Special Series: The Secret Journal Club

1. The Secret Journal Club: Asthma, Placebos, and How Not To Make Someone Better
2. The Secret Journal Club: Vitamins Are For Death Panels
3. The Secret Journal Club: The Johns Hogwarts School Of Medical Wizardry

CC BY-NC-SA image by blackrvn via Flickr

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry motto: Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus (Never tickle a sleeping dragon)

Johns Hopkins University motto: Veritas vos liberabit (The truth shall make you free)

As previously noted, my intent for the next meeting of The Secret Journal Club was to take on a challenge from a certain Overlord on the topic of weight loss. However, I’m delaying that until next time so that I can take a look at one of the more interesting geek-related peer reviewed articles to come out of the august institution that is Johns Hopkins. This can only be “The new and improved learning community at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) resembles that at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”, published in the journal Medical Teacher in 2007.

Medical Teacher is a peer reviewed journal that focuses on training in the health professions, and “provides accounts of new teaching methods, guidance on structuring courses and assessing achievement, and serves as a forum for communication between medical teachers and those involved in general education”. Sadly, the publisher has locked the full text of this article behind a paywall. From the abstract:

Background: In July 2005, a learning community was created at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to foster camaraderie, networking, advising, mentoring, professionalism, clinical skills, and scholarship—The Colleges. The cultural and structural changes that emerged with the creation of this program have resulted in JHUSOM bearing a resemblance to J. K. Rowling’s fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Aims: This manuscript will describe the similarities between these two revered schools, and highlight the innovations and improvements made to JHUSOM’s learning environment.
Description: The intense, stressful, and lengthy professional training required to achieve competency in the practice of medicine and in the practice of witchcraft (albeit fictional) have meaningful parallels.
Conclusion: The supportive learning environment at these two schools should afford the next generation of graduates to have an even more enriching experience than those who have come before them.

This sounds like a fun and cute comparison, but my initial reaction was: what’s the academic point? As if anticipating this question, the authors listed the following as “Practice Points”:

• Changes that optimize the learning community of a medical school are likely to enhance the educational experience of both students and physician–teachers.
• Personal and professional growth of medical students is most likely to occur in supportive and encouraging environments.
• Literature, beyond just medical literature, can be a valuable source of information that promotes reflection on our medical practices.

What follows is a delightfully written series of thoughts that compare the changes made to the JHUSOM in 2005 to the structure of Hogwarts as depicted in the Harry Potter novels. The authors clearly are fans of and well-versed in the Potter mythos, and their enthusiasm for both that and medical education shines through. They choose to compare the two institutions across the following points:

Joining the ranks – Hogwarts students on matriculation are excited by learning a new language, skillset, and obtain wizard robes and special equipment when they start. If you substitute “white coat” for “wizard robes”, the description is the same for medical students.

Dividing the whole into four – The four Houses of Hogwarts are named after “the four greatest witches and wizards of the age”:

“Helga Hufflepuff is remembered for her loyalty and justice, Godric Gryffindor for his daring, nerve, and chivalry, Rowena Ravenclaw for her wit and desire to learn, and Salazar Slytherin for his cunning.”

In 2005, JHUSOM created four Colleges that the students are randomly assigned to, and identify with over the course of their training. These are named for extraordinary physicians of the past:

• Dr. Florence Sabin, the first woman to rise to the rank of Professor at JHUSOM, and the first woman to become a member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Honorary Dr. Vivien Thomas, surgeon and scientist who made significant contributions to the Blalock–Taussig shunt to treat ‘blue baby’ syndrome, and mentor to numerous Hopkins surgeons for cardiac surgical techniques
• Dr. Daniel Nathans, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discoveries in genetics and molecular biology
• Dr. Helen Taussig, a pediatric cardiologist and Professor at JHUSOM, who was also instrumental in developing the Blalock–Taussig shunt, and excelled clinically despite losing her hearing

The physical setting and surroundings – Both Hogwarts and Johns Hopkins Hospital are vast, sprawling structures with imposing portraits of former instructors on the walls and are quite easy to get lost in. Of course, the portraits at Hopkins don’t talk and the staircases don’t move.

Valuing diversity – Both institutions cherish diversity in their students and instructors, both in terms of race/ethnicity and background interests.

Learning together – Both the Houses of Hogwarts and the Colleges of JHUSOM serve as close-knit learning groups for their members from year to year.

Grading system, coursework structure, and reprimands – In general, the systems are similar, although the Hogwarts structure is far more punitive, with half of the Hogwarts grades carrying a negative connotation (Outstanding, Exceeds Expectations, Acceptable, Poor, Dreadful, and Troll) compared to only one that does in the JHUSOM (Honors, High Pass, Pass, and Fail). Additionally, the freedom of the Hogwarts instructors to remove points from a House or assign all manners of detention to students is (fortunately, perhaps) nonexistent at the JHUSOM. Both have detail sets of curricula that are competency based, such that students are not allowed to attempt advanced techniques before mastering basic ones.

Social events and competition – If only JHUSOM had quiddich… students could fly around on ensorceled stethoscopes, chasing after a winged prescription pad… nevermind. Although inter-House competition is a crucial part of Hogwarts life, this is far less emphasized with the JHUSOM Colleges. That noted, the Colleges do annually compete against each other in athletic events, as well as mingling in at various social events.

The roles of the faculty – Both institutions have core faculty of various specializations assigned to each House/College for leadership, mentoring, and running different specific courses.

Interaction between older and younger students – Hogarts and the JHUSOM have dedicated space assigned for studying and socialization specific to each House of College. Additionally, emphasis at both is place on contact building with students of different years and alumni.

The article concludes by assessing why the structures at both institutions work well:

Both involve prolonged professional training at schools that are committed to the growth and development of their students. The new Colleges program at JHUSOM represents a substantial investment that is changing the learning environment for the students and faculty members alike. The ‘house model’ of the Colleges program at JHUSOM appears to be more wide-ranging than other medical school formats that have been previously described, in that faculty members are called upon to be advisors, mentors, teachers, evaluators, role models, social-event planners, and community anchors or pillars for the student body.

The authors also examine how the meaningful relationships such an environment provides can allow the students to learn better, as well as to specifically foster a better sense of professional humanism and compassion. From the broader context of medical education, they contend:

The new organizational structure at our medical school, which resembles other institutions of learning that have taken on the ‘houses format’, including Hogwarts, is a structure that allows each medical student to receive individualized attention from a faculty advisor who will be with them for the duration of their training experience. Future research will determine how this progressive attention influences the growth and development of medical students and affects their careers in medicine.

Apart from being an enjoyable read, I am forced to go back to my initial question: what was the academic point of publishing this? To me, the answer is half a cheat – discussing the changes to the JHUSOM itself would have been dry, but adding in the Hogwarts comparisons makes such a discussion far more entertaining. The ultimate goal of the article is an excellent one, namely to show that a restructuring of how traditional medical school education (a thing that is sorely needed on many fronts) from a social perspective ultimately provides a better experience for students and better doctors to the world at large.

The fact that the educational model J. K. Rowling has crafted in her novels is being proven successful in the medical educational world is merely enchanted icing on the cake. Also, the fact that six of Rowling’s books are cited along with academic articles from such places as the New England Journal of Medicine in a peer-reviewed medical publication is also decidedly cool.

Reference: Stewart, R., Barker, A., Shochet, R., & Wright, S. (2007). The new and improved learning community at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine resembles that at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Medical Teacher, 29 (4), 353-357 DOI: 10.1080/01421590701477423

(Gee, Overlord, Does this mean that someone didn’t write an article for today?)

(Nuh-uh. Shut up. You’re next Minister Lynn’s Monkey Semen Relaxation Pod.)

(Oh god…no…NOOOOOOOOOOO.)

Image via Wikipedia

You will need:

Place the corned beef on one slice of bread, add the cheddar and the horseradish to taste, then place the second piece of bread on top. Place the sandwich on a plate. Place the plate inside the plastic bag and, using the duct tape, seal the bag tightly, wrapping all but a single small corner. Cut the corner so that the aroma of the corned beef can escape. Set aside.

Take one of the lemon peels and hold against your nostrils for one minute. Notice how all other smells in the room are masked.

Take the bag with sandwich in it and place it somewhere that your husband will find it, somewhere away from the television. Causally mention that you are saving the sandwich for later. Return to the kitchen and get the duct tape, the lemon, the whiskey (toddy). Leave the steel cut oats…they are for much later.

While your husband is trying to get past the duct tape and into the sandwich bag, take the remote and put on something pleasant. Duct Tape the remote to your leg, so that it cannot be stolen.

Drink some of the whiskey toddy.

When your husband returns from devouring the sandwich, ignore his pleas for the remote and wait until he sits to join you.

Wait about twenty minutes, and then place the lemon peel near your nostrils. As your husband begins to release the gas that’s been building since eating the sandwich, sip the whiskey toddy and sniff the lemon peel.

Repeat until blackness claims you.

The next morning, drag yourself into the kitchen and look at the oatmeal. Remember that we do not live in some fake Irish marketing scheme, and that there are several good breakfast places near you. Have your husband take you to one of them.

Repeat as necessary until the cold abates.

The Jamesburg Earth Station provides ample space for experimentation, a barn for the Shetland-Bonobos, a helicopter pad, an antenna suitably powerful for broadcasting ultimatums to world powers, and includes basketball and pool table facilities for the minions. And should the Goldblum-Smith virus fail to thwart the world’s thermonuclear capabilities during our synchronized worldwide coup, the facility is hardened to nuclear attacks. It’s also an excellent point from which to expand offworld.

Details

As you might gather if you’ve read my Castle Panic review, I really love cooperative board games.¹ For Christmas this year, we bought Forbidden Island. It’s a co-op treasure hunting adventure wherein the 2-4 players each take the role of a treasure hunter trying to recover treasures from a sinking island. As you play, different tiles will become flooded, and the overall water level will rise. Players win when they manage to recover all four treasures, make it back to the helicopter, and fly off the island. Players lose if they sink, if the water level rises too high, if the helicopter sinks, or if they become unable to recover a treasure.

Once you get used to the rules, they’re really quite simple: On each player’s turn, you take three actions, then draw treasure cards, and then sink tiles. This sequence is printed on the back of each player’s character card for easy reference. Your actions each turn can be moving your pawn one tile, “shoring up” a flooded tile, or collecting one of the four treasures if you’ve collected the requisite four treasure cards and made it to the correct spot.

On each player’s turn, cards are drawn to indicate which of the island’s 24 tiles flood. When a card is drawn, normal tiles flood, and already-flooded tiles sink, removing those areas entirely from play. This makes the game board dynamic and can change available paths. Players can un-flood flooded tiles with the “shore up” action, but sunken tiles are gone permanently.

The game quickly becomes about triage: which island tiles are critical to save and which are acceptible losses? Do we have The Pilot or The Diver to traverse that gap? How can I get closer to another player so that she can trade me the card I need on her turn?

There are six characters in the game, with names like “The Pilot”, “The Navigator”, and “The Explorer”, and each has unique abilities, adding to the game’s replayability. Randomly-assigned character cards include a single-sentence description of each character’s ability.

Forbidden Island has some very nice art on each of its cards and tiles, and is surprisingly inexpensive. The game plays more quickly than most board games, especially if the helicopter sinks during the first player’s turn. It’s not uncommon for the players to lose to the game, but I consider that a plus – who wants to play a game where there’s no question as to the outcome?

1. This is not because we haven’t yet successfully taught our daughter not to freak out when she loses a game. At least, it’s not ONLY because of that.

Image by Evil King Macrocranios via Flickr

This is Doc Blue, transmitting again from my secret underground laboratory.

Let me start by thanking everyone for their kind welcome and particularly Natalie Metzger, Bruce Baugh, and John Cmar for their suggestions of magazines to read.

During my last Overlord-sanctioned outing, I was able to find only one of the suggestions: Cinefex. I will be honest, the title font and spelling put me in mind of some sort of pseudo-Celtic cultural magazine, but little could be further from the truth.

It doesn’t tell you anywhere on the cover or title page, but Cinefex is about movie special effects. (The title becomes obvious when you think about that for a little bit.) This issue focused on The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Hugo, The Tree of Life, and Real Steel. There is not a lot of wasted space in this 120+ page magazine. A title page, a significant amount of high gloss and very industry targeted advertising, and four very dense articles. There is no fluff here, no letters page. This is a magazine about special effects for people involved in or with a deep interest in the industry.

I found the articles a bit hard to get through. Though there was a lot of explanation of each technique, there was also a lot of assumed knowledge – and a great deal of industry name dropping. In many ways, if it weren’t for the beautiful photography, it would be very easy to mistake this for an academic or industry journal (which I suppose it really may be). One thing I really appreciated was that each article tracked the basic narrative of the movie as it discussed the special effects. It may it a lot easier to parse what was going on and, combined with the multitude of images, it really enhanced my overall understanding.

But I promised that this would not be a review. The real point of this exercise was to avoid mental ruts and make new connections. The first task was definitely achieved this month. I would have never picked this up without the suggestion. (Thanks again to Bruce Baugh.)

So what did I take away from Cinefex?

(1)    Know your audience. Cinefex feels like it was written for special effects professionals, but I found it in a chain bookstore somewhere in the Midwest. As far as I know, there isn’t a huge cinematography community here. So I’m not certain who the magazine is really intended for. This is a beautiful and well written magazine, but as designed, it is going to be for a very focused audience.

(2)    Narrative is important. Were I to package an article about movie special effects, I would be tempted to ignore the story of the movie, or perhaps just provide a brief summary at the beginning of the piece to set context. I really appreciated that the story was threaded through the entirety of all four articles. This is clearly an editorial decision on the part of the magazine and it is really helpful. In my day job, narrative is almost an afterthought.  I am definitely going to think about how to package my analyses in terms of the story rather than in terms of the just the facts and the techniques.

(3)    Base Your Fantasy in Reality. The one thing that struck me about all four movies, and possibly about the process, is how deeply the directors embedded their stories in the real world. Hugo was based in historical France, but leveraged footage of modern Paris, as well as, historical photos. Rise of the Planets of the Apes and Real Steel were near future, but had to be filmed in the modern day. Effects were largely used to transform the real world and none of the directors wanted to create from digital whole cloth. Sometimes when writing, especially when crafting sci fi or fantasy tales, it is tempted to throw out the world and build up everything from the ground up. The discussions in Cinefex really drove home the power of starting with reality and making subtle alterations. Film the bottom 20 feet of those redwoods – and then augment to create your towering primeval forest. Weigh down your stunt martial artists to simulate the movement of combat robots.

I think this was very successful first stage of my year long experiment.

My current list of magazines to look for includes Imagine FX, Diabetic Cooking, and Fortean Times. My next Overlord-sanctioned outing is scheduled for the last weekend in January. Hopefully I can find one of these then. I also still need more suggestions to fill out my year of reading 12 new magazines, so please don’t hesitate to throw suggestions out.

Until next time, this is Doc Blue, signing off!

CC BY-NC-SA image by ferlomu on Flickr

“Well, I see it’s come to this.”

The goat rose as Vinnie “Ankles” Moretti forced his way into the stable. In the next stall, Kentucky Derby winner Calcaneus rested before tomorrow’s Preakness Stakes.

“Wait. Did you just… talk?”

The goat stared back. It knew two things: Vinnie was a bookie, and he was called “Ankles” because that’s what he broke when someone didn’t pay.

“You’re not going to get me, you know.”

The goat darted aside as Vinnie lunged, sack in hand. As it struck Vinnie’s leg with thick hooves, it pondered irony and Calcaneus’s odds at the Triple Crown.

…..

The above drabble (flash fiction of exactly 100 words) is a part of a series of short fiction by John Cmar inspired by randomly discovered Creative Commons licensed images, and is itself licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Beowulf manuscript. Image via Wikipedia

Previously, on History of English:

• Introduction
• When Angles Met Saxons

In our last little chat together, we talked a bit about how English got started when a bunch of Germanic tribes decided to go a-conquerin’ (like you do). This time, let’s take a look at just what that earliest form of our crazy language actually looked and sounded like.

Without a doubt, the most famous Anglo-Saxon (a.k.a. Old English)¹ poem is the epic Beowulf.² You’ve probably been forced to read parts of it at some point in your schooling (or if you’ve been subjected to any of the film versions, God help you).

Most likely, you read it in a translation into Modern English (of which there are a number of very good ones, though my personal favorite is the Seamus Heaney translation). Now, if you’re like me, this may have seemed a little odd to you; after all, isn’t this already supposed to be a great English poem? The beginning of English literature? So we have to read English translated into… English? Well, here’s why. Here are the opening lines of Beowulf in the original text:³

Hwæt! We Gardena         in geardagum, 
þeodcyninga,         þrym gefrunon, 
hu ða æþelingas         ellen fremedon. 
Oft Scyld Scefing         sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum,         meodosetla ofteah, 
egsode eorlas.         Syððan ærest wearð 
feasceaft funden,         he þæs frofre gebad, 
weox under wolcnum,         weorðmyndum þah, 
oðþæt him æghwylc         þara ymbsittendra 
ofer hronrade         hyran scolde, 
gomban gyldan.         þæt wæs god cyning!

And through the magic of the Interwebs, here’s a video of how it sounded to its original audiences!

Um, as the Anglo-Saxons would say, hwæt? That certainly doesn’t sound (or look) like the language I’m writing in here! Even though that is, in fact, an early form of English, if you were to fire up your TARDIS and go back to the British Isles circa 800 AD you’d be just as much at a loss to understand anyone as if you were dropped into rural China today.⁴ This is so much so that scholars today who study Anglo-Saxon have to learn it in the same way they would any other foreign language.

And yet, once you get past the initial alienness of it, you can start to see some recognizable parts. Take the last phrase above, for example: “þæt wæs god cyning.” At first glance it looks and sounds like gibberish, but that’s mostly just changes in pronunciation and manner of writing.⁵ For example, that weird letter “þ” that looks like it can’t decide if it wants to be a “p” or a “b” is called thorn and is the equivalent of the modern “th.”⁶ And that weird combination of “a” and “e,” “æ,” just becomes an “a” in modern spelling.⁷ So the first two words, then, are “that was.” The next word is a little misleading, since in Modern English we’d write it with two “o”s. In the last word, you just have to remember that the “c” is pronounced like a “k” and the “y” like the modern “short” “i.” Say it enough times fast, and you’ll likely shorten it into its modern equivalent, “king.” So that line says, exactly, “that was (a) good king!”

Hey, this is easy! So reading Anglo-Saxon is just a matter of learning different spellings and pronunciations, right?

Well, um, no. Anglo-Saxon had a radically different grammar from Modern English. Anglo-Saxon was largely an inflecting language; that is, a word’s function in a sentence was determined by changing the ending of a word, as in languages like Greek, Russian, Latin, and German. In Modern English, how a word fits into a sentence is determined mostly by its position relative to the other words: “The boy hit the ball” and “The ball hit the boy” are very different ideas!

We still have a few remnants of the old system of inflections, however; for example, we add -ed to the end of (most) verbs to make past tense, we add “‘s” to make a word possessive (e.g., the book belonging to Jason is “Jason’s book”), and we make words plural by adding -s. In Anglo-Saxon, however, the system was much more complex. Nouns, for example, used a system of cases (nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative) with each case corresponding to a particular grammatical use. Let’s take a look at all the forms the word “stán” (stone) can take:

• Nominative singular: stán
  The nominative case denotes the subject of the sentence, e.g., “The stone rolled over poor Thrydwulf!”
• Genitive singular: stánes
  The genitive case is used for possession, e.g., “The stone’s weight crushed the life out of him!”
• Dative singular: stáne
  The dative case indicates the indirect object of a sentence, e.g., “Someone teach the stone a lesson!”
• Accusative singular: stán
  The accusative case indicates the direct object of a sentence, e.g., “I’m going to smash the stone into little bits!”

And then to make it plural, there was a whole difference set of endings:

• Nominative plural: stánas
  “Stones don’t crush people on purpose.”
• Genitive plural: stána
  “It’s not the stones’ fault!”
• Dative plural: stánum
  “Don’t do anything to the poor stones.”
• Accusative plural: stánas
  “Save the stones, man!”

And this was just for one type of noun! Other nouns used different sets of endings. And that’s to say nothing of verbs…

As different as it looks, sounds, and, well, works, this is where the English language began. It’s come a long way (baby), but I for one find it pretty amazing to remember that there’s a definite connective thread stretching from Beowulf to LOLcats.

Before we wrap this one up, one quick word about dialects.⁸ What I’ve presented here, and what you’ll almost certainly learn if you ever study Anglo-Saxon, is really only one specific dialect of the language. Specifically, it’s what’s called the West Saxon dialect, and is just one of four major Anglo-Saxon dialects (or more properly, categories, each almost certainly having countless variations). When people talk about the Anglo-Saxon language, they’re almost always talking specifically about the West Saxon dialect.

So why do we only look at West Saxon? Mainly it’s because most of the surviving Anglo-Saxon texts (Beowulf included) are written in West Saxon. And why is that? Well, two reasons: money and power. West Saxon was the dialect spoken by most of the kings and their courts. Books were expensive and time-consuming to produce, and writing was an extremely rare and specialized skill. Kings were the ones who could pay to have books made for them, and when they did they wanted them in the type of English they spoke. In fact, many works which students of the language read today in the “original” Anglo-Saxon are translations into West Saxon from other dialects! Also, many official records (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for example) were naturally written in the “King’s English,” if you see what I mean.

Next time: Vikings invade! Then, later, the French (who were really Vikings in disguise) invade! English is doomed (to change in really cool ways)!

1. Though “Anglo-Saxon” and “Old English” are interchangeable terms, I tend to prefer the former. “Old English” often makes people think of “Ye Olde Englishe,” which is a faux-historical type of writing where extra -e’s, -eth’s, and thous are thrown frivolously and often incorrectly into current English sentences. As we’ll see later, this is really more a caricature of Early Modern English.
2. If you read only one epic Anglo-Saxon poem this year…!
3. Text courtesy “Beowulf in Hypertext.”
4. Assuming you don’t speak any form of Chinese, that is.
5. The technical term is orthography, if’n ya wants ta get all fancy.
6. Thorn actually represents only the unvoiced “th” sound, the sound at the beginning of the words “thick” and “thin.” A different letter, “ð” (called edh) was used for the voiced sound at the beginning of “this” and “thus.”
7. Anglo-Saxon orthography used “æ” to represent, roughly, the vowel in “hat” and “a” for the first vowel in “father.”
8. Can you tell yet that I find the subject of dialects really interesting?