowed

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How's this for a lesson plan? Serendipity is allowed . . . and even encouraged. It is a philosophy set forth by Ed Moriarty , an instructor at MIT's Edgerton Center.  Opening the doors of the strobe lab for "that Saturday thing," as it is called by the students, Ed provides mentorship and asks challenging questions of children and adults of all ages who drop by to play and experiment. Here is learning at its most creative, combining physical manipulation of electrical components with thoughtful observation.  There is no syllabus, just the joy of learning. We were giving some friends a tour of MIT and we had explained that the philosophy of play is an important component of life at MIT.  We walked by the strobe lab at an opportune moment and were immediately hijacked by Ed. He said, "Hey, come in here. I want to show you some stuff." He borrowed a circuit that eight-year-old Amelia had constructed and asked us, "What kind of shadow is created when you ...
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Yes, even surgeons can learn

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The Risk Management Foundation of CRICO recently supported a research program to test the effectiveness of 360 degree reviews in influencing surgeons' communication and behavioral skills.  The results were just published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons . The context was important: The program was deployed as part of a long-standing, surgical chief-led patient safety and quality collaborative. The collaborative had previously constructed a Code of Excellence (COE), an explicit description of behaviors expected of all surgeons within their departments. The 360 degree evaluation process was designed to assess progress towards these standards. Here's how the study was designed: Three hundred and eighty five surgeons in a variety of specialties [in the Harvard hospitals] underwent 360-degree evaluations with a median of 29 reviewers each. Beginning six months after evaluation, surgeons, department heads, and reviewers completed follow-up surveys evaluating...
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