bookofjoe

'Vote Tomkins — For a Better World Today'

You may or may not recall a post about Hermès' $450 chopsticks (above) which appeared in bookofjoe last November 29.

Recall? Heck, you may not even have been born then. But I digress.

One of my many British readers is the cynosural Financial Times columnist Richard Tomkins.

His piece in today's paper began, "How much should you expect to pay for a pair of luxury chopsticks?"

He went on, "... as a reader has brought to my attention, there are the ones that Hermès offers, in somewhat plain-looking silver and wood, for $490."

Inflation. But I digress yet again.

I am delighted to see that the work of my crack research team is not going unnoticed but rather is drawing the attention of journalists and others worldwide in search of the new new thing.

Though Tomkins has not yet declared I do believe that popular demand may yet cause this modest, rather retiring man to throw his hat into the ring as a write-in candidate — do they have such a thing in the U.K.? —

in the upcoming race for Prime Minister.

BehindTheMedspeak: Wheeler Lipes — who as a Navy pharmacist's mate during World War II performed an appendectomy using tablespoons while on a submarine 120 feet under the Pacific — is dead

Talk about "no good deed goes unpunished": afterward he was threatened with a court-martial by the outraged U.S. surgeon general.

Here is Adam Bernstein's gripping obituary, which appeared in today's Washington Post, about an unassuming high school dropout (above) whom circumstance and fate combined to make a legend.

Make sure to read the whole thing, because the final paragraph is priceless.

Wheeler Lipes Dies; Did Emergency Surgery While on Sub

Wheeler "Johnny" Lipes, 84, a Navy pharmacist's mate who performed a remarkable, improvised appendectomy during a World War II submarine run 120 feet under the Pacific Ocean, died April 17 at a hospital in New Bern, N.C.

He had pancreatic cancer.

Lipes, who retired as a lieutenant commander, was a 22-year-old high school dropout at the time of his surgical feat in 1942.

The Lipes legend was chronicled in a Pulitzer Prize-winning news account, provided a surge of morale during a period of desperately bad news from the Pacific and helped inspire a wartime action film starring Cary Grant.

Doctors were not assigned to submarines at the time; instead, the medical work was left to such independent duty corpsmen as Cmdr. Lipes.

He led the first of three successful surgeries by submarine corpsmen during the war but was ostracized by Navy Medical Corps physicians.

They were angered by his actions, even though he had been obeying his captain's orders.

There also was talk of a court-martial by the outraged U.S. surgeon general, who was forced to set protocols for appendectomies on submarines.

Cmdr. Lipes was the only medical professional aboard the submarine Seadragon on Sept. 11, 1942, when seaman Darrell Rector, 19, began complaining about a pain in his stomach and asked for laxatives.

Cmdr. Lipes examined Rector and determined that his appendix was about to burst, but he was reluctant to work on him.

The Seadragon's captain, knowing they were in the hostile South China Sea and days from home port in Fremantle, in western Australia, ordered Cmdr. Lipes to collect a team of helpers and use whatever supplies he could find.

He converted a dining table in the ward room into an operating table.

Bent tablespoon handles became retractors to hold open the incision and abdominal muscles.

Aides poured ether on gauze and placed the gauze over a tea strainer to act as an anesthesia mask over Rector's mouth.

They sterilized all instruments with boiling water.

They used "torpedo juice," alcohol usually reserved for fueling the Seadragon's torpedoes, to kill germs in the pajamas that substituted for surgical clothing.

As he started the procedure, Cmdr. Lipes used the McBurney's point, the most tender area of the abdomen of patients in the early stage of appendicitis, to locate the inflamed appendix.

He made his incision, but the appendix did not pop up as expected.

Looking around, he found it a massive five-inches long and stuck to three places on the lining of the intestine, which, if it broke, would pour pus into the abdomen and kill the patient.

Part of the appendix was gangrenous.

Wielding a scalpel blade -- he lacked the full scalpel -- he gently removed the appendix while wafts of ether filled the cabin.

The operation, which was successful, lasted 2 1/2 hours.

The Seadragon, noting its record at sea, sent an eye-catching message back to base: "One Merchant Ship, One Oil Tanker and One Successful Appendectomy."

News spread through the prize-winning story in the Chicago Daily News.

The film "Destination Tokyo" (1943), starring Cary Grant as the skipper, also featured a submarine appendectomy that paralleled the events aboard the Seadragon -- except the surgery was performed beneath Tokyo Bay for added drama.

Rector returned to duty but perished two years later aboard the submarine Tang, whose launched torpedo circled back and hit the vessel.

Wheeler Bryson Lipes was born July 12, 1920, in New Castle, Va., near Roanoke.

"Somewhere on my mother's side there were a couple of doctors in the family, but the branch I came from didn't have much going except peanuts," he once said.

He helped his divorced mother, who did nursing home work for Navy personnel in the Norfolk area.

As a teenager, he worked at a Norfolk naval hospital serving meals to patients, helping in the pharmacy and typing patient records.

He joined the Navy at age 16, later receiving a high school diploma through a GED program and attending George Washington University.

After training as a pharmacist's mate, he was transferred in 1940 to the Philippines.

While he was serving on the submarine Sealion, the ship was hit by Japanese bombs during an attack on Cavite Naval Yard on Dec. 10, 1941.

Cmdr. Lipes suffered minor injuries -- "That's where I got this extra part in my hair" -- and he became the new pharmacist's mate aboard the Seadragon.

In 1951, Cmdr. Lipes was commissioned an ensign in the Navy's Medical Service Corps.

He attended the Naval Justice School in Newport, R.I., and participated in defense work in court-martial proceedings.

His final active-duty assignment, in 1962, was as a finance officer at the naval hospital in Memphis.

He did hospital administration work in Tennessee before retiring in 1991 as president of Memorial Medical Center in Corpus Christi, Tex.

His military decorations included the Purple Heart.

More recent lobbying by Navy historians led to his receiving the Navy Commendation Medal in February at a ceremony at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

His first wife, Myrtle Peterson Lipes, whom he married in 1939, died in 1997.

Survivors include his wife, Audrey Lipes of New Bern; a stepson who took his surname, Bruce Lipes of Corpus Christi; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Cmdr. Lipes once flew to Chicago for a meeting of the American Hospital Association.

Next to him a man was looking incredulously at a "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" sketch, which showed the submarine appendectomy and the spoons used.

"He looked at me with a strange look on his face," Cmdr. Lipes recalled, "and said, 'Do you believe that?' And I said to him, 'I wouldn't believe a word of it.' "

Addendum added 1:41 p.m. April 21

Yesterday's New York Times lead obituary was that of Wheeler Lipes.

It contained additional information which only adds to the magnificence of his accomplishment on September 11, 1942, 120 feet beneath the surface of the South China Sea.

Origin of the term 'halo effect'

In 1920 American psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike published a paper entitled "A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings" in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Volume 4, pages 25-29.

In it was the following passage:

"The "halo effect" is an extension of an overall impression of a person (or one particular outstanding trait) to influence the total judgment of that person. The effect is to evaluate an individual high on many traits because of a belief that the individual is high on one trait. Similar to this is the "devil effect," whereby a person evaluates another as low on many traits because of a belief that the individual is low on one trait which is assumed to be critical."

The term "halo effect" is tossed around with abandon these days, most often lately in regard to whether or not Apple will be able to extend the iPod's phenomenal success to its computer offerings.

Me, I'm much more enchanted with the wonderfully named "devil effect."

I wonder why that one never caught on.

Blondes come to mind in that regard: be blonde and beautiful and you've got an uphill battle for life being thought of as anything else.

BehindTheMedspeak: Ultrasound Laptop

Unbelievable technology announced yesterday by SonoSite: their new MicroMaxx™ laptop-sized, hand-carried ultrasound machine (above) that produces images (below) that are simply sensational.

Have a look here if you want proof.

They've somehow taken a standard ultrasound machine that stands four feet tall, measures three feet by two feet and weighs hundreds of pounds, requiring a wall socket for power, and crammed it into a battery-powered laptop unit that boots up in 12 seconds, faster than your computer.

They won't be able to make these fast enough, the demand will be so great.

No more nonsense about scheduling an ultrasound and then transporting the patient all over the hospital.

I wonder if Steve Jobs might consider buying this company and offering ultrasound and maybe even a defibrillator as options on the upcoming G5 laptop.

Just a thought.

I mean, now that it's all chipsets what's theoretically preventing such things from happening?

Nothing.

.jobs — Steve Jobs really is God

What other explanation could there possibly be for the fact that the newest top-level web domain is named after him?

I mean, I don't see .bookofjoe out there, do you?

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved ".jobs" earlier this month.

"Employers can use the suffix to create dedicated job-posting Web sites that end in '.jobs' rather than '.com,'" wrote Erin White and Kris Maher in a story that appeared in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

For example, Apple's job site could be www.apple.jobs; Walt Disney's could be www.disney.jobs.

And bookofjoe's will be www.bookofjoe.jobs.

Employ Media, a Cleveland start-up, will operate the new domain.

The company plans to start taking applications for site names around June, said Tom Embrescia, the chairman and majority owner, in the newspaper story.

Each employer will have to pay an annual fee, which will likely be less than $100 for the new site name.

Few companies are yet aware of the new suffix but as soon as this post appears that will no longer will be the case.

I was tempted for a second there to buy gas.jobs,

anesthesia.jobs and anesthesiology.jobs but then I had second thoughts even if I do stand to make a fortune by flipping the names.

I've got a blog to run — you do it.

Imagine how cool it would be to type "steve.jobs" into the URL box and see your site come up.

Scrolling LED Belt Buckle

"Introducing the most technologically advanced piece of clothing since the Hypercolor T-shirt — the LED scrolling belt buckle."

Watch the video here if you want to see it in action.

You can program it with up to six unique messages at time — each message can be up to 256 characters long.

If you can't get it out in that space you don't deserve to own such a cool piece of technology.

You can even change the speed of the scrolling message and the display's brightness.

Compatible with almost any belt that employs a buckle.

It will not, however, play your MP3s.

Comes with batteries and instructions.

$28.99 (plus $6.49 for shipping and handling) here.

[via Kupsztal]

DNAstuff.com — 'What stuff life is made of'

Where else are you going to find a James D. Watson bobblehead doll (above)?

Now that Barry Bonds has been unmasked as a fraud, why not junk your old bobblehead in favor of this one ($21.95), celebrating the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid?

Lots of other DNA-related stuff here too.

I have no clue as to why they chose their inane slogan instead of "Everything DNA," which is so much snappier.

Probably because like so many companies with great hopes and goals, they failed to do the single most important thing that determines success or failure in today's hypercompetitive business world: seek a free consultation with bookofjoe and our world-renowned crack research team to make sure everything's set for success.

Ah well, I know you won't be as foolish.

Meet Betsey Johnson — 6 p.m. today at Lord & Taylor

One good reason to live in New York City is that you get the chance to meet very cool people.

For example, the great fashion designer Betsey Johnson, still as original and full of flair and verve as she was twenty-five years ago.

She still does a cartwheel down the catwalk at the end of her shows.

She'll be meeting her fans and admirers today at 6 p.m. on the main floor at Lord & Taylor's flagship store (5th Avenue at 39th Street).

There'll be cocktails, music and "special gifts," whatever that means.

How refreshing in a way, that you don't have to line up at 8 a.m. to get a numbered wristband that "might" allow you a place in line later that day to meet Mariah Carey or Paris Hilton.

Mariah or Paris couldn't carry Betsey's tank top.

Fashionistas, enough with the losers at the bars after work: go give Betsey a shout-out.

She's so cool.

Bonus: "With any $50 Betsey Johnson Intimates purchase, receive a free thong."

What's keeping you?