Chaos Program

My boss and I have an ongoing disagreement that sometimes flares up (loudly), about who was the better detective: Hercule Poirot, or Sherlock Holmes? The boss takes the point of view that Holmes relied on “parlor tricks” while Poirot used pure intelligence to reason out the solutions.

I contend (very reasonably and with only enough shrillness in my voice to convince people to listen) that this shows a lack of understanding of Holmes’s true skills as a detective. The famous parlor tricks – where he figured out people’s life stories by observing tiny clues he noticed in a glance at them – are NOT how he solved cases at all. Unlike the indolent Poirot who seemed to get most of his information by eavesdropping, Holmes investigated cases. He used disguises to infiltrate locations and spy on suspects. He had a network of informants (The Baker Street Irregulars). He studied shipping and train schedules and knew the map of London intimately, in order to understand the movements of people and things related to his cases. He did experiments in order to improve his understanding of potential evidence. He worked at the business of investigating.

To be honest, it’s been decades since I absorbed the complete Sherlock Holmes novels and stories and I never did get into the Poirot stuff because I find Agatha Christie’s writing style to be dull. Really really really dull. Maybe it’s a British thing. Odd, really, since my mother has everything Christie ever wrote. Most of what I know about the brilliant Belgian detective I got from watching the series with David Suchet on TV. I enjoyed them and often found the solutions to be quite clever. But to compare Poirot’s skill at thinking to the monomaniacal investigative prowess of the great Sherlock Holmes is silly.
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Should doctors be more than medical technicians?

I’ve thought of this question several times in the last few years, most recently in connection with two emergency room visits for my mother. She complained of (among other things) a very bad headache. Early on, one doctor ordered a ct scan of her head to see if there was maybe a tumor or something to explain the headache. The ct scan showed nothing out of the ordinary.

Here’s the bit that made me start wondering about doctor education, or intelligence or something: When the ct scan came back clean, the doctors then proceeded to completely ignore the headache. It was as if, when the test showed nothing, the problem simply ceased to exist.

This is the way not-very-skilled technicians operate. People who, in the IT field (my field) would be level 1 help desk and who would probably never progress beyond that level. Example (a real one):

Me: “I have a problem with my internet connection.”
Tech support: “I’ll test the line.” (pause) “The line is fine.”
Me: “Okay but I keep losing my connection.”
Tech support: “Restart your modem and check that it’s plugged in correctly.”
Me: “I did that. The modem is fine. There’s something wrong with the connection.”
Tech support: “I’m sorry sir but the line is clean. You need to check your modem.”
Me: “Aaaaaaaaauuuugggggghhhh!”

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