>use it to jump to the wrong conclusions, imagining all kinds of ailments that they just don't have.

Part of a doctor's job is to manage that, and it's simple to tell a patient that looking at parts of the information or looking at it wrong can lead to different diagnoses or diagnoses for things you just don't have. And a doctor that isn't checking for the unusual explanation while at least starting treatment for the common explanation is not actually doing his job either.

All of a patient's job is to second-guess the doctor until both doctor and patient are sure they have the right diagnosis and treatment.

If you're not doing that job, some doctors will take you around the horn on the testing tour, racking up fees all the way. Others will take your co-pay and hustle you out the door with a prescription for ibuprofen hoping your immune system will do their job for them.

Don't know why that's funny.

It's the way it should be.

The doctor can do a hundred tests to know what's happened to me in the past, or, he can wave an RFID reader over my wrist and populate his database with my history since birth and the interpretations of his predecessors and data on what did and didn't work.

Anything that speeds up the doctoring process and reduces error in information retrieval is the goal.

Except that it might be a real condition. I'm pretty sure I had it. Addictive behavior related to certain fast-food menu items. To the point where, after I'd kicked it, I genuinely suspected there had been something deliberately addictive in there.

Later on I learned that certain combinations of fat and carbohydrates are themselves habituating to the point of addiction. Fast-food joints have that stoichiometry nailed. The composition of their most popular menu items make them about as nutritious as the same mass of ice cream.

But calling it that on a medical chart seems like a perfectly reasonable thing with not much other explanation necessary.

The idea of "taking them home" is a metaphor.

They should all be placed in a secure online repository for you to examine and add annotations as necessary.

Lots of people know enough to know that they didn't receive a breast-reduction when they went in for an artificial knee surgery, but will find those errors in their records only if they actually see their records. And lots of less egregious stuff.

You'll also be able to tell when your doctor mischaracterized what you told him. Future doctors working on you when you're out cold should have the correct information.

Some people will actually have the knowledge to do something more with the data in their documents. The information can come in handy in other ways. For instance, I had a minor invasive surgical procedure while awake, and they gave me a sedative along with the local anesthetic, to keep me from freaking out in the middle of it. But I can never remember what that sedative was, although I recall it worked without giving me the slightest side-effect. That'd be something handy to have written down, say, in my smartphone, if I'm in a place where they need to give me something but can't get to my online records.

I bet if I went through my entire record I could find lots of examples of things I don't remember or never knew that any future doctor would find helpful but wouldn't know to search for even if he had my records.

The simple fact is, the only reason for you as a patient not to have access to 100% of the knowledge of your care is if the doctor wants to hide it from your lawyer. And that reason should be illegal, now that the technology for making your records accessible is all but trivial.

A couple of the Fukushima workers were exposed to some pretty heavy dosages. Only a matter of time for them.

And the statistical nature of exposure and the way radiation does its thing means that it's unlikely but possible for anyone exposed to the initial releases of material, or to material that travelled long distances, can ultimately die from it. Japan's population density is much thicker than almost any other place, so this tiny likelihood becomes a statistically significant likelihood across the larger number.

So it's very likely someone will die from the radiation released by Fukushima, but unlikely anyone will ever be able to connect it conclusively.

Geckos, not guppies.

Godzilla is a lizard, not a fish.

At least you picked a vertebrate.

So the Japanese prison system is like the American economic system.

>some first world country who treats their citizens like third world crap and their prisoners like dogs and feel justified in doing so

Arizona. Or Texas.

I give it three thumbs up.

>Please don't tell my insurance agent.

Ohhhh! Where's your risky nature now?

One CT scan is like a couple dozen x-rays.

You do not want to get such a thing regularly.

Actually, it sounds a lot like this thing called "paint".

Tell her we'd rather you put a webcam in there.

Well, your doctor knew someone who'd had such an injury. Probably several someones.

You never knew them because they were dead or hooked up to a machine in a hospital instead of out and about to meet you.

And bicycle or motorcycle doesn't make a difference. It's not the speed that does you in. It's the fall. Your head hits the ground the same, dropping from 5 feet, either way, and that's what your helmet will be certified for. No lid in the world will do a damn thing to stop your skull from shattering if you go horizontally headfirst into a curb or car or pole at 40 mph, so no lid tries. If you ever heard of anyone surviving that, it was due to luck, not design.

Wear your helmet anyway.

Every one of his objections is something that is actually alleviated by freeing you from the desk-and-keyboard-and-fixed-monitor model of computing.

You can use many positions and orientations when you use mobiles.

And because you're outside and moving around, instead of planted on your pasty, fat, congealing ass all day, you're 27% less likely die of a heart attack.

This is one of those cases where you just want to take someone's diploma away from them.