On this 50th Anniversary of barcode scanning, I’ve been thinking about chewing gum, lot numbers, spinach, expiration dates, medication packaging, and the FDA. On June 26, 1974, a ten-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum was the world’s first bar-coded product scanned at a point of sale. Today, over 10 billion barcodes are scanned between sunrises […]
The tragic death of a hospitalized patient in Oregon [1] has once again put a spotlight on pharmacy i.v. rooms. Unfortunately this isn’t the first i.v. error to harm, or kill a patient and I’m sad to say that it probably won’t be the last. We know that IVs present higher risks than most other […]
On my daily walks, I’ve been listening to Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I’m at Christmas of 1943—the year Bing Crosby’s newly recorded “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” began tugging at souls on radios across America. The tug persists. Though the bestseller’s central figure, Louis Zamperini, did […]
During the 2008 presidential campaign, I thought Tina Fey did a good Sarah Palin—so good that when the governor from Alaska joined the comedian on Saturday Night Live, it seemed as if Tina Palin and Sarah Fey were impersonating each other. A mesmerizing duo. On my morning walks in the woods this week, I’ve been […]
The bulk of the word consequence is sequence. In sequence, outcomes (intended or not) follow actions. Typically, consequences is used in reference to negative outcomes. In 1974, Richard Nixon had neither intended nor anticipated the devastating sequence of events that would follow the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up. He had not expected his actions would […]
Between innings at a Mariners’ game, I got chatting with a visitor from New York about how in 1958, the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Adding injury to insult, I mentioned how their Hall of Fame centerfielder, Duke Snider, moved onto my block in the All-American City of Lynwood. Not good. Clearly, the Bum’s abandoning […]
Stumbling onto “South Carolina’s Homepage,” The State, I read about some hospitals that are into reading palms, which prompted me to rush over to wikihow.com to brush up on the subject. The brief preamble of How to Read Palms says, “The objective is to evaluate a person’s character or future by studying the palm of their hand,” followed by nuts and bolts: […]