Ditch Doc » Reflections

Exhaustion

bt — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 18:32:29 +0000

Since starting work last Friday, I’ve worked two regular days and three twenty-four hour days. And I’ve come to the following conclusion: It’s not that all of a sudden once you graduate from college, staying up all night makes you a wreck the next day. Think back and you’ll realize that that was at least as true then as now. It’s that after college, you spend that day on things that can’t be faked by a walking corpse.

Psychology of Debt

bt — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:43:25 +0000

Mortgage brokers enjoy giving potential borrowers tips on speedier repayment. The typical line goes like this: “If you only switch to bi-weekly payments, it’ll cost you about as much as an extra latte per week, [I believe the latte is a standard unit among bankers] and you’ll clear your debt five years earlier.” Needless to say, they don’t tell you this so you’ll get out of debt faster, but because it’ll make you more likely to get the mortgage. How so? They know you’ll do the following math, just far enough below full awareness to prevent your spying the trap.

25 yr mortgage / 5 yrs = 20% of the mortgage
5 yrs = 1 coffee/wk
So
1 coffee/wk = 20% of the mortgage
and
5 coffees/wk = 100% of the mortgage
Therefore, I can pay off my whole mortgage in zero years, and it’ll cost about $12.50 a week.

Well, where do I sign?

Family Day

bt — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 21:20:58 +0000

You know the family is in rough shape when having one day of the year named after it increases its importance. The really scary thing is that in the lead-up to this fourth EVER family day in Ontario, people were already asking one another: “So. Gonna do anything with your family for Family Day?” Just the same, I’ll accept the day off.

History

bt — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:28:29 +0000

One hears from time to time that we must study history, lest we repeat it. That’s never convinced me to crack a book. After a year and a half of classes and discussions amongst a university population largely unaware of history, I’ve decided why. The real danger of not studying history is that we WON’T repeat it. History is turgid with the rule of law, the scientific method and the development of the arts, not to mention countless individual examples of love and heroism. Most importantly, we live within the ever-present history of God’s self-sacrifice for our salvation. If we study history only to get rid of the evil bits, we risk rejecting the good with the bad and trying to reinvent humanity with no reference to the past, strictly according to what we can know by abstraction from the present. And that is how, with the best intentions, we repeat the despicable parts of history again and again.

Mathematics of Life

bt — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:57:11 +0000

I’ve never understood why the heroes of sexual licence are so blind to its essential tendency to suicide. Ideas are passed on in the home. Contraception, abortion and homosexual acts drastically limit the number of children raised in homes where these things are accepted. Stable, sexually continent couples have more children every year, and then their children have more children. Arithmetic has no moral concerns, and condemns the hedonistic view without pausing to consider its truth or falsehood. Its champions should not abandon it for this reason, but they should stop writing paeans to the new world order and study the age-old art of the lament for a doomed glory. They sing like Romans marching through the gates of Carthage, the defenders in hiding or already atop the pyre. But were they only to look up, they would recognize those walls for the cliffs of Thermopylae, and the men before them for the band of Leonidas. In a thousand years, they will be remembered not as the conquering army of Scipio, but the routed horde of Xerxes, who dared to flog the Hellespont.

Remembrance Day

bt — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:05:30 +0000

It seems as though every Remembrance Day someone trots out the little trope that we remember our fathers’ sacrifices so that we won’t have to repeat them. I’m surprised it took me so long to realize the obvious error of this sentiment. We remember their sacrifices first of all to pray for their eternal rest, and second to honour those who remain. Of course these acts should affect our own disposition as well, the goal being to give us courage to follow in their footsteps. The only certain thing about freedom is that it will always require the blood of the free. Remembrance Day reminds us to offer it. When we finally decide “never again,” and act on it, we will have decided to live as slaves.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them, lest we forget.

Tools

bt — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 01:21:39 +0000

The poor workman blames his tools, and so, I suppose, the good one doesn’t. But it’s not because he does a good job in spite of bad tools. It’s because he buys good tools.

Futility

bt — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:18:08 +0000

There’s nothing more frustrating than an argument with a relativist. It’s kind of like playing chess like this:

“Aha! Mate in three moves.”
“Uh, not if I don’t move any of my pieces. Oh well, guess it’s another stalemate.”
“That’s not a stalemate, it’s…”
“Yeah, well that’s your opinion.”

Prayer request

bt — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:33:54 +0000

The prayer service for those who donated their bodies to the anatomy department this year was held yesterday. All the donors’ names were read, and every few names a student presented a brief meditation. Here was mine:

“Perhaps it is fitting that every aspiring doctor, at the beginning of his career, is forced to contemplate its end. On the day we received our white coats, we pledged our lives to medicine, to the maintenance and preservation of human health. It was a heady day. Not long after, in the anatomy laboratory, we looked down at the most unsettling basic fact of medicine: no matter how cleverly we outwit death, or how long we hide our patients from his gaze, though we might snatch a thousand years out of his hands, all of our patients, and all of us, will end in the grave. Faced with death, we are forced to ask: what does life mean?

“These donors offer us an answer. This man on the table in front of me, whose name I do not know, loved his neighbours, loved me, so much that he submitted his body to the ignominy of my scalpel, so that I might learn from him how to treat my patients. His sacrifice demands another. To be loyal to this man’s gift, I must take his example and give my own life to those I treat.

“But what can I do for him? Is there anything we can do for those who have gone before? Our very presence at this prayer service proclaims our confident hope that there is. Though his body has been of use to me, I can be of use to his soul. Wherever I go in my medical career, I will keep his memory with me and pray that God might give him what medicine could not: life everlasting. Goodnight, sweet prince, flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, and until we meet again, may you enjoy the reward of your generosity. You are in my prayers.”

Politics

bt — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:52:37 +0000

Figure this one out for me:

A) Religious conservatives subscribe to the belief that there is an Almighty ruler of creation, but do not expect him to arrange a perfect state of political affairs before politics are permanently dissolved in the consummation of the ages.

B) Moral liberals tend to believe that the world operates according to some vague mixture of complete personal autonomy and the whims of Darwinian chance, but speak as though these forces were leading us into the age of universal peace and agreement. At least if we could get rid of those damn conservatives.