Pre-Dental School Update: about 4 months left

The process of getting ready for dental school is slowly moving along. My list of things to do:

1. DEPOSIT & FINANCIAL AID: I've submitted everything, but the admissions lady has been out this week, so I don't know if they've received my deposit/FAFSA stuff yet. I was surprised that University of Colorado wants you to send some financial aid form and tax forms to them as well as file FAFSA online. So, I faxed it in, as requested on the form, but not sure if I did the fax number correctly at work. I also mailed the form it, so hopefully they get it one way or another. I'm kind of surprised how uninformative they've been about such an important process; maybe they don't start getting on it until your deposit has been registered.

2. HOUSING: Well, we're not going to bother with trying to buy a home for now (as we discussed doing when I thought I'd be attending Indiana University). We have managed to find a decent looking apartment complex that is relatively inexpensive and somewhat close to school (5 miles from Fitzsimmons Campus). It seems to get good reviews online, so we'll just do everything over the phone. A little risky, but it should be OK. And, if that complex doesn't have any openings come June or whenever, there are a couple of other places that seem good, too. We will just start with a 6 month lease so that if it sucks, we can just take a weekend and move.

3. MOVING: I've been pondering the idea of putting a hitch on our CR-V so we can pull one of those little U-Haul trailers. Maybe $125 for the hitch, $330 for the trailer; should be cheaper than having to buy a new couch/desk/etc. and then we won't have to leave expensive stuff just sitting in our car when we stop. Still need to actually go look at the trailers; they are just never as big as the dimensions online make them sound.

4. FUN: Very important. I am not going to work straight up until I start dental school. Ritsuko and I have been talking recently about taking a trip to South America (Peru, specifically) or the Caribbean. She has enough miles to take here as far as Peru (but not to Japan or Europe), and tickets for Masashi and I wouldn't bee too expensive going south for the summer. Peru sounds cool if it'd just be my wife and I. But, with little Masa, maybe a more stationary vacation would be better. That trip will probably be late May (work can eat it).
We will also definitely be doing some camping and traveling to various national parks once we've moved out to Denver. Ritsuko's never been to the Rocky Mountains, so it should be exciting!

5. PASSING THE TIME: That's such an unfortunate phrase, but "LIVING" kind of pulls the attention away from the focus of this post, the fact that I'll be going to dental school in about four months. Anyway, I'll just keep studying for my Medical Microbiology and Eastern Religions classes, hanging out with friends, spending a lot of time with Ritsuko and Masashi just playing and hanging out, reading whatever I can get my hands on, and churning out the translations at work (when I'm not messing around on Student Doctor Network or writing this blog). I'm actually going down to Cincinnati this weekend (with my wife's blessing) to hang with some old high school friends. Pizza, beer, video games; despite being future dentists, radiologists, insurance agents, or unemployed living in France for his wife's job while he gets a "culture" stipend from her company to just have fun everyday, we can all still enjoy the camaraderie and simple pleasures that life offers.

Clinton & Obama Health Care Plans: Any difference?

Here it is, what you've all been waiting for! After endless minutes of research, I will now explain to you the differences between Hillary Clinton's health care plan and Barack Obama's health care plan.

1. Offer same kind of coverage available to members of Congress: Clinton & Obama
2. Guarantee no denial of coverage: Clinton & Obama
3. Pledge to bring down costs of premiums: Clinton & Obama
4. Streamline system for acquiring coverage and seeking care: Clinton & Obama
5. Leave the public free to buy either public or private coverage: Clinton & Obama
6. Reform insurance rules and end precondition limitations: Clinton & Obama
7. Expect employers to help contribute to health care costs (either directly through premiums or indirectly by paying to the government): Clinton & Obama
8. Government will assist individuals unable to avoid insurance: Clinton & Obama
9. Small business will receive a tax credit to help offset insurance burden: Clinton & Obama
10. Modernize health care system: Clinton & Obama, though Obama gives more details
11. Mandatory coverage: Clinton-everyone, Obama-only children
12. Strengthen Medicaid and CHIP: Clinton & Obama
13. Help keep drug costs down: Clinton & Obama
14. Allow state plans to work and experiment within national plan: Obama
15. Tax credit for retirees: Clinton

There you go. It's obvious that Hillary and Barack were both reading the same book; with so few differences between their health care plans, this does not seem like it should be a big factor in decided between the two candidates. There are a couple of differences (well, really only one), so let's take a look at them.

10. Modernize health care system: While both agree "modernization" needs to be done, Obama goes into more details. Unfortunately, many of these details amount to nothing more than fluff. To be fair, though, Clinton has links to more detailed explanations of here plans on the side of the health care issue page. I know all politicians "fluff" their issue statements, but I just want to give an example: "Obama will support implementation of programs and encourage team care that will improve coordination and integration of care of those with chronic conditions." OK, so what exactly does that mean? What are these "programs?" How will you "encourage team care," whatever that is?
I think you understand that I'm not a big fan of fluff padding (which Obama seems to have more of on his issues page).

11. Mandatory coverage: Obama does not go as far as Clinton in mandating that everyone be covered under some insurance plan. He limits the requirement to children (I assume under the age of 18). I can see how this issue might cause a little arguing: if everyone isn't required to buy insurance, then less people are paying into the system and less money would be available to help those who cannot afford anything. From personal experience, I know that Japanese works the way Clinton proposes, and many health professional schools also mandate insurance coverage for there students. Mandated coverage is no big shocker to me, but that might not be true for other Americans. There are plenty of healthy young lads and lasses that have no interest in forking over money every month for something that they are statistically unlikely to need. While I don't see this being a really big sticking point in the primaries, undoubtedly national health care will come up in the national election this fall.

14. Allow state plans to work and experiment within national plan: Obama is the only one who talks about this issue, though I cannot see Clinton having much desire to upset the federalist history of our beautiful union too much.

15. Tax credit for retirees: Clinton is the only candidate who addressed this issue (if it even is an issue). I'll be honest--I don't really know what this is about. You can read it and figure it out for yourself, but I doubt Obama would say much different if asked about this. I assume he doesn't mention it one his issues page because it's really not that big of a deal.

Now, there were other little things both candidates brought up, but it is fairly clear that Clinton and Obama share basically the same ideas for dealing with national health care.

Gibson versus THE WORLD (at least the capitalist part)

Gibson is suing everybody and their mom over the supposed Rock Band/Guitar Hero patent infringement. Activision, MTV, Electronic Arts, Target, Walmart, etc. Of course, Gibson's patent is for something almost completely different (as you can see in this article), but who can blame them for trying to get a chunk of the change!

Did someone whack me with a shillelaugh?

Ugh. Post-St. Patrick's Day is much less fun and exciting than St. Patrick's day was, especially when you wake up two hours late for work. Went down with a good friend of mine after our Medical Microbiology class and managed to get fairly ólta. Lots of Guinness, of course, and quite a bit of another beer from southern Indiana that was like a Belgian ale or something. Pretty good. No food, no water, just beer. We managed to get a table, which was a nice bonus, and gathered a nice sized crowd of new and old friends. Good times.

Now, the challenge I am currently faced with is staying awake at work. I have absolutely nothing to do (again) as both Japanese engineers seem to be out. My eyes seem to be wandering in under my eyelids, so reading news all day might be a bit much. I could disappear to my car for the next couple of hours, but I'm actually a very ethical employee; if I'm paid to sit here and wait for some Japanese emails to come, then I'll sit here. I guess I could sit here and play video games or something while I wait...

John McCain: an Analysis of the Issues

I analyzed Obama and Huckabee (who is out), so I guess it's time for look at another candidate. I will probably not look at Hillary Clinton due to 1. I don't think she'll get the nomination and 2. there is really little difference between her stance and Obama's stance on most issues.

John McCain, the Republican contender for the 2008 Presidential Elections: McCain holds some appeal to me for is conservative fiscal policies and lack of Bible-thumping rhetoric. Let's learn a little more about the man who will try to become president under the shadow of George W. Bush by analyzing each of the issues outlined on his web page.

Economic Stimulus Plan: cut corporate taxes and encourage entrepreneurial activity via various deductions. Sounds good, especially in light of the sinking value of the American dollar. The only way I feel we can begin to turn the economy around is by encouraging investment and new businesses in America (not by giving every John and Jane a rebate check for a few hundred bucks or something).

Tax Cut Plan: McCain gets into a lot of different issues with this section. I agree with the lower tax ideas that he proposes. He focuses again on keeping tax rates low and introducing cuts that encourage the innovative sectors of society (research and development, no Internet tax, lower investment taxes, repeal Alternative Minimum Tax to help middle class families). I feel that when these parts of society improve, it brings everyone up with them. I also agree with McCain on the need for lower trade barriers and spurning alternative energy initiatives WITHOUT the use of subsidies. McCain again puts his faith in the "technological prowess of American industry and science." I couldn't agree more.

Spending, Taxes, & Economy: Nothing new here, just tried and true stump statements about lower taxes, ending pork barrel spending, increasing transparency, yada yada yada. He outlines some of these things in other sections, like taxes and open markets, but I just don't see (and he doesn't provide any clue as to) how McCain is going to increase transparency and end pork barrel spending and earmarks. I believe earmarks are an especially harmful part of our legislative process, allowing lobbyist and interest groups more power than they should have. Unfortunately, McCain doesn't provide any real answers as to how he will address this, and I doubt any nominee's ability to put such legislation through an opposition Congress. If he wants to decrease government spending, this is where he needs to start. I think the earmark issue deserves more attention.

Straight Talk on Health System Reform: I'll give you the straight talk: McCain offers almost NOTHING to this discussion. It's the old stuff about stimulating competition, increased flexibility, give a nice tax credit: wonderful. So what will that actually do? He makes some sense talking about personal responsibility (good luck with that one!) and reforming tort laws "to eliminate frivolous lawsuits" (a necessity), but really fails to offer any new ideas. I personally believe the only way to free the medical system from the grips of insurance companies is nationalizing health care.
God, I wrestling with this idea of forcing other people to pay for health care of their fellow citizens, but I just don't see any other way. Maybe we should subsidize doctors so they can work without insurance companies and offer lower rates (not really any different than nationalizing health care, but it sounds better). Maybe if America wasn't a nation of fat, pizza-stuffing slobs this issue would be a little easier to address. Who really wants to support a national health system when the average American insists on eating him or herself into an early grave, but what's the alternative? Do I sound intolerant? Maybe we need a little more peer-pressure to help curb our unhealthy habits. Maybe we need a "fat-tax" on sugary, fatty foods (but no, that will only hurt the low-income folks who insist on raising their kids on Pepsi and frozen pizza but still want free access to world-class heart transplants). That's it, a FAT TAX, with the tax going to a national health plan. Makes sense, right?
Anyway, health care is a mess and McCain doesn't really have any new ideas.


Strict Constructionist Philosophy: while I agree with the general idea that we should not be hasty to change laws and should base legal decisions upon pre-established laws as much as possible, BUT saying that judges should not challenge the legislative branch on issues is like saying that there should be no system of checks and balances. What I see here is McCain trying to placate social conservatives who worry that he is too moderate on certain issues. This kind of wording also always McCain to hold position with independents. For a libertarian like myself, nothing to really fear here.

Human Dignity and Life: how about applying that "strict constructionist philosophy" to Roe vs. Wade? What about local legislatures trying to usurp the legal rules of the federal courts? John McCain talks about ending abortion: maybe it does with his free trade policy by encouraging abortion tourism. I will never agree with McCain's policy here and feel that the logic is fundamentally flawed and at odds with other policies that seek to retain personal freedoms. People are free to make money but not have a gay wedding or abortions? As long as people are free to make money, they WILL be opening gay and WILL have abortions. McCain, you talk about encouraging innovation yet seek to marginalize some of the more innovative members of our society with this socially backwards policy.
He does leave himself some outs with independents, though, by maintaining that these social policies should be decided at the local level. Fine, how about the most local level, the personal level? Man-woman family is the "foundation of Western Civilization and civil society?" I thought the ancient Greeks were the founders of Western civilization, and they "did not conceive of sexual orientation as a social identifier." Why don't we take a few lessons on social policies from our ancient Greek friends? How about just outlawing governments involvement at any level in social unions? The fact that these are even issues is simply ridiculous. People worry about their gay neighbors while they credit card themselves into the poor house and eat themselves to death. Maybe we should reconsider who the demos are for our democracy. What would rule by the ignorant be, anideocracy, "rule by those without a clue."

Lobbying and Ethics Reforms: Yes, yes, yes!! Please! Do this, and this stuff about trying to keep homosexuals from getting married and other dumb stuff won't even get floor time in Congress because the special interest groups will no longer be able to buy it!

Strategy for Victory in Iraq: Honestly, there will never be true "victory" in Iraq because we are fighting a cultural war; cultures do no surrender, they either continue as is, change, or cease to exist. So, unless we're planning on a genocide, we had better think harder about how to improve relations in the Middle East. McCain has ideas on improving the local situation in Iraq that will surely work temporarily, but he seems to be missing the big, long-term picture. And, this "Win the Homefront" BS is more scaremongering: I thought we'd leave that behind with Bush age of ignorance. Guess not...

Border Security & Immigration Reform: I think McCain has all of the right ideas about this issue, I just hope he doesn't cave-in too much to the less-clearly, short-term thinking members of the Republican party.

Veterans' Affairs: Of course, of course, of course. Being against any of this stuff would be like saying you're the kind of guy who drowns baby puppies just because you're dog had too many. Does this really need mention?

Education: I really know very little about the "No Child Left Behind" act other than that I'm not going to rely on it to see that my child gets an education. I agree, though, that parents should be able to choose to some degree where their kids go to school. Why not just privatize the whole thing?

National Security: bigger, better, badder! Oh yeah! Americans love big guns. Smarter defense spending sounds good if it means spending on a defensive army rather than legions of Imperial Stormtroopers over-price Death Stars. What we need is effective diplomacy (which McCain eludes to) and an image that inspires reverence rather than loathing, not more military personnel.

Stewards of Our Nation's Rich Natural Heritage: great ideas, little substance. I especially dislike the low-blow and complete backwards jab at Democrats with the statement "ignoring the problem reflects a 'liberal live for today' attitude unworthy of our great country." Well, living for today might be a liberal idea, but protecting our environment is definitely not a conservative one. I like McCain for a lot of reasons, but completely stupid comments such as these make me doubt his ability to effectively work with Democrats and independents.

2nd Amendment Rights: Of course! How are you going to make a bigger army by spending less? Let everyone import their own assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips! I do agree that you cannot hold "the innocent responsible for the acts of the criminal," but the same logic carried to the extreme holds that nuclear and biological weapons should be made available to any American who wishes to buy them. Why can't you buy weapons-grade plutonium? Because you might hurt someone with it. How about some consistency on this issue.

America's Space Program: While I fully support NASA, I do not see the need for manned missions to the moon or Mars. I'm sure many at NASA and other centers of scientific research would agree with me.

Wow, McCain. You're carrying a lot of garbage with all those good ideas of yours. I guess that's part of politics. Focus on the fiscal policies and you might have my vote.

Denver, here we come!

We are moving to Denver!! I got the call from the Colorado School of Dentistry last night at about 6 PM and am still a little dumbfounded. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to get a rejection, but now that I'm in I have to retrain all of my thoughts from "if I get in" to "when we move." I am ecstatic!(A picture of where the dental school is)

Link to events in and around Denver

Moving from Indiana to Colorado: Better Pack Light!

Wow. Just look at that. That is how much it would cost to rent a U-Haul truck big enough to move our stuff from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Denver, Colorado. Throw in another $150 for a car-pulling trailer and then gas on the <10 style="font-style: italic;">gogatsu ningyo Masa got from his grandparents in Japan. I guess we can just ship something like that if we run out of room in the cars. We should be able to make this work, it's just that stupid couch.

ADA DAT Frequency Tables for 2007

Since this is my blog I feel like I can brag a little bit: based on the frequency tables for testers who took the Dental Admission Test in 2007, I scored in the 99.9 percentile for Natural Sciences (Biology, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry), 99.2 percentile for Academic Average (natural sciences + reading comprehension + quantitative reasoning), and 94.1 percentile for the perceptual ability portion of the test! Not too shabby, huh.

So, out of the 8897 people who took the test in 2007, only 26 people got a higher academic average than mine (46 had the same score) and only NINE (9) people had a higher natural sciences score (only 5 had the same score)!! That's even better than I thought (I was basing my estimate on 2006 frequency tables). Let this serve as a motivation to all of you NON-SCIENCE MAJORS or NON-TRADITIONAL students or those of you who cannot be bothered to put down the big bucks for expensive books or training classes. There's no reason you can't do this, too!

OK, I'm done patting myself on the back, but I just had to get that out there.

Frequency tables put up by the American Dental Association for 2007
(alternative download)
*the password for both is ada

my stats here

The State of the American Economy

I am hardly a financial expert, but it doesn't take a degree from Wharton's to see where the US economy is going. With ballooning war-expenses, even greater social security obligations, and all of the problems with lender bankruptcies, the diversion of foreign investments from the US market to others will only continue. As Scott Ainsbury, a portfolio manager at FX Concepts Inc. in New York, said to Bloomberg News "Why put the money in the U.S. where stocks are sliding and the dollar is sliding? It's just a double whammy."

At the end of the day, I believe this is all a good thing. Weakening of the US market and strengthening of others will help to bring more balance to the international arena. The US has a disproportionate amount of power in the world today and has unfortunately lacked the foresight to use that power judiciously and effectively. I welcome a world in which the European Union, Japan, and even China play a greater, more balancing role.

The American Dollar: Going Down?

That's right, your greenbacks grow more and more worthless everyday. I hope you didn't cash in all those Euro from your trip to France five years ago; it's gonna cost you about 40 cents more for every Euro you want for your next vacation to Europe. How about Japan? Well, let's just say I should have left my money there when I moved back to the States. Can't get a cheap soda with Canadian quarters anymore, either (not that you've been able to do that for a long time, anyway). The loonie is now worth MORE than our good ol' George Washingtons. Here are some graphs showing how many of currency X you can get with your hard-earned buck. The time period, coincidentally, approximately coincides with the term of our glorious commander-in-chief, George W. Bush. For those of you not good with charts and graphs, the fact that these are all going DOWN from left to right means that your money is worth less abroad.

Euro/US $

Canadian $/US $

Yen/US $

Notice a trend?
*dollar dropped vs. the yen even more and is now $1/100 yen (3/13/2008)

Just DIE already, Cable!

We're all familiar with YouTube and its collection of daredevils, stop animation, singing animals, and poor-quality captures of '80's cartoons.

Joost is another option: download the software and stream OK quality video from one of their various channels, complete with little commercial snippets. Selection seems to be improving all the time, and there are some good or interesting shows available. They have a lot of cool music videos from all over the world, and have recently added old Star Treks to the schedule. The way they do the commercials is perfect: short and sweet.

Vuze (this link goes to the Wikipedia article as the Vuze site was down at the time I wrote this blog), formerly known as the bittorrent client Azureus (which remains its primary function, actually), offers shows or segments in downloadable format, but many of the good shows have a fee. They were asking almost $6 for an hour-long PBS Nova episode! I also noticed something last night about Vuze: if you play the downloaded content through their viewer, it will sometimes put full 30sec. commercials in, even if the file is only 2min long!! I downloaded a funny set of short animations called Neko Rahmen, but the file format was something I could only play in their viewer (a Matroska, *.mkv, file. There's other software to play or convert it to *.avi, but I didn't feel like messing with it). The first nine 2.5min clips played with no commercials, but for the last 4 I got a 30sec Battlestar Galactica commercial before each one! So, I don't know about the Vuze channels, but its function as a bittorrent client is excellent.

Now there's a new site coming out, and it's already getting a lot of press time. Hulu opens to the U.S. public on March 12th and offers a range of popular, well-known TV shows. The sample of The Simpsons they offer on their homepage looks good, and it sounds like the commercial format should be fine. I'm looking forward to trying this out tomorrow!

The alternatives to cable/dish/regular TV seem to be expanding everyday. Now I just need to get my MacBook for dental school (if/when I get into Colorado) so I can stream these shows onto the big TV in the living room...

Prescription Drugs in Your Water

Is anyone really shocked by this story about trace amounts of prescription drugs in the water supplies of cities around America (and the world)? I never though about it, honestly, but it makes sense that water filtration techniques wouldn't be designed to essentially metabolize the ever-growing array of pharmaceuticals that we flush down with each visit to the little boys' or girls' room.

Now that the subject has risen to a level of awareness that it gets front page Google News, it looks like more attention might be given to something that could potentially be a problem. It is also a silent testament to the drugged-up world that we live in, but the overuse of prescription medicine is another story.

Unfortunately, with all of the attention being given the story today, it was a little difficult to find some actual professional journal articles on the issue. Maybe I didn't search hard enough, but all I really came up with is the name of one of the researchers/professors, Dr. Francesco Pomati, doing a lot of work in this area. He's an Italian dude with a pretty pimp-looking 'stache and works in a university department that also seems to focus on astrobiology. Cool.

Yummy Yummy Dolphin Meat!

I just came across this article in the New York Times about mercury-tainted whale and dolphin meat and I said "What!! I didn't know you could buy dolphin meat in Japan! I was camping with some friends once just about an hour away from this town where they sell dolphin and didn't even go to try some myself!" Just kidding, I don't know if I could bring myself to eat dolphin, though I have tried whale (which was uninteresting and not worth the $1 paid for the small piece of sushi). It's kind of up there with eating dogs or cats, yuck. Here's a picture I found on a little site called Japan Focus. The meat on the right is Mink whale and on the left is Dolphin (red meat).

Dentist? Physician? Which would you prefer to become?

Obviously I'm biased towards becoming a dentist, but my choice was made with solid reasoning. Physicians are just getting the short end of the stick in the USA these days, as this somewhat old yet still relevant article explains. Both professions help people improve their health, both professions are paid well, but being a family practice physician almost seems like a nightmare compared to dentistry! This article might present a rather extreme contrast of the two professions (I doubt most dentists, even in pairs, are pulling in half a million a year!! I also hope most family practice physicians are as miserable as this guy...). I especially liked the part in this article where a dentists offers to pay his surgeon more for the surgery on his Achilles tendon because he didn't think insurance was paying the guy enough!!

It's really sad the way insurance companies are destroying medical care in this country, which I guess brings us into the larger discussion of what to do about it. Doctors that don't take insurance (like many dentists)? Nationalized health care? Is health a "right" or a privilege? I won't even go into here...

Japanese for Beginners

I was thinking that, being a Japanese-English translator and all, I might share some of my knowledge and resources with those of you interested in learning a little Japanese. I've tried to come up with a couple of simple, useful phrases or terms that you should be able to memorize quite quickly. Hopefully you'll find this useful!

Kenbansenen: Meibomianitis. Of course, we all know what this is, here's how you might use it in Japanese:


Friend: Me wa doshita no? Kimochi warui!! (What's up with your eye? Ewe, gross!!)
You: Eh, kore? Tada no kenbansenen da yo. (What, this? It's just a bit of meibomianitis.)


Chuuseishibakudan: Neutron bomb. Who doesn't want to know how to talk about these fun little things.

Friend on phone: Kyo nani shiteru no? (So, what are you up to today?)
You: Ore no chuuseishibakudan o yamiichi de utte miyo ka na to omotteru. Doh omo? (I'm thinking I might try to sell my neutron bomb on the black market. What do you think?)
Friend: Iin ja nai? (Sounds good.)


Gijihankyoshingoseiseikairo: Pseudo echo signal generator circuit. Every vocal information exchange system should have one!

Spouse: Kora! Nande denwa bunkai shiteru no? (Hey! Why are you taking apart the phone?)
You: Omae urusai, na! Gijihankyoshingoseiseikairo o suetsuketteru zo. Pai ya nanka tsukureba...(You sure are annoying! I'm installing a pseudo echo signal generator circuit. Why don't you go make a pie or something...)

Useful, huh? Go try it with your Japanese friend today!