A surprisingly funny article on people who bought unlimited first-class tickets from American Airlines.

There are frequent fliers, and then there are people like Steven Rothstein and Jacques Vroom.

Both men bought tickets that gave them unlimited first-class travel for life on American Airlines. It was almost like owning a fleet of private jets.

Passes in hand, Rothstein and Vroom flew for business. They flew for pleasure. They flew just because they liked being on planes. They bypassed long lines, booked backup itineraries in case the weather turned, and never worried about cancellation fees. Flight crews memorized their names and favorite meals.

Who said the best things in life are free? A carte blanche to fly to anywhere in the world any time on first class is almost magical. Imagine flying to Europe or a Caribbean island for a weekend on a whim: Make a quick call, get to the airport, skip the lines, get the first class treatment and arrive at any destination you’ve ever wanted to go.

Atul Gawande writes about the last 200 years of surgery from the invention of anesthesia, antisepsis to professionalization. It’s almost impossible to imagine how patients back then could withstand open surgeries:

Before anesthesia, the sounds of patients thrashing and screaming filled operating rooms. So, from the first use of surgical anesthesia, observers were struck by the stillness and silence. 

This was around 1846 when the discovery of ether by William Morton, a Boston dentist, began to boldly push the boundaries of surgery:

Surgeons soon found, however, that anesthesia allowed them to perform more complex, invasive, and precise maneuvers than they had dared to attempt before. Within a decade, for instance, the first successful hysterectomy and bilateral ovariotomy — removal of massive ovarian cysts weighing several pounds— proved that the abdomen could be safely penetrated.

However, the issue of infection was rarely addressed as the concept of pasteurization was yet to be discovered. Even after Pasteur’s findings, it took years for surgeons to adopt his ideas. Meanwhile, surgeons continued to operate without surgical gowns or even washing their hands.

Fortunately, proper techniques soon followed and with it came even greater advancements in surgery. By 1920s, articles about surgeries occupied about half of The New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery. However, as laboratory medicine (like vaccines and antibiotics) and other technologies started to make the headlines, the surgical articles started to appear less in the Journal. Surgery nonetheless continued to refine itself, making it safer and more effective. In recent years, new techniques like laparoscopy and thoracoscopy made incisions normally half a meter wide to just half a centimeter small.

There are at least 50 million surgeries performed annually just in the United States, and if the history of surgery is any indication, most of them will become as easy and noninvasive as swallowing a spoonful of small robotic devices.

(Source: nejm.org)

ingwon:

Sometimes the boy felt frustrated at his job. Early in the morning, long before the sun would rise, he put on his boots and followed his father out to the replication site where the helicase had already done his work and the primers lay in wait. In the blanket-like darkness he walked behind his…

This is a great snippet from The New York Times’ interview with Louis C.K. on success and diligence.

You’ve spent the last several months on a tour where you sold tickets only through your Web site. How did that go?

Boy, did that work. It was so satisfying to get that done. The special, I didn’t need to do anything. I just made it and offered it. But the tickets were really tricky. The big ticket companies make exclusive arrangements with these rooms. They pay them just to not work with others. So if a company gives you 30 grand a year to stay away from anybody else, you need it. We didn’t attack their territory. We just went to places that they didn’t care about.

Does it matter that what you’ve achieved, with your online special and your tour can’t be replicated by other performers who don’t have the visibility or fan base that you do?

Why do you think those people don’t have the same resources that I have, the same visibility or relationship? What’s different between me and them?

You have the platform. You have the level of recognition.

So why do I have the platform and the recognition?

At this point you’ve put in the time.

There you go. There’s no way around that. There’s people that say: “It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.” I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by “new at it,” I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.