via Matt Novak

I need more people to do my things for me.

— Tim Carmody (@tcarmody) January 30, 2012

my ability to successfully adjust time & microwave power for partially defrosted frozen meals makes me feel like my generation’s julia child

— Sarah Pavis (@spavis) January 30, 2012

A prologue for a developing TV series. I would totally watch this.

Related to stuff we’re talking about.

When things blew up, we didn’t say to ourselves, “maybe it’s not possible to engineer a low-risk 6% annual return on assets” or “maybe it’s not possible for everyone a demographically mature population to expect to spend as much time out of the workforce as in it.” Instead, we search for the fault in the system: were pension fund managers too incompetent? Bankers too greedy and clever about searching for loopholes? Regulators too lax? Did we write the rules governing bank risk capital wrong?

Discovering that we can’t all achieve higher risk-free returns by piling into mortage securities, we do not question the premise that there is some way to achieve attractive risk free returns on a mass scale; instead, we direct the banks to pile into OECD sovereign debt. Having created a bubble in OECD sovereign debt that is about to end disastrously, bankers and regulators are undoubtedly even now searching for a “truly” risk free security that they can use to backstop their deposits.

Let us instead consider the possibility that this thing may not exist. There may be no way for us all to enjoy steady, low-risk capital appreciation, or to exit the workforce whenever work becomes difficult. There may be no way to engineer these possibilities into being.

And that’s counting Cher’s twitter feed.

If you identified with the kids from The Breakfast Club when it came out, you’re now much closer to the age of Principal Vernon.

A youngster has his tooth removed via sisterly love, a long piece of dental floss, and a mini motorcycle.

That’s Daddy, third guy from the left. Happy Father’s Day.

You are the generation on the precipice of a transformation medicine has no choice but to undergo, the riders in the front car of the roller coaster clack-clack-clacking its way up to the drop. The revolution that remade how other fields handle complexity is coming to health care, and I think you sense it. I see this in the burst of students obtaining extra degrees in fields like public health, business administration, public policy, information technology, education, economics, engineering. Of some two hundred students graduating today, more than thirty-five are getting such degrees, intuiting that ordinary medical training wouldn’t prepare you for the world to come. Two years ago, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement started its Open School, offering free online courses in systems skills such as outcome measurement, quality improvement, implementation, and leadership. They hoped a few hundred medical students would enroll. Forty-five thousand did. You’ve recognized faster than any of us that the way we train, practice, and innovate has to change. Even the laboratory science must change—toward generating treatments and diagnostics that do not stand in isolation but fit in as reliable components of an integrated, economical, and effective package of care for the needs patients have.