I reloaded MacOS, restored my home directory from backup, and was surprised to learn that I have 3e5 files. Most of the bulk is music, but that’s only 7e3 files. Is there a tool analogous to du that gives the number of files in each directory, rather than their aggregate size? —Later: When Apple Mail imported my Thunderbird archives, it made huge numbers of files, but I don’t know yet whether they’re enough to answer the question.

In other news, the medical jargon specimen of the week:

Infant is status post a negative rule out sepsis workup . . .

I guess that means sepsis was ruled out, rather than that it was not ruled out. The weird thing is that “rule out sepsis” is often listed as a diagnosis rather than a procedure.

Roderick Long (1993): How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis: Medical Insurance that Worked – Until Government “Fixed” It

Hey, I’m a fictional character! Dr. Anton Sherwood, “an older man in a tweed suit”, appears in The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld, a novel about which I know nothing else. (I searched for my name, as one sometimes does, this time looking for ones that aren’t me.)

The latest thing to puzzle me in med-speak is “benign yet appropriate”. When would it be inappropriate to appear healthy?

There apparently exists a surgical tool called a synovial elevator. Makes me think of a bioengineered building, with beams of bone.

Friendly societies: ancient free-market social security

Meet the Mind Readers: brain implants to control prostheses.

In previous studies, Nicolelis’s team showed that when monkeys had their brains hooked up to robotic arms, they assimilated the arm, effectively making it their own. “Their brains actually incorporated the robotic arm by dedicating neuronal space to it. We want to see if the same thing happens in humans,” he adds.

Can’t imagine why it wouldn’t. What I wanna know is whether – and how readily – a brain can embrace an interface that has no familiar analogue.

A woman volunteered to donate an organ to her mother, but mom’s pee tested positive for marijuana, so no go. I could understand disqualifying the disobedient from receiving an organ from the limited pool of dead strangers, but how does this make sense even by drug war logic?

In Area 51, do they study Grays’ anatomy?

Strange but true — People study for years to talk like this:

Infant is status post initial ampicillin and gentamycin for rule out sepsis workup.