BehindTheMedspeak: 'How Doctors Think'

That's the title of Dr. Jerome Groopman's upcoming 2008 (!) book, to be published by Houghton Mifflin.

I was just reading about it Wednesday in the New York Times.

They said he'd received "an advance of more than $500,000" for it.

Whoa.

Wait just a minute.

Half a million simoleons?

For vaporware, to be published in four years - maybe?

I mean, even at 4% interest, that's a sweet twenty grand a year in walking around money from the interest alone.

What the heck am I doing here?

I'm gonna crank out a prequel, and call it "Can Doctors Think?"

Then - if it meets with the kind of reception I think it will - I'll follow it up very quickly with a sequel entitled, "Do Doctors Think?"

That should be worth a cool million up front, at the very least.

Who wants to negotiate my contract?

You get 25%.

But remember: unless you're using new math, 25% of zilch is, well, not a whole lot.

But we have so much fun here, who cares about money?