Thinking on your feet is an important job skill...

Let's say you're interviewing for a job. A technical job, something relating to database management, at a TV station. You arrive at the office of your prospective employer and are directed to a room -- one of the studio sets -- for your interview. An employee, presumably your interviewer, walks in and introduces herself, then asks if you're ready. You say yes. You become slightly alarmed when another employee appears, clips a microphone on your shirt, and disappears. Before you have time to ask what's going on, bright lights turn on and your "interviewer" begins speaking to the cameras on the other side of the room. And now you're live on TV.

Welcome to the BBC.

As I read about the incident on CNN:

LONDON, England (AP) -- An applicant for a job at the British Broadcasting Corp. who accidentally found himself on live television recalled his moment of fame, returning -- on purpose -- to the program on which he inadvertently appeared.

Guy Goma appeared on the News 24 program after a mix-up led his being mistaken for an expert on Internet music downloads. The network put Goma back on the air after he became a news story unto himself.

"I was very shocked," Goma said after watching a replay of his interview Tuesday on the BBC's all-news channel. "But I think now it is all right."

The confusion occurred on May 8, when Britain's High Court awarded a victory to Apple Computer in a lawsuit against Apple Corps, The Beatles' commercial arm.

The BBC had intended to interview computer expert Guy Kewney, but after a mistake at a reception desk, employees brought Goma to the studio. Goma was waiting in a reception area for his interview.

After BBC News 24 consumer affairs correspondent Karen Bowerman ostensibly welcomed the apparent expert, there was a Kafkaesque moment in which Goma winced and tried to open his mouth as if to explain.

When Bowerman asked if he was surprised by the verdict, a befuddled Goma managed to offer that he was "very surprised."

But his performance later swept the Internet in part because he simply pressed on, offering the best answers he could and growing more confident in his punditry as the interview progressed.

Meanwhile, the real Kewney watched the exchange in shock from outside the studio. During Tuesday's program, the BBC also interviewed him by telephone.

When offered a chance to speak directly to Kewney, Goma shook his head.

"I just want to say to him, sorry," Goma said.

Goma told the BBC that he didn't know yet if he got the tech job he sought.

But Britain's industrious tabloids have already put him to work. The Sun newspaper offered Goma a punditry platform beneath a story headlined the "Big Bluffer."

Goma, who has offered to speak on a variety of subjects, offered snap assessments on Saddam Hussein's trial ("He deserves to face justice"); Prince Harry ("It is difficult for him as everything he does is watched") and Britain's Human Rights Act ("We should treat each other as we wish to be treated.")

Of course, video clips of the incident are also available. And while there were probably a ton of signs that should have alerted this guy as to what was going on, it's hard not to feel bad for him. Watch the video and notice his momentary deer-in-the-headlights look when the host introduces him -- with the wrong name. At least he "recovered" and faked his way through the interview...mostly. Apparently now he is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame in the UK. Of course, the real question is whether he got the job or not.

On an unrelated note, I just finished my Heme/Onc exam. Eight days and one exam left until the end of my first year of medical school.

Time for a nap...

The end of "The West Wing" and talk about tax cuts

Sadly, last night was the final episode of "The West Wing." While I'm getting over my personal loss, I figured it would be appropriate to post something on here to spark some political conversation and debate. Most people who know me wouldn't be too surprised to learn that I think the administration's recent tax cut extensions (along with most of their tax cuts in the last 6 years) have done nothing but transfer the tax burden from the rich to the poor and from their generation to mine. With that in mind, here is Sebastian Mallaby's op-ed from this morning's Washington Post:

"The Return of Voodoo Economics"
By Sebastian Mallaby

Nobody serious believes that tax cuts pay for themselves, as I noted last week. But most senior Republicans flunk this test of seriousness.

In January, George W. Bush declared that, "by cutting the taxes on the American people, this economy is strong, and the overall tax revenues have hit at record levels." Regrettably, this endorsement of what his dad called voodoo economics was not a one-time oversight. The next month, Bush told a New Hampshire audience, "You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase."

Bush is not alone in this. Dick Cheney, allegedly a serious person, asserted in February that the "tax cuts have translated into higher federal revenues."

Bill Frist is sometimes taken seriously, not least by himself. And yet the Republican Senate leader is capable of saying: "Many people in Washington have long known a dirty little secret about tax-cut measures: When done right, they actually result in more money for the government."

Chuck Grassley chairs the Senate Finance Committee and ought to know about this stuff. But he mouths the following nonsense: "There is a mindset in both branches of government that if you reduce taxes you have a net loss, if you increase taxes you have a net gain, and history does not show that relationship."

And just last week Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) celebrated the extension of the Bush tax cuts by saying, "We've put these tax provisions in place and they've raised money."

Okay, so let's review this issue with the help of some experts. I'd like to cite Richard Kogan of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, because his work inspired this column. But to win over reasonable conservatives, I'm going to choose N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard, a proponent of tax cuts who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers in the Bush White House. Mankiw is a top-notch economist hired by Bush and Cheney to advise them. And last year he published a paper on how far tax cuts pay for themselves, reporting enthusiastically that this self-financing effect is "surprisingly large."

How large, exactly? Mankiw reckons that over the long run (the long run being generous to his argument), cuts on capital taxes generate enough extra growth to pay for half of the lost revenue. Hello, Mr. President, that means that the other half of the lost revenue translates into bigger deficits. Mankiw also calculates that the comparable figure for cuts in taxes on wages is 17 percent. Yes, Mr. President, that means every $1 trillion in tax cuts is going to add $830 billion to the national debt.

Let's engage in what Bush might call the soft bigotry of low expectations and cut Republicans some slack. Hey, maybe they just overlooked that Mankiw paper? Or maybe, despite hiring Mankiw to head the Council of Economic Advisers, they later acquired reasons to doubt his judgment? In that case they should at least have listened to Douglas Holtz-Eakin, another conservative economist who worked in the Bush White House and who went on to run the Congressional Budget Office.

In a study published under Holtz-Eakin's direction last December, the CBO estimated the extent to which a 10 percent reduction in personal taxes might pay for itself. The conclusions confirm that the free-lunch mantra is just plain wrong. On the most optimistic assumptions it could muster, the CBO found that tax cuts would stimulate enough economic growth to replace 22 percent of lost revenue in the first five years and 32 percent in the second five. On pessimistic assumptions, the growth effects of tax cuts did nothing to offset revenue loss.

So Mankiw isn't with them. Holtz-Eakin isn't with them. Which raises a question: When top Republicans go around claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves, which economic authorities are they relying on? None, is the answer. These people's approach to government is to make economics up.

The Republicans' only argument is that tax receipts have boomed in the years since the 2003 tax cut. But the question is whether tax receipts increased because the tax cuts worked some kind of magic or because the economy was headed up anyway after the recession, thanks maybe to low interest rates resulting from the Asian savings glut. Friends, the reason we have economists is so that they can solve these puzzles for us. Ignoring their solutions is like ignoring the judgment of medical science in favor of faith healers and quacks.

Politicians are always speechifying about how the United States must lead the world in research to maintain its edge. But having the world's best economics research isn't particularly helpful if those same politicians are silly enough to tune it out. The truth is that American business excels at turning university research into world-beating products; the paranoia on this score is overdone. But American government is often lousy at turning research into policies. That's what we should fret about.

And now, back to the books. 22 hours until my second-to-last exam of the year.

Mood: cautious
Song: Red Hot Chili Peppers, "By the Way"

I don't like people...

...who don't pay their full portion when settling the bill after group meals.

A breakthrough?

Anatomy and histology have not been my strong point in medical school this year. They're both longitudinal committees (or "classes" as most people say), which seems like a good idea in theory (learn bit by bit instead of having to "master" the subject in just a few weeks), but in reality the longitudinal structure seems to just make it easier to never actually learn the fundmental principles. And, perhaps more importantly, both subjects rely heavily on visual interpretation, a skill which I've never really had to practice in an academic context.

And yet, for some reason, I've made huge strides in both subjects in the last few days. Conceptually, things finally seem to be falling into place. In part it's because we've had a lot of this material before. But that doesn't explain it all. At any rate, it feels good to no longer be paralyzed with frustration on both topics.

Our endo/repro exam is coming up on Friday, so the next 31 hours will consist of either studying or sleeping. And so far I'm loving endocrinology.

I also figured out my summer research plans -- more on that after the exam. Back to the books for now...

Mood: upbeat
Song: Eric Prydz, "Call on Me" (Ministry of Sound)

P.S. Three years from tomorrow I'll be matching for residency. Crazy.

Going home? Returning home?

Last weekend I went to DC for a few days to attend an AMSA Political Leadership Institute. It was basically a weekend seminar on politial skills -- speechwriting and delivery, grassroots organizing, interacting with the media, preparing issue briefs, lobbying, delivering presentations, etc. It was particularly fun to meet other med students from around the country (most of whom were 1st-years) and hear about their experiences. I'm looking forward to seeing most of them at AMSA's national convention at the end of the month.

It was both exciting and unnerving to be back in DC. Living there was a really good experience for me -- good job, fun social scene, lots to do. And the fact that I got into med school while I was there certainly doesn't hurt. And I got to see a lot of my friends while I was there. The strangest part about being there, however, was the feeling that it was home. Or that it had been home. And that I hadn't really recognized it while I was there.

It's an understandable feeling -- I only lived there for a year, but it felt a lot more like home than had Baltimore (which, admittedly, was only my home for 10 months). DC was the place where I established my first real community after leaving California...among coworkers, old college friends, and new friends. It was the first time I'd really forced myself to become more independent by living alone. And unlike Baltimore, I didn't really want to leave.

Anyway, the trip helped me recognize how much life has changed in the last 7 months, in terms of friends, lifestyle/schedule, personal goals, and self image. The fact that is has only been 7 months is pretty scary...but at least I'm able to visit my old home, enjoy it, and come back to a place where I am happy to be.

streams of consciousness

Med school can really screw with your emotions. While Case certainly isn't a cutthroat academic environment, there is always a fair amount of underlying competition that merely reflects the ridiculously large quantity of material to be learned. Even if you're not competing with your classmates, you're nearly always competing with yourself. It's impossible to learn everything that we're supposed to know, let alone learning it all in just a matter of weeks (each academic block is just a few weeks, so you can't put off learning the material for more than a couple days). No matter how hard you work, you will never learn it all. Never. The idea of "catching up" is just a poor excuse for a coping mechanism. "I'm almost caught up" is a common phrase around here...but what does it mean? You've reviewed the absolute bare minimum content for each lecture? Please. I'm just thankful that most of my friends and I have absolutely no clue as to how many times we'll actually need to cover this material until it gains the most meager foothold on our long term memories.

And most of all, I've never been this busy before. Not even close. Maybe during junior year when I was going 60+ hours of extracurricular junk each week and sleeping 4ish hours each weeknight. But that still doesn't compare with this. I've been trying to finish this entry for nearly two weeks, but free time really is a thing of the past. 10 or 15 minutes free here or there? Not really. If you think of walking home from school as free time, then maybe you're right. Tonight I brought a textbook to the gym for the first time, theoretically to read while I was on a stationary bike. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. It reminds me of a book I read a few years ago about students going through medical school. At one point, the author's roommate makes the fantastic discovery that if she puts each of her notecards in a plastic bag, she can study them while she's in the shower. That passage didn't sit well with me at the time, and it still doesn't now...but now I'm starting to understand it. And it seems like a very slippery slope.

State of the Union: 24 hours later

I've been too busy to blog recently, but this article was too good to pass up:

Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports

By Kevin G. Hall
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."

He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.

Asked why the president used the words "the Middle East" when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that "every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands." The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.