Tag: ultrasound

• The Problem of Freedom

  The rough, shadowed texture of a log fallen across a meandering stream, the scattered sparkles of the water as it murmurs briefly to a rock it passes, the deep, barely moving green of the leafy tunnel that shrouds the gently dancing blue beneath -these are what I know of freedom: permission to imagine, permission to […]

  gozzter

  September 9, 2015

  Uncategorized

  abstract, Alison Gopnik, baby, baby’s movements, baby’s thoughts, due date, Fetal distress, Freedom, Non stress test, NST, permission, problem of freedom, Robert Frost, The Philosophical Baby, ultrasound, Voltaire

• Why do we Know something?

  Knowledge is interesting. But what is it, exactly? What does it mean to say you know something? Plato defined it as being justified true belief, but is it? Take Bertrand Russel’s famous thought experiment: the ‘stopped clock case’, for example. Alice looks at a clock and says it is two o’clock. Well, because the clock […]

  gozzter

  July 15, 2015

  Uncategorized

  Bertrand Russel, Creationism, endometrial biopsy, Gettier Problem, irregular menstrual bleeding, Justified true belief, knowledge, Marcel Proust, menopause, Pandora’s box, Plato, the Why Question, ultrasound

• Please and Thank you

  Please and thank you –isn’t that what we were all taught? Perhaps it was my prairie upbringing, but it seemed the norm when I was growing up. There was no asking why –no need to, in fact- we all just did it. Indeed its absence was noticed and noticeable –like maybe wearing a suit without […]

  gozzter

  May 5, 2015

  Uncategorized

  computer, folkways, mores, politeness, prairie upbringing, saying please, saying thank you, ultrasound

• Trust

  Like time, trust is a difficult concept –easy enough to conceptualize, perhaps, but hard to define. To categorize. To understand. It is slippery, and slides through the fingers like water. As St. Thomas Aquinas said of time, you know what it is until someone asks you to be more specific. It is something, however, that […]

  gozzter

  March 15, 2015

  Uncategorized

  Confirmation bias, doctor rating systems, endometrial biopsy, fibroids, medicine, postmenopausal bleeding, relationships, sickness, St. Thomas Aquinas, Time, trust, ultrasound

• Medicine and Ideology

  Some things are more definitive than others –less ambiguous, more predictable. Reliable, in other words. They lend themselves to yes-no answers, right-wrong judgements, good-bad characteristics. And some people prefer to see the world in black and white like this. Uncertainty is uncomfortable for them; they crave cognitive closure in the opinion of Arie Kruglanski, a […]

  gozzter

  October 15, 2014

  Uncategorized

  abortion, Arie Kruglanski, Canadian Medical Association Journal, cognitive closure, dogma, Ideology, medicine, politics, pregnancy termination, Relational autonomy, State laws, transition, ultrasound

• A Medical Dilemma

  Here’s an outrageous assertion: there are some things that we just cannot control. Worse, sometimes they are undefineable – or at least so vague as to defy placing them on some scale or other. Ranking them in terms of importance either to us, or to others. Naming them for future reference. And if we cannot […]

  gozzter

  September 25, 2014

  Uncategorized

  anticoagulation, belly button surgery, blood thinners, fibroids, indications for surgery, laparoscopy, medical decisions, medical dilemma, myomectomy, pulmonary embolism, Revisionism, Things we cannot control, treatment of fibroids, tumor markers, ultrasound