Life

As the story goes, when the first nuclear reactor pile was built in Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project, Enrico Fermi was quite taken-aback when he learned why his American counterparts had decided to call it a pile. He had thought that the word pile had some grand and poetic meaning, and they had chosen that word specifically for such a momentous occasion. He was wrong: they just chose it because they were working with a big pile of uranium.

So, why bring this up? Well, I think it's kind of a funny story, and America at its finest, no doubt, but also because I have my own pile. Not a pile of plutonium uranium, of course, but a pile of books. Books that I've been studying from for the past couple of years. Most of the books anyway. There are some I couldn't find. So, on to exhibit A:

That's my pile. And just for reference, I measured it:

That's about 18 inches folks. Anyway, as you might have guessed, that is WAY too much to be able to read over to study for a board exam when you only have a month. Which leads me to the greatest medical book ever:

It's a whole lot of information, condensed down to just the bare bones. Its prefect for studying from, because it has just enough about everything to make you remember what you learned already. Again, for reference, I measured it. It's WAY smaller than 18 inches.

It's a great book. So great in fact, that I wish I didn't have to utilize Photoshop to get this:

I hope you believe me, that it's truly as great as I'm saying it is.

And now, just to wrap things up, I am legally obligated to mention Wolfram|Alpha in any blog post this weekend, since it finally came out. I have to admit, I spent a good bit of time yesterday typing in every thing I could think of to it. Although I'm still waiting for the beta version...