Shazzam!

There is an amusement park that is open 24/7, 365 days a year. The queue for their best ride, Shazzam!, is more or less constant and the average wait time is one hour. Still, people can't resist it's allure. The ride itself lasts five minutes (including two minutes for collecting tickets and safely securing and disembarking passengers). There is only one man servicing passengers. In any given period, the same number of people exit the ride as join the line waiting to get on. Occasionally, the line increases or decreases a bit but not dramatically so.

One day, Freddie, the ride operator, had an idea. He figured that since the line moves pretty well at a constant rate, the reason there is an hour wait is due to the constant backlog. So, he went to management and explained "If you put another man on the job to help me with the passengers until there is no queue left, I could then maintain the same pace as now--same number coming as going, and never have anyone wait longer than the five minutes it takes to operate the ride."

Management agreed and hired a temp for Freddie. Sure enough, within a few days, the line had dwindled, the temp was sent on his way (hopefully to do some equally helpful job) and the ride was operating smoothly. Well, you can guess what happened next. As word spread of the decreased wait time, more and more people wanted to ride Shazzam!, including people who had just gotten off. It wasn't long before the queue reached its previous and constant length and the wait time went back to an hour.

This story is not about an amusement park. It is about hospitals. And Shazzam! is not a ride, it is the Emergency Room. Waiting an hour to go on a ride may be unpleasant, but doing so in the ER waiting room could be life-threatening. People have literally died waiting. Why do we accept the unacceptable? Especially when there is a very simple solution?

"But, Vinny", you may be saying, "won't the wait times eventually go back to where they were as in your example?" Absolutely not. People don't decide whether to go to the hospital based on the wait times (or how much they enjoy "the ride")--they go to the ER when and because they have an emergency. Reduce the backlog and you should be able to maintain much faster service times with the current staff going forward.

This solution may not apply to rural hospitals where the number of ER patients fluctuates greatly, but then wait times are probably not as big an issue there, either. In big cities that don't sleep at night, the ER is almost always jammed. This is where it applies. This is where it's needed. Is anyone listening out there?

Q & A's from around the web

What exercise should a man do to have a round, firm & solid hard butt?

Eat cement.

Living in the bizarro world

It was a glorious day, today--bright sunshine, a few puffy clouds in the sky, a light breeze blowing and about 80 F. I should remind/inform you that I live in The Great White North. A place where we are no strangers to some of the coldest, most severe weather on the planet. So, imagine my surprise when while I was out, I spotted several people wearing jackets. Granted, it wasn't one of the balmy, humid days in the 90's we regularly get this time of year, but still, it certainly was a shorts and t-shirt day.

Now, you may be thinking that I observed people sporting suit jackets or blazers. Nope. I'm talking regular jackets generally worn for protection against the elements. And now, for the kicker: One guy was wearing one of those bubble-type winter jackets. Not an old guy who's always cold, or afflicted with dementia--a guy in his 20's. Okay, it was sleeveless, but c'mon, now. These are the dog days, bud. What are you going to do in January? Hibernate? Do these people know they're living in the bizarro world? Are their friends too embarrassed to tell them they um, dress funny? Do they not have friends to guide them? Were their friends over-dressed today, too? I would have asked, but who knows how a guy who lives in bizarro land might react. I wouldn't want an anvil dropped on me.

Here's my question...

...posed on a Q & A site on the web and getting two answers:

What happened to Fifth Grader? I used to watch it on Thursday nights. Where did it go?

that show was garbage, its pretty obvious what happened.... it got cancelled for sucking so much.

Season 3 will premiere Sept. 5/08

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I don't think you can ask anything and get a consensus.

My Recipe: Chicken with Rice

Vinny’s Chicken with Rice

Ingredients:
6-8 chicken wings
1 3/4 cups Italian style rice
1 1/4 tsp. salt
pepper, parsley, parmesan cheese
Yield: four servings

Directions:
1. Fill a medium-sized pot with about 7 cups of water and bring to a boil. While waiting…
2. Wash chicken wings.
3. Cut the wing tips off.
4. Place wings in the pot.
5. When it reaches a boil, reduce to a simmer. Be careful it doesn't overflow. The fat will "foam up", but if simmering slowly enough, it will dissipate. Do NOT remove the foam. It provides much of the taste. While waiting...
6. Lightly rinse excess starch from rice.
7. After about 30 minutes, remove the chicken and spray with cold water. Do not discard the water in the pot.
8. Carefully separate the meat from the fat, bones and cartilage.
9. Ladle out about one third of the water in the pot and set aside (you may need some or all of it).
10. Place the meat back in the pot.
11. Place a chicken bouillon cube (or like powder) into the pot.
12. Put about 2 to 2 1/2 cups of rice into the pot.
13. Season with salt, pepper and parsley.
14. Simmer covered until rice is cooked, stirring occasionally.
15. Ladle out into bowls, sprinkle with more pepper, parsley and parmesan cheese if you have it.
16. Serve with garlic bread or bread sticks.

Notes:
1. If most of the water dissipates before the rice is fully cooked, stir in a bit of the reserve as you go along. The contents should be free of water when it's done.
2. Parmesan cheese is indispensable in an Italian household. I use it in many dishes--pastas and soups, for instance.