Author: Joe Kaempf

A manuscript that highlights W. Edwards Deming is worth reading,……my bias. Drs. Litt and Hintz discuss challenges of high-risk infant follow-up programs, and the need for enhanced standardization and QI collaboration. Page 2 top left – Dr. Deming (he of “if you don’t provide data, you’re just another opinion”) coined the “System of Profound Knowledge”.  What is not to…

209 years ago today two inspiring heroes were born, February 12, 1809.  Just a moment of gratitude. Spectacular contributions, incalculable positive influence, both bedazzle exponentially the more studied,…..Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.   Request:  A) recent social media review useful for providers, B) poem, C) happy article. Lu et al want to bring order to social media’s dominance so we can…

Two requests from friends:  a) a useful shared decision-making review, b) a poem. Shared decision-making is akin to Bayesian-thinking,……we do it every day naturally in healthcare, unaware at times, often skillfully, sometimes not.  Stiggelbout et al expertly summarize a confusing literature for us (attached).  I especially appreciate their 1-2-3-4 summation,……bless their avoidance of overwrought constructs. …

Shakespeare’s genius created characters in literature, perhaps the first writer to portray humans as heroic and flawed, triumphal and defeated, insightful and blind,…..in short, what readers adore.  Prior to Shakespeare, characters in poetry and prose were largely symbolic of classic traits,…..representing Courage, Fidelity, Evil, Wisdom, Good, Fertility, Power, and so on.  Greek myths fabulous yes, but typically…

Recent events are unsettling, in the tumult some disparaging descriptions:  “Person X is Machiavellian”,…..“Group Y is using Machiavellian strategies to push their agenda”.  Venal motives are implied. Politics aside, this concerns me re: Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1572), as he was hardly the “moral monster” routinely stereotyped by the unaware.  Machiavelli deserves kudos for being among the…

I don’t favor the agonistic theory of literature or creative culture.  Art can rightfully and productively be emulative, even imitative.  Absorbing past masters and their works is nourishing, not stultifying, quite the opposite of alienation.  Shakespeare is a perfect exemplar, both his own self as a writer, and us reading him.  Just my opinion. A…

Arguably History’s most accomplished intellect, with accomplishments spanning science, philosophy, statesmanship, novels, and poetry. Read what Johann von Goethe perceptively said about poetry: The key difference is whether the poet seeks the particular for the universal, or whether he beholds the universal in the particular. From the former originates allegory, where the particular is only considered an example of…

Think again of the beautiful Pensées – Blaise Pascal’s (1623-1662) masterpiece, born of quiet thought that has bridged time, culture, religion, and science: Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in Nature, but he is a thinking reed.  The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him.  A vapor, a drop of water, suffices to kill…

You might enjoy the attached commentary:  a) provocative, b) combines insight and gross oversimplification, c) several accurate and inaccurate statements, d) the very definition of slippery slope, and e) reinforces (unintentionally) why we should consider two of the 20th Century’s most exhilarating and prescient intellects – Isaiah Berlin and Eric Hoffer (just my opinion). Part…

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is said to be the “original modern philosopher”.  This puzzles me as there are novel thinkers of his time who were thoroughly more modern, some you are familiar with (Baruch Spinoza), some you possibly have never read (Pierre Bayle). Descartes’ signature “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) capsulizes his mathematician’s…