Five words
Words meme from fearsclave
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
Opera
I'm sure I've written about this before. It's that weird art form that combines classical music with theatre that composers have been playing with for the last four hundred years or so. I'm constantly struck by the ability of great music to transform banal or just plain silly plots into great drama. Try it but not by listening to audio recordings. That works fine for people who know a work backwards but opera is meant to be seen as well as heard. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. Try it, preferably, in the theatre or in one of the excellent Metropolitan Opera live cinema broadcasts ($20 gets you a view that would cost you $300 in New York!) or if you can't manage either watch a DVD on a decent home theatre set up.
Books
I love books for their content but also as objects to be appreciated in their own right. That's why I can't see me ever being a big convert to ebooks. ebooks are like Bill Gates having HD TV screens all over his MacMansion instead of real paintings. (OK they have their place). I've posted dozens and dozens of book pictures both here and on Flickr! Check them out and see what I mean.
Ehealth
This is what I do, more or less, for a living. I figure out how to apply Information and Communications technologies to improve healthcare. It's frustrating as all heck because most of my peers are all about the technology and really don't get that the technology is just a tool. I think this is because they are frustrated and/or intimidated by the clinicians. I'm not. Frankly I'm as smart as 95%+ of MDs and I know my own little patch pretty well. This lets me be very open with the docs and I can usually find good ways of making things happen that really do work. Unfortunately my opportunities to do so are restricted by control freak bureaucrats not to mention a range of rather dubious procurement practices in my patch.
Cooking
I like to eat. I like to eat well. The only economical option for eating well is to cook for oneself (or have a partner who does, which I don't). So, I taught myself to cook well. A spell early in my career in the food and food ingredients businesses helped. Some sense of the physics and chemistry of cooking is useful. A highly peripatetic existence as a consultant also gave me the opportunity to eat in a whole lot of really good restaurants which provided some education in the art of the possible. Recreating great dishes from restaurants was a good stepping stone to inventing new ones. I suspect my real strength though is not complex, restaurant style food but, rather, the ability to come up with a good, simple meal from what's in the fridge or a few things picked up on the way home from work.
Climbing
This is probably in my past. I used to love to climb. I was an old school, outdoor, trad climber who regarded bolts and similar devices with disdain. I preferred to lead rather than second and I've done my share of necky leads. I always considered myself a mountaineer who cragged when there was nothing better to do. I would not fit well in a world that starts beginners on 5.8 bolt ladders and rigorously segregates 'sport climbing' (gag) from mountaineering.
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
Opera
I'm sure I've written about this before. It's that weird art form that combines classical music with theatre that composers have been playing with for the last four hundred years or so. I'm constantly struck by the ability of great music to transform banal or just plain silly plots into great drama. Try it but not by listening to audio recordings. That works fine for people who know a work backwards but opera is meant to be seen as well as heard. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. Try it, preferably, in the theatre or in one of the excellent Metropolitan Opera live cinema broadcasts ($20 gets you a view that would cost you $300 in New York!) or if you can't manage either watch a DVD on a decent home theatre set up.
Books
I love books for their content but also as objects to be appreciated in their own right. That's why I can't see me ever being a big convert to ebooks. ebooks are like Bill Gates having HD TV screens all over his MacMansion instead of real paintings. (OK they have their place). I've posted dozens and dozens of book pictures both here and on Flickr! Check them out and see what I mean.
Ehealth
This is what I do, more or less, for a living. I figure out how to apply Information and Communications technologies to improve healthcare. It's frustrating as all heck because most of my peers are all about the technology and really don't get that the technology is just a tool. I think this is because they are frustrated and/or intimidated by the clinicians. I'm not. Frankly I'm as smart as 95%+ of MDs and I know my own little patch pretty well. This lets me be very open with the docs and I can usually find good ways of making things happen that really do work. Unfortunately my opportunities to do so are restricted by control freak bureaucrats not to mention a range of rather dubious procurement practices in my patch.
Cooking
I like to eat. I like to eat well. The only economical option for eating well is to cook for oneself (or have a partner who does, which I don't). So, I taught myself to cook well. A spell early in my career in the food and food ingredients businesses helped. Some sense of the physics and chemistry of cooking is useful. A highly peripatetic existence as a consultant also gave me the opportunity to eat in a whole lot of really good restaurants which provided some education in the art of the possible. Recreating great dishes from restaurants was a good stepping stone to inventing new ones. I suspect my real strength though is not complex, restaurant style food but, rather, the ability to come up with a good, simple meal from what's in the fridge or a few things picked up on the way home from work.
Climbing
This is probably in my past. I used to love to climb. I was an old school, outdoor, trad climber who regarded bolts and similar devices with disdain. I preferred to lead rather than second and I've done my share of necky leads. I always considered myself a mountaineer who cragged when there was nothing better to do. I would not fit well in a world that starts beginners on 5.8 bolt ladders and rigorously segregates 'sport climbing' (gag) from mountaineering.