Kohlschreiber fever
Jan. 16th, 2008 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyAccording to the sports news I just heard on the radio, "Kohlschreiber fever" is sweeping Melbourne. Something to do with the tennis, apparently, although it sounds improbable.
At lunch today I read Australian GP, the weekly newspaper for doctors to which we subscribe. I always like examples of work-related humour that could only be funny to people in that particular profession. At accounting seminars I've been to, for example, I've heard jokes about tax that only accountants would get and/or find amusing ("... and then he asked if he was eligible for a Capital Gains Tax exemption! Ha ha ha!"). It is also fascinating to see one profession's view of another; accountants, mocked by so many for being boring, mock actuaries for the same thing**. Meanwhile, GPs are always arguing amongst themselves, but they're prepared to gang up together on pharmacists.
The GP paper had a fine example of both these things in its "funny bone" column (and the name of that column itself is a piece of profession-related humour, isn't it?). Last week the paper reported that the GP association had hired actors* to go into pharmacies with prescriptions to see if the pharmacists were dispensing the correct drugs or taking it upon themselves to suggest something else (which they can do, to some extent, but the GP association was concerned they were taking it too far).
So this week, there was an allegedly humorous response from a "pharmacist" called Ivor Script, saying that pharmacists would respond in kind. "We intend to send our own 'secret shoppers' into GP surgeries to check reports that many GPs are encouraging patients to try non-pharmaceutical remedies... Patients need to be told that prescription drugs are always the best answer, and if we can sell them a beach ball and a bottle of perfume at the same time, all the better." If that's not a fine example of heavy-handed inter-professional snarking, I don't know what is.
In the more serious sections of the paper, I discovered that there is a significantly higher natural incidence of twins in West Africa than anywhere else, apparently because of the large quantity of yams eaten in that part of the world. So there you go. Also, entrepreneurs in southern China are recycling used condoms into hair elastics that are sold wholesale to hairdressers, and doctors fear that may spread some nasty infectious diseases. Well... yes, would be my assessment.
* I hope they were famous ones. Imagine Meryl Streep's performance as "woman who needs antibiotics"; there's another Oscar, straight away.
** As an accountant, I should say that this is because actuaries really are boring. :-)
At lunch today I read Australian GP, the weekly newspaper for doctors to which we subscribe. I always like examples of work-related humour that could only be funny to people in that particular profession. At accounting seminars I've been to, for example, I've heard jokes about tax that only accountants would get and/or find amusing ("... and then he asked if he was eligible for a Capital Gains Tax exemption! Ha ha ha!"). It is also fascinating to see one profession's view of another; accountants, mocked by so many for being boring, mock actuaries for the same thing**. Meanwhile, GPs are always arguing amongst themselves, but they're prepared to gang up together on pharmacists.
The GP paper had a fine example of both these things in its "funny bone" column (and the name of that column itself is a piece of profession-related humour, isn't it?). Last week the paper reported that the GP association had hired actors* to go into pharmacies with prescriptions to see if the pharmacists were dispensing the correct drugs or taking it upon themselves to suggest something else (which they can do, to some extent, but the GP association was concerned they were taking it too far).
So this week, there was an allegedly humorous response from a "pharmacist" called Ivor Script, saying that pharmacists would respond in kind. "We intend to send our own 'secret shoppers' into GP surgeries to check reports that many GPs are encouraging patients to try non-pharmaceutical remedies... Patients need to be told that prescription drugs are always the best answer, and if we can sell them a beach ball and a bottle of perfume at the same time, all the better." If that's not a fine example of heavy-handed inter-professional snarking, I don't know what is.
In the more serious sections of the paper, I discovered that there is a significantly higher natural incidence of twins in West Africa than anywhere else, apparently because of the large quantity of yams eaten in that part of the world. So there you go. Also, entrepreneurs in southern China are recycling used condoms into hair elastics that are sold wholesale to hairdressers, and doctors fear that may spread some nasty infectious diseases. Well... yes, would be my assessment.
* I hope they were famous ones. Imagine Meryl Streep's performance as "woman who needs antibiotics"; there's another Oscar, straight away.
** As an accountant, I should say that this is because actuaries really are boring. :-)