Elliott and Lara

2009 Recap

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 21:29:00 -0500

This was written by Lara on elliottandlara.com.

It's that time of year again when we repent for being bad bloggers and give a quick rundown of the last year.

Last March (2009), we decided on Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX) for med school and started making plans and preparations for our move. But before leaving D.C., we had a few adventures that haven't made it on our blog.

Spring in D.C.

In March-April, we were visited by Rachel, Hyrum, Caleb, Adam, and Lucas; Camas (and Bethany); Spencer and Emeline; Andrea and Dave (apologies if we missed someone, but it was awhile ago and these are all the pictures we could find!).

The Great Outdoors

Another April highlight was the Cherry Blossom Festival. Growing up, I'd heard my parents talk about the cherry blossoms in D.C. and I kinda thought, eh, what's the big deal? Turns out they're really that lovely.

Also in April: Virginia Beach with danje. You can't help but have ridiculous fun with those guys.

In May, we went rock climbing on Sugarloaf Mountain with Chris and Leigh. We were trying to get some practice...

...for our camping and rock climbing trip with them and others in Pennsylvania in June. On our way back home, we visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, which was fascinating.

Cooler Than Being a White House Crasher

A couple weeks later, we went to World Refugee Day (after some internet sleuthing to find tickets), where we attended a presentation and afterwards had lunch with and met Khaled Hosseini and Greg Mortensen (and a few surprises, like Anne Curry and Angelina Jolie, who were both very pleasant in person). We were definitely outclassed at the event, but it was inspiring to meet so many good people doing so much good. We left ready to change the world.

Goodbye D.C, Hello Paris!

Later in June, I ran my first race ever (except for the Hot Dog Run in Valdez when I was a kid, but I don't think that counts). It was a 5K, and Elliott was a fantastic cheerleader.

The last day of June was the last day of work for both Elliott and me. The next day, we finished loading up all of our belongings into a single Relocube and got on a flight to Europe, where we spent a good chunk of our savings on a glorious two week trip to France and Greece.

Someday we'll get an account of our trip written up for all the Internets to see, but for now we'll say this: Paris, Athens, and Santorini were fantastic. (Both good food and skinny dipping may have been involved.)

Roadtrip to Texas

When we got home from Europe, we got in the car and drove to Houston. En route, we stopped in North Carolina for a couple days to see the nephews.

Down the road, we stopped at my Grandpa's in Georgia. Elliott and Grandpa had never met each other, so I was glad we got to spend a couple days with him.

Medical school begins, life ends

We only had a couple days between arriving in Houston and Elliott starting med school orientation, so we tried to make quick work of our move-in. For purposes of quiet and security, our choice of a third floor condo was a good one. But as we hauled everything we owned up three flights of stairs in Houston in July, we were seriously reconsidering our decision. (Especially when it came to lifting our crazy-heavy-retrotastic-Craigslist-acquisition treadmill.)

Elliott started school at the beginning of August, and his parents came down for his White Coat Ceremony two weeks later. It was great to have them as our first houseguests in Houston!

School is organized into blocks for Elliott, each around six weeks long, with an exam at the end of each block. Between one block ending and the next beginning, there's usually the better part of a week of no school, which is perfect for having adventures!

After Block 1, we spent a day in Galveston, then went to Austin for the weekend and saw its awesome weirdness, bats, capitol, hiking trails, and a geeky computer museum.

After Block 2, we went camping/rock-climbing with several other BCM students (as part of Baylor's Wilderness Medical Society) just west of San Antonio. A cold rainstorm hit late in the night, and only one person in our large group managed to stay dry. Elliott and I switched spots partway through the night, so both of us had the chance to sleep in the large puddle in our tent. However, the following day turned out sunny and pleasant and absolutely perfect for rock climbing. On our way home, we stopped in San Antonio for a few hours, where we had dinner and explored the River Walk.

The next day was Halloween, and we attended Baylor's annual celebration, Coffeehouse, a variety show put on by the medical students. A great time was had by all. There was a costume contest and we took second place as Kanye West and Taylor Swift (losing to a pretty awesome Russel from "Up").

To continue our winning streak, the next week we brought the prize-winning hummus to a "Stuff White People Like" party thrown by our friend Lauren, and received spectacularly ugly sweaters for our efforts.

Long December

Elliott and I spent most of December apart; I was in Alaska, helping my Mom after shoulder surgery, and Elliott was in Houston with his nose to the scholastic grindstone. It was great for me to be with my family and great for Elliott to be able to focus on school, but it reminded us that we'd much rather be with each other than not.

A couple days after Elliott's Block 3 exams were over, I returned from Alaska. I'd been home 18 hours when we loaded up and drove to North Carolina for Christmas. Elliott's whole family was gathering and we were the final two to arrive, bringing the total to 15, including our four nephews and our brand new niece, who we got to meet for the first time during our visit. It was so great to all be together and we had a great Christmas!

Life in General

We've been pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoy living in Houston, despite the failed promise of pleasantly warm winters.

Living inside the loop has been a nice change for Elliott (who went to high school in the suburbs), and living adjacent to the Texas Medical Center has made it easy to commute to school, go running in Herman Park or around Rice, and visit places like the Rothko Chapel.

Elliott is able to bike to school most days, and with our purchase of a bike for me, we have started going on biking adventures together. (Last week we discovered an amazing city park--complete with hills and unpaved backwoods "mountain" trails--in Houston.)

Also of late, we have been engaged in several home improvement projects, which we will be unveiling in later blogs.

It's been a good year and we've been able to do lots of fun things, but right now, most of all, we're hanging in there as medical school and the job hunt grinds on.

2 Years Down

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:41:00 -0500

This was written by Lara on elliottandlara.com.

One of the things I love about mine and Elliott's relationship is this: every once in a while, one of us will throw out a totally unrealistic idea, and then the other says, yeah, okay, let's do it!

Like having exclusively ice cream for dinner the other night.

Or getting married in Hawaii two years ago.

Both great decisions.

Today we earn our associates degrees in marriage, with high marks all around. And best of all, we still like each other. Like a lot.

Cinnamon Girl

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:08:00 -0500

This was written by lara on elliottandlara.com.

I wanted to start a tradition of cinnamon/orange rolls for October General Conference, so I spent last week looking at different recipes, deciding at the last minute on one from King Arthur Flour. A lot of butter later, I had these to show for my work.

A little more butter, a little more sugar, and I had these babies.

I made a lot so we could buy friends with the valuable currency of baked goods.

We'd hoped to deliver the goods before 11:00 conference started, but we weren't ready in time so we decided to deliver them between sessions. I didn't want them getting hard during the two hour wait, so I put them back in a slightly warm oven with a pan of water to keep them nice and soft. For good measure, I also spritzed them with water from a spray bottle.

Now, about six months ago I bought a four-pack of spray bottles from Costco, identical except for the bottles' color accents. I use them as water bottles for plants and laundry (and sometimes cooking) and for homemade and reconstituted household cleaners. Perhaps you see where this is going.

Once the orange and cinnamon rolls were in the oven, I grabbed the bottle next to the stove to give them one last mist before I let them be. *mist* *mist* *mist mist* Then in one of those slow-motion realizations, the slight smell of lemon verbena tells me something's not right. I wasn't spraying water but Mrs. Meyer's All Purpose Cleaner on the cinnamon rolls that were supposed to make us friends.

I shriek and Elliott rushes in, frantic to know which family member just died. I'm standing there, horrified, but manage to tell him, between sobs and giggles, what I've done.

After spending hours making almost sixty orange and cinnamon rolls, I was determined someone outside of our house was going to enjoy them. Luckily there were enough that weren't in the oven with their ill-fated brothers that we managed to deliver a couple plates of non-cleansed goodies, but if we never manage to have more than 2 friends in Houston, we'll all know why.

The Cost Conundrum

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:23:00 -0500

This was written by Elliott on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:

The Cost Conundrum, by Atul Gawande

I started to summarize my favorite points from this piece, but I decided against it. Because...you need to read the article in its entirety [1]. It's that good.

Yes, I am a soon-to-be-medical-student, so naturally this is a topic of great interest to me. But I hope that by reading Gawande's article, you too are convinced that health care reform is the most important issue in America today, with great personal relevance to each citizen and with far reaching fiscal implications for our country. It is not an issue that can be solved with simple solutions, talking points, or finger pointing. I am beginning to see that the usual points of debate (i.e. private vs public insurance) are largely irrelevant to many of the fundamental problems. Like Gawande, I believe that we must lay aside ideology for empiricism if we are ever going to succeed.

Today Obama addressed the American Medical Association (and for the first time I followed live tweets [2]). There is much that could be said, good and bad, about Obama's speech, but I was happy to learn that he (President Obama) had also read Gawande's piece.

While I continue to worry about health care reform, that in itself is a reason for hope.

[1] When you're done with that, a great commentary on Dr. Gawande's article can be found here. An interesting take on Obama's speech can be found here. For more insights by Dr. Gawande, check out Better (a must read) or watch the lecture he gave to us at the National Institutes of Health. Also, an interesting piece ("The Isolationism of Health Reform") was posted on Slate last night.

[2] Yes, I am one of those users...and I read more about Twitter in tech news than actually use it.

On Science, Faith, and Boxes

Tue, 05 May 2009 13:44:00 -0500

This was written by Elliott on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
The evangelical atheists and Mormon anti-evolutionists have joined forces

Those who know me well know that science is a subject very dear to my heart. When given the chance to speak at my graduation convocation for the College of Life Sciences a year ago, I spent my entire alloted time quoting Elder John Widtsoe and Dr. Francis Collins and gushing about the beauty of biology and evolution.

Those who know me well have probably also had me pestering them to check out The Mormon Organon, a blog written by my former BYU professor. The following excerpt is from his latest post, and is today's featured LB article.

(Note: I wanted to highlight certain sentences, but it is all so good I don't know where to begin. Just read it, even though your brain may want to bypass it since, you know, its indented.)

"The presence of God is found in inwardness, as Kierkegaard argued. God's grace is his willingness to be known. Directly. Not found as part of a scientific deduction. This is where the fear of evolution goes astray...

"The naïve view that we must protect our belief in God from the physical facts of the universe (like evolution, big bang etc.) generates harm because it suggests that God can only work in our lives like we can--as a physical mechanic that intervenes in simple manipulations of matter (God took a handful of dust and made it into a body like an advanced claymation creature). No. Unlike the atheists, and those believers who have joined with them, in thinking the battle is fought in the physical world, I suggest that they look towards building a relationship with God in the inward reaches of their soul. That's where the atheists will find the evidence they seek, and the believers will find they don't need to protect our religion from the findings of science. And what they'll find once they discover (the atheists), or trust (the threatened believers), this relationship with God in inwardness, they'll find that God permeates the physical universe in ways they never expected."

I often think of a film from my molecular biology class. It was a documentary of college students from strong Bible-belt upbringings making their journey into the sciences, chronicling their early concerns and later passion for the study of evolution. In the film, it was evident that these students had decided—despite their parent's anger and vitriol towards the subject—that they didn't have to choose between science and faith. In the words of one of the students (I simply love this line): "God was bigger than the box I put him in."

One does more than miss out on the inspiring beauty and order of nature by dismissing science—they also unwittingly and arrogantly constrain God. Feeling empowered by their interpretation of scripture that was never meant to be a treatise on history, geology, or physics, they insist that He did things at a certain time in a certain way that fits within the rigid confines of their worldview—forgetting that God's ways are not our ways, nor his thought our thoughts.

God is bigger than that box. And yet, even after one moves past the dogma that God had to manually sculpt the first humans out of raw materials, it's probably still impossible to escape framing God in other ways. To a certain extent, that's OK. Boxes can serve a purpose, just as Newtonian physics is still taught as a precursor to quantum mechanics. But until we know the truth of all things, man-made boxes should not be the end-all for a God who is endless.

While evolution may seem a controversial subject, the reality is that evidence from the fossil record and genetics is mounting and undeniable. I for one do not believe that God is trying to trick us with all these clues in the natural world. I like this written response to my professor's article:

"...Could all things on and in the earth have been created how they are or placed on the earth as they are as a deception to try our faith? No! As Alma states, "all things denote there is a God". If this is true (and it came from the mouth of Alma), how can science disprove God or be at odds with the gospel? It can't and it's not! The evidence and history contained in the rocks and in the earth are the evidence and history of the hand of God. No member of the church should fear having their faith tried when they visit a natural history museum. On the contrary, it should be a faith building experience as I'm sure your BYU classes are as well."

Having a healthy attitude towards science does more than just help us spiritually. In writing this post, I am reminded of a New York Times essay I read last January:

"That endeavor [science], which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view. These are the unabashedly pragmatic working principles that...is slowly and thoroughly penetrating every nook and cranny of the world."

I hope that it is true. And I hope that believers embrace these fruits of science openly and freely, instead of waging destructive culture wars. For while science and religion serve us in completely different ways—and while God's grace, in the words of my professor, is "not part of a scientific deduction"—I believe that science deserves an important place for every person of faith.

I've rambled, and I could go on much further. I hope, at the very least, I've convinced you that science is not just a lame subject in high school or a pork project that McCain twitters against. Expect to hear more on this subject from me in the future.

UPDATE: I just learned about The BioLogos Foundation, which was recently established by Dr. Francis Collins. I highly recommend a visit to the website, http://biologos.org.

Boys Will Be [Boys]

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:36:00 -0500

This was written by Lara on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
Dude, You've Got Problems

A while back I declared I wanted to phase out cleaning chemicals and instead use vinegar, baking soda, etc. for household cleaners. (This isn't totally related to the LB article, but bear with me for a moment.) Elliott is great at supporting me in what I want to do, so of course he was okay with it (especially after I assured him the house wouldn't constantly smell like pickles). In fact, he recently cleaned the bathroom while I wasn't home and used vinegar, even though other cleaners were in the cabinet. But the first thing Elliott said when I made my announcement was, with a big grin, "We're going to be the hippie family, aren't we?"

And the thing is, I kinda hope so. I hope we're able to avoid enough of the less admirable aspects of our culture that we end up coming across as a little weird. I'm fine with that. But I worry about our kids. I'm okay not being in lockstep with the mainstream, but it can be tougher for a kid.

Now, I'm not hoping my children will be best of friends with the kids getting highlights and bikini waxes at age 10 (don't even get me started), but it's also not my goal to alienate them from their peers. Their lives would be easier and more enjoyable if they weren't mocked every day at school for not being able to identify the 15-years-from-now-equivalent of the Jonas brothers. Or Miley Cirus. Or whoever.

I won't try to make my kids weird, but chances are good they will be, at least a little. Maybe they won't understand all the TV references. Maybe they'll be jealous of their friends' lunchables. Maybe they'll just be a little awkward, due to being my child.

I worry for my future girl(s), but the girl issues I know something about (see bikini waxes at 10). I can identify objectification of women a mile away. I've worked with girls with eating disorders. And, you know, I've been a girl.

Now, back to the LB article. It's my future boy(s) that have me really worried.

"Boy culture" is being heard loud and clear: to be something other than the narrowest, stupidest sort of guy's guy, is to be unworthy of even being alive.

The article talks about boys whose offenses are doing well in school, liking bright clothes, or enjoying books and as a result, are taunted mercilessly.

It's weird, isn't it, that in an age in which the definition of acceptable girlhood has expanded, so that desirable femininity now encompasses school success and athleticism, the bounds of boyhood have remained so tightly constrained?

Chances are our boys won't fit the mold. And they'll be brilliant and successful and happy...if they can just make it through middle school.

The Great Recession

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:19:00 -0500

This was written by Lara on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
Making Ends Meet in the Great Depression

New unemployment figures were released today and it's not pretty. At 8.5% unemployment, we're at the highest rate in 25 years.

The comparison between this recession and the Great Depression of the 1930s is pervasive. But we're at 8.5%. In 1933, unemployment in the US hit 25%. That's three times higher than where we're at now.

Now, for those without a job, which snowballs for many into being without a home, it's plenty bleak. But for the fortunate 91.5% with employment, as well as a place to live and plenty to eat, I can't help thinking that comparing this to the Great Depression seems...dishonest? self-deceptive?

I sometimes catch myself thinking about what I'll tell my children or grandchildren about the Great Recession. The housing crash. The bailouts. The massive layoffs. The worry and hopelessness.

And then I read things like today's link--accounts from people who lived through the Great Depression, and I'm reminded: I have no idea what poverty even is.

From these accounts, two things struck, and inspired, me.

One, there seems to have been very strong camaraderie--not just within families, but also communities that pulled together to look out for each other. I mean, making up a plate of dinner leftovers and putting it out on the porch so an anonymous stranger could score a meal? Can you imagine anyone doing that today?

Two, these people were frugal in ways I can't even wrap my mind around. One account talks about framing pictures from the Sears catalog for home decor and sewing together pieces of worn sheets to make new ones. And then when those wore out, they'd cut them into strips and weave them into blankets (with strips from old clothes, if you wanted to add some color). Two generations out, are we, as a society, even capable of this degree of frugality?

Well. Global disaster on Monday, global financial crisis on Friday, all brought to you by Elliott and Lara. Next week we'll try to be more upbeat, with blog posts about cherry blossoms.

Global Warning (Needed)

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:50:00 -0500

This was written by Elliott on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe

While the disaster movies would have you believe that it's going to be an asteroid, nuclear war, or virus outbreak that kills most of us off, it may be nothing less than a case of bad weather.

Well, space weather, that is. A large enough ejection of coronal mass from the sun (a phenomenon often coinciding with solar flares) would disrupt the Earth's magnetic field, induce large currents in wires, melt transformers, knock out continental power grids, and render large sections of our interconnected and electricity-dependant infrastructure completely useless.

I think what this doomsday scenario should teach us as a civilization is a little humility. For all our greatness, it would just take a little puff of solar plasma to plunge our cities into darkness, starvation, and chaos.

Apparently, our best shot at achieving adequate global warning is to replace the aging Advanced Composition Explorer probe, which currently only might buy us fifteen minutes to prepare our power grids for the impact.

In the meantime, maybe it wouldn't hurt to plant a moon garden or two, far away from all the chaos and destruction.

Side Project: BabelFox

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:43:00 -0500

This was written by Elliott on elliottandlara.com.

Link to BabelFox:
http://elliottandlara.com/babelfox

Christmas Prank

Last December, Lara and I went up to Alaska to spend Christmas with her family. It was going to be my first time meeting one of her brothers, who'd recently returned from a church mission. I had heard stories of pranks done on his other brother-in-law (and last visit I myself had been short-sheeted by another of Lara's brothers), so I knew come Christmas time, it was game on.

Having recently discovered the Firefox add-on "FoxReplace," and knowing that he was an avid reader of right-wing blogs, I came prepared. FoxReplace swaps out words on a web page according to a user-defined list, like a Find and Replace. (Of course, the actual website isn't changed, just what you see of it. If you opened the page in another browser, you wouldn't see the changes.) With another sibling, we came up with a bunch of substitutions, such as "liberal" to "conservative," "American" to "Fascist," and, one of my favorites, "money" to "poo" (try reading the Economist or Wall Street Journal with that substitution turned on).

The prank was first (unintentionally) sprung on my mother-in-law. When she went to check the schedule for the BYUTV Christmas program, she was a little surprised that there wasn't one scheduled...and we giggled when she announced that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Hanukkah program would be coming on soon.

We got Lara's brother the next day. It wasn't the liberal/conservative switch either. He was reading a Wikipedia article on some American historical figure, who according to Wikipedia was a "famous nineteenth century Fascist writer." He blinked, clicked on more links, and then really got excited when he came to the entry on "America."

He even emailed The Drudge Report to report a "mass vandalization" of Wikipedia.

I can't remember how the joke was revealed, but our uncontrolled snickering in the background was probably a hint. (When he did find out, he was a really good sport about it.)

"BabelFox" Web Application

However, FoxReplace doesn't have to be just fun and games. Here I present a way to use FoxReplace to complement your study of a foreign language. It's built on the premise that since a lot of learning needs repetition, one can bolster vocabulary in a passive way by hijacking other daily activities--like blogging.

I was actually planning to write my own FoxReplace extension before I found that someone had already done it. Back in November I was thinking about strategies to help retain my Chinese vocabulary that wouldn't significantly alter my schedule. Since I spend a fair amount of time reading news articles and blogs, I thought it would be great to have a program that would insert vocabulary words into web pages, creating a sort of "inline flashcard" experience. For example, if the Washington Post said "Nice weather today," I wanted my web browser to read "Nice ) today" [1]. Since ) is one isolated word, it doesn't really slow down my English reading speed, but it tells my brain to prioritize this bit of information [2].

You can find my little web app here. I've called it BabelFox, because it is sort of like the famed Babel Fish, except it makes intelligible words less intelligible.

In a nutshell, the app retrieves a Google Spreadsheet [3] and converts it into a FoxReplace XML file, complete with custom regular expressions and formatting. Voila! Every web page you visit now is a potential mine of flashcards. If you forget what a particular word means, putting the cursor over the vocab word will give you its definition and pronunciation--if that's how you've chosen to configure it. Not interested in language learning? You can also use BabelFox to create and manage prank lists like that used on my brother-in-law. Very importantly, BabelFox also allows you to share your list with others without exposing your Google account name [4] or even the original document's URL.

This project is mostly an experiment with XML, regex, and Google Spreadsheets, but I hope that it can also be useful to others. Also, if I have reinvented the wheel with BabelFox, or there is a better solution out there, please let me know [5].

UPDATE: I just found a Firefox project called LanguageBob which is built on the same idea--inserting vocabulary words into web pages that you visit. It looks to better suited for the beginner language learner, and there doesn't seem to be the same fine-tuned control.

--

[1] If this: [)] looks like this: [??] it probably means that Asian fonts are not installed on your computer. And if this: [)] should look like this: [)#], then you're probably from Taiwan.

[2] As awesome as our brains are, they're often described as "limited-capacity processors." Maybe by repeating the stimulus to the brain, you'll convince the filing system to prioritize it for future recall. Or maybe the repetition will cause the brain to de-prioritize it, since it figures it doesn't need to remember information that is always in front of it. Or maybe...I should just stop pretending to know what I'm talking about.

[3] Initially, I began to build a simplified spreadsheet-like interface for creating a vocabulary list for BabelFox. Then I realized--why not utilize Google Docs, since everyone these days has a Google account? Then I didn't have to worry about user management and email addresses, etc.

[4] This was a VERY annoying thing I discovered about Google Docs...the RSS feed from a published spreadsheet totally has one's gmail address exposed! (Although not the other outputs, like txt, xls, etc., as far as I could tell.) Google engineers: C'mon guys!

[5] Last year when I wrote BabelFox, I did try a few searches and found some interesting related projects. If you are learning Japanese, for example, here is a clever and somewhat related Firefox extension.

The Soy Milk-y Way

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:52:00 -0500

This was written by Elliott on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
Early soy diet may protect against breast cancer

It has long been known that breast cancer rates in Asian women are lower than average but that the difference quickly diminishes in subsequent generations after immigration to the West (suggesting a factor other than genetics). The study above lays out strong evidence pointing to childhood soy intake as a major protective factor[1].

The primary author of the study is in my branch, and her office is three down from mine...which, yes, makes me pretty much awesome by association (like all of my other claims to awesomeness). This morning I showed her the extent of her fame on Google News.

My association to soy itself also makes me feel a little awesomer. Lara and I independently switched to soy milk a couple months before we reunited and started dating. I don't know what Lara's reasons were, but I had grown to enjoy all forms of soy while in China (tip: never say to a Chinese person that you like to eat tofu, as I mistakenly did during an English summer program), and when my friend Farris went on a soy milk kick when we were rooming together, I tried it too and have never looked back. In fact, its amazing how the taste and experience of drinking milk changes after you take an extended break from it. It helps me understand my vegetarian friends' sentiments towards meat.

So, it's a funny coincidence that Lara had also made the switch, but made more surprising if you know our previous habits. We were both the heaviest milk drinkers in our respective families (which means no protective childhood intake for us, sadly). Don't gag, but in high school I would even chug iced skim milk after an evening run in sweltering Houston.

While we're on the subject of epidemiology, you've probably read about this 500K study, which demonstrates a significant association between increased mortality and red meat consumption.

I'm OK that most Americans don't drink soy milk, but I do wish more people would lay off the beef. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love a good steak now and then. But as evidence continues to surface on the dangers of heavy meat consumption, I do hope that this oft-under-appreciated part of the Word of Wisdom will make a comeback.

[1] Studies looking at adult soy intake do not have as clear results (but generally it is still considered protective, albeit less so).

Happy Name Day to You

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:39:00 -0500

This was written by Lara on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
Name days

My birthday is over and it was great. Its passing puts me in my late 20s, which is fine, I'm just not sure where the last 5 years went. I still feel 22.

In many countries, including in Europe and Latin America, people celebrate not only their birthdays, but also their name days. You can read up on it here and go here to see if you have a name day. I was surprised to find my name has a day, but Elliott isn't so lucky. And today, happy name day to all the Rebeccas and Beckys!

Lunch Break Break, Twinners, Birthdays

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:03:00 -0500

This was written by Elliott on elliottandlara.com.

Lunch Break will return next week. We've been entertaining out-of-town visitors this week, and today Lara is off to California for business meetings (I would be very jealous, except the weather suddenly turned amazing here).

And one surprising discovery. I googled "Elliott and Lara" (in quotes) a couple days back (out of vanity and to see which blogs were giving us the link love), and I learned...that another Elliott and Lara are getting married this August! Congratulations guys! (And nice kitchenware choices!) [1,2]

Also: This Sunday is Lara's birthday! (My Lara, not the newly discovered Lara.) Feel free to leave her a comment here or send her an email (her private address is best, but for the uninitiated, elliottandlara@gmail.com will work fine).

[1] To my knowledge, this makes only two so-named couples in the world (the internet world, at least). The only other interesting pairing of these two distinguished names and spellings comes from a 1986 New York Times piece. The subject of the article is a woman with the last name of Lara, and her interviewer's first name is Elliott—which is cool but not THAT cool, except for the fact that Ms. Lara may be a CUBAN SPY (!!!).

[2] Also, ummm, sorry other-Elliott-and-Lara couple....I already snagged elliottandlara.com, elliottandlara@gmail.com, youtube.com/elliottandlara, elliottandlara.wordpress.com, twitter.com/elliottandlara, elliottandlara.blogspot.com, and a couple others that aren't coming to mind. (But as a very poor consolation, you can still have myspace.com/elliottandlara...unless its since been taken by a Cuban secret agent after having a fit of nostalgia about an interview she had over twenty years ago.)

Paradigm Lost

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:55:00 -0500

This was written by Elliott on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/using-technology-to-skip-the-doctors-office/

My grandfather, a retired pediatrician who shares my first and last name, speaks fondly about going on house calls, black doctor bag in hand, to checkup on children and calm worried parents. In the past few years, I have run into multiple people who, upon recognizing our shared name, speaks of him in glowing terms like "my doctor" or "our pediatrician." My grandfather says that such relationships were the most rewarding aspects of his career.

Like my grandfather, I expect much of my satisfaction as a physician will come through direct interaction with patients--email, phone, office visit, house call, whatever form it ultimately takes. On my mission, I spent much of my time in regular, intimate visits with individuals and families. Many were wanting to make lifestyle changes, such as overcoming addictions, and were often very open despite my being almost a complete stranger. During our visits, as I listened to their fears and doubts, I developed for them a kind of love that I had not experienced before. I expect medicine to be similar.

I realize, however, that such satisfaction will not be guaranteed. It only takes a quick web search with the terms "physician disillusionment" to realize that there are real challenges facing doctors today. My greatest fears as a physician include being caught in a situation where I am bound by the dictates of an insurer and not the available best evidence and my own conscience--or worse, I fear that my idealism will sour into cynicism amid a daily grind of paperwork battles, malpractice fights, and business decisions. Even my grandfather has noted the changes to the health care system with managed care and wonders if he would still choose medicine, were he and I to switch places.

How do we fix health care? That is the million dollar question...well, no actually, it's the two and a half trillion dollar question [1].

We're not short on solutions. Today's featured article, as an example, points to the merits of the use of secure email and electronic records, as evidenced by doctors in Hawaii. In the age of Google and Facebook, this idea seems incredibly obvious--and frankly, a bit shocking that it is newsworthy at all. But sadly, this simple, small innovation is made nearly impossible by the present "fee for service" paradigm that doctors find themselves in.

I'm glad that health care reform has remained in the public consciousness and in the current administration's agenda. Hopefully when I'm done with medical training--nearly a decade from now--I won't have to deal with the worst of our current problems. In the meantime, you'll probably be hearing a lot more on this subject from me.

[1] And it's not paying off.

CPR for the Masses

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:27:00 -0500

This was written by Lara on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001426.html

I've had several jobs that required getting CPR training. You sit there in a classroom (usually a freezing one) and spend your day learning how to do chest compressions and how that cracking sound is supposed to happen.

Even though I've been certified at least three times, I couldn't tell you how to do it properly, much less actually perform CPR.

I'm pretty sure I'm repressing that knowledge so I'll never actually think, yeah, I'm all over this, and go volunteering myself to try to bring a dead person back to life. Because that would be utterly terrifying and traumatizing for me.

So I repress. But as of today, Dinosaur Comics has provided a mnemonic that moves me one step closer to not being able to forget. If I one day save someone's life, it's all T-Rex's fault.

(Click on comic for full size version)

Open Memo to Teachers and Parents

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:38:00 -0500

This was written by elliott on elliottandlara.com.

Today's Lunch Break:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/obama-calls-for-overhaul-of-education-system/

I have many friends in the teaching field, and as this can be an emotionally loaded subject, my apologies if I offend. Let me first say that I truly admire what you do.

Certainly the problems in our school systems have no simple solutions. As for me, I generally support (and all opinions of mine are subject to change, given additional facts and added perspective) charter schools, school vouchers, magnet programs, and merit-based pay. However, I don't pretend that any one of these is a silver bullet, or that they should be applied uniformly across the board[1].

The most powerful solution lies in strengthening the home and in parents being better parents, but I do think the government has an important role in improving our education system. All regional challenges are unique, and I believe that state and local leaders (as opposed to the federal government) should be given more discretion on what is best for their area. In fact, I hesitate to make any sweeping generalizations about what I think should be done--well, with two exceptions. I'm in support of ending Bush's failed No Child Left Behind and of limiting the power of teachers unions.

Many of our public school teachers work hard and care about our children. But the present system fails both our teachers and our students. Change is necessary, but any attempt at reform or innovation is quickly shot down by the teachers unions, a protective group that (to a certain extent) propagandizes parents and students (this is what I observed in Utah during the failure of the school voucher program)[2].

With the voting support Obama received from the teachers' unions, I was worried that he would cave to their demands, considering their enormous power as a special interest group[3]. I am glad that he is speaking boldly on this issue, and I hope that we do see a change in the quality of public education [4]. Here is my two cents on what else should be done.

I met dozens of classmates who would have made phenomenal high school teachers. They had the creativity, energy, intelligence, and personality for it. Few, even those interested in the idea, ultimately went that route. This reluctance to pursue education was particularly pronounced among the male students at BYU.

The standard line is that we get the best teachers because money isn't the motivator. But that's not true--I watched many of the best future teachers go to law or dental school instead. Teachers deserve to take pride in their profession on the same level as doctors, lawyers, and businessman, and many of the brightest students need that sense of identity, pride, and accomplishment to make the leap into a career.

So we want to improve our public schools? Perhaps we need to visit our colleges first. I'd like to see the day when I overhear this part of shallow conversation from a BYU student: "Yes, yes, he's going to be a teacher. Yes, its so nice to be dating someone with so much ambition...and, lets be honest, someone who's going to be making a six figure salary when he's done with school."

[1] There is no "one size fits all" in education. We won't find the cure for cancer by only attacking the problem from one approach. (Of course, "cancer" will never be "cured" in the usual sense of the word, as it is not one disease but a constellation of different diseases. But learning is not only one thing either, as not all kids learn the same way--which is why fighting against alternatives like charter schools or supporting a measure like No Child Left Behind both seem so ridiculous to me.)

[2] We need innovation and evidence-based reform. Let's bring science back to the school classroom--and to the school administration.

[3] Considering how populist the GOP has become in recent years, I wonder if we'll see some shifts in allegiance there.

[4] I don't agree with all of his proposals, however. I agree with some of the criticisms on his over-emphasis on college education for all, for example. I do feel better about moderate pick for education secretary after finding this commentary though.