Lament of the Believers

The spectroscopist's lament.

An AIer's Lament

It, is interesting t,o note that there is no agreed upon definition of artificial intrlligence. Why is this interesting? Because government agencies ask for it, software shops claim to provide it, popular magazines and newspapers publish articles about, it, dreamers base their fant,asies on it, and pragmatists criticize and denounce it. Such a stat,c of affairs has persisted since Newell, Simon...

Radiologists' lament.

TO THE EDITOR: This letter of lament was prompted by a recently overheard complaint by a first-year intern to her colleagues that radiologists were not “obeying” her! Her comment led us to review her last five imaging requests (“orders”). After discussion with other radiologists, three of these requests were considered inappropriate. Major reasons for inappropriate imaging investigations are la...

Anesthesiologist's Lament.

A fter a day of keeping up the shtick, As a colleague calls it, all the backslapping And one-liners that put the staff at ease, Dodging comebacks of passing gas and napping, The old clichés of caring for the sick While saving lives and stamping out disease, I settle in for an all-night case on call And let myself consider the surreal: Some sorry bastard known as Stat Unknown Who passed out, I a...

Diffraction for Non-believers *

Diffractive reactions involving a hard scale can be understood in terms of quarks and gluons. These reactions have become a valuable tool for investigating the low-x structure of the proton and the behavior of QCD in the high-density regime, and they may provide a clean environment to study or even discover the Higgs boson at the LHC. In this paper we give a brief introduction to the descriptio...