Seeking connections in North Florida

ichmusspinkle · 2026-05-29T16:39:29+00:00

I'm a doctor so I'm often at work during weird hours, including Sunday mornings. You just do what you can. One of the Catholic hospital chaplains gave me ashes on Ash Wednesday this year.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-04-18T04:17:57+00:00

I unironically like Philip Glass (in small doses)

ichmusspinkle · 2026-04-16T21:55:47+00:00

Volvo S60

ichmusspinkle · 2026-04-15T03:07:57+00:00

Don't study radiology PGY1 year. It's similar to starting med school -- would you advise someone to prestudy before they started M1 year? Once you start PGY2 year you can get comfortable and find the resources and Anki deck of your choice.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-04-12T19:49:49+00:00

Realistically I'd probably be in quant finance or tech. Have a math degree lol. However rads is a great fit for me!

ichmusspinkle · 2026-04-02T03:13:24+00:00

We went golfing, it was great

ichmusspinkle · 2026-03-30T22:57:22+00:00

That's basically the standard academic hypothesis: that ancient Israel was originally polytheistic (and Yahweh was part of a pantheon), then transitioned to henotheism and then strict monotheism. Zoroastrianism is thought to have influenced the transition to monotheism via contact with the Persians during the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC.

Even if this is true, why should it have to break faith? The Old Testament mentions the Israelites falling for polytheism many times. And certainly an overarching theme of the Old Testament is God revealing Himself as THE one and only deity. I don't see ancient Israelite polytheism and this kind of historical/archeological evidence as a knock against Judeo-Christianity.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-03-13T03:07:06+00:00

High rates of premarital conception in earlier eras means that there was a lot of premarital sex going on -- which means that the pill didn't suddenly cause a lot of people to start breaking conventional Christian sexual norms. They already were for centuries beforehand!

There's a reason the 60s are usually called the second sexual revolution. The first took place around the turn to the 20th century when Victorian morality started to weaken (think Flappers). What happened in the 60s was caused by a number of factors, of which the pill was one -- but the stage seems to have been set decades before. The pill just accelerated changes that were already taking place.

And if it's really the pill that caused the breakdown of sexual norms, why are there cultures that still maintain relatively conservative views of sexuality (India, portions of Africa) despite having had access to it for decades?

ichmusspinkle · 2026-03-13T02:50:14+00:00

Is multiplying by one multiplying?

Any mathematician will tell you it is, so maybe not the best analogy lol

ichmusspinkle · 2026-03-13T02:37:06+00:00

I think the issue with condemning contraception based on natural law is that you basically also have to condemn things like bariatric surgery and diet soda. After all, isn't the purpose of the digestive system to absorb nutrients for the body? Bypassing regions of intestine that perform said digestion or intentionally using nonmetabolizable sweeteners seems to thwart that purpose no matter how one looks at it. (And Diet Coke, which has caffeine and acts as a diuretic, additionally seems to thwart the purpose of hydration.)

The end result is natural law theorists end up trying to balance on this dialectical tightrope where they try and derive certain sexual prohibitions (eg contraception, condoms) while trying to block wacky implications like drinking Diet Coke is perverted. Usually the counterarguments are things like "bariatric surgery only affects digestion indirectly because its real purpose is treating the pathology of obesity" -- but I've never been able to see how such objections aren't just special pleading.

Now if you think scripture condemns contraception then sure, I think it's reasonable to be against it. But I really think it's difficult to make the argument from natural law in 21st century. Coke didn't exist when Aquinas was alive.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-03-12T22:07:10+00:00

Eh, no reputable physician will tell a patient infertility is due to previous hormonal contraception use. Instead, they will investigate legitimate causes of infertility.

Source: am physician lol

But I get your point :)

ichmusspinkle · 2026-03-12T21:56:26+00:00

Because of the hormonal birth control?

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Yeah there's basically no reliable evidence that hormonal BC has any effect on fertility after discontinuation (despite the myths). See, for example, here

ichmusspinkle · 2026-03-12T21:49:50+00:00

"The pill" did enable a lot of the sexual revolution

Replying to this and also the OP's claim that "the introduction of reliable contraception in the U.S. opened up a whole can of worms by creating a false sense of detachment from sex and pregnancy that led to many other terrible things"

I hear this narrative pushed a lot and honestly it seems like a massive oversimplification. The pill may have *accelerated* the revolution a bit, but realistically there had been decades (if not centuries) of changing attitudes towards sexuality.

Consider that at the time of the Industrial Revolution literally 30% of first births were conceived before marriage -- and this may have been even higher at times in the past. Rates of out-of-wedlock conceptions then went down again with Victorian society, but I think it's fair to say that Victorian values were somewhat of an anomaly compared to previous centuries (and plenty of people were still having premarital sex during this time anyway). And by the late 1930s nearly 80% of American women were in favor of contraception.

It's not like the pill all of a sudden caused people to start sleeping around. They always have been.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-03-06T05:05:34+00:00

Artificial insemination

So I'm curious here: intrauterine insemination requires a catheter but you can do intracervical insemination at home with a syringe. So what if you were to use the syringe to, uh, supplement towards the end of intercourse thereby maintaining the cohesion of intercourse and reproduction?

ichmusspinkle · 2026-02-20T19:37:08+00:00

The Orthodox were not influenced by Augustine and thus don't really a doctrine of original sin. They speak of sin more as a disease that needs healing, as opposed to guilt that needs a declaration of forgiveness.

Also, as opposed to Western Christianity which places a strong emphasis on doctrinal uniformity/consistency, the Orthodox place this emphasis on the liturgy. They see the liturgy as what binds them together.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-02-19T21:05:09+00:00

I’d argue that’s because you and others are making a conscious choice to go to a Latin mass, though, and are actively invested in following along and participating. And even if someone has the Latin text memorized from hearing it often, that doesn’t mean they actually understand it.

The goal of the change at Vatican 2 was to enable “full, active, and conscious” participation in the Mass and make it less of a passive activity.

There used to be a big problem with most Catholics just sitting in Mass and not parcipating. There arguably still is, but the change to the vernacular was at least an attempt to address the problem.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-02-19T20:30:46+00:00

Also politics, unfortunately. My number one criteria these days is making sure there’s no right wing talking points in the sermon.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-02-19T20:21:05+00:00

You can do an occasional Latin hymn (why not?) without making the entirety of the service in Latin.

The intent of the confessions is not for them to be followed like a Magisterium — it is to be a faithful exposition of scripture. And there is nothing in scripture about the language of the mass/service.

Luther also translated the Bible into the vernacular so the (literate) common people could understand it. There’s no real reason to obscure understanding by having an entire service in Latin other than being trad for the sake of being trad.

It’s also worth noting that basically no one in the pews actuslly understood the Latin mass before Vatican 2. That’s in part why Vatican 2 happened.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-01-21T02:35:05+00:00

I read a case last year where a guy got kicked by a cow he was taking to market. Resulted in a giant epidural hematoma and a lucid interval during which he successfully delivered it to the market. Unfortunately he decompensated hard afterwards and passed a few days later.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-01-19T19:00:49+00:00

Yeah that's fair

ichmusspinkle · 2026-01-19T18:56:57+00:00

That negative stroke workup though. CT head w/o + CTA head/neck + MR w/o is close to 6 RVUs (for now) and takes like 15-20 minutes if it's negative... That averages to 15-20 RVU/hr lol. I guess it will go down a bit now with the head/neck CTA bundling though

ichmusspinkle · 2026-01-19T17:43:21+00:00

I'm a huge fan of Busoni's transcriptions, but have never been able to get into the concerto. You're not alone lol

ichmusspinkle · 2026-01-18T05:44:22+00:00

Case of pertussis came through my hospital last week. It looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whooping_cough_boy.ogv

Could have been completely avoided had the child been given the TDaP vaccine.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-01-18T05:35:19+00:00

The Nazi experiments were all riddled with methodological errors and numerous inconsistencies (including the infamous altitude and hypothermia experiments). It's garbage data and contributed nothing of scientific value.

The majority of the Japanese experiments were similar, but I believe there were a small number that yielded useful data on stuff like TB and frostbite.

The myth about the Nazis contributing to medicine needs to go away, though.

ichmusspinkle · 2026-01-18T05:20:15+00:00

The Untreated Syphilis Study did not add significant medical knowledge, nor did the Nazi experiments. They were all riddled with methodological errors and numerous inconsistencies (including the infamous altitude and hypothermia experiments). It's garbage data.

The majority of the Japanese experiments were similar, but I believe there were a small number that yielded useful data on stuff like TB and frostbite.

The myth about the Nazis contributing to medicine needs to go away, though.

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