Douglas L. Ross - My Personal Reflections

I sometimes do public speaking at industry events or at company meetings. I'm told that I am, at best, a mediocre speaker unless I'm really passionate about something. That passion seems to give me the words and to animate me in a way that makes me much more interesting than usual. It also seems to enable me to even deliver a joke properly when normally I'm terrible at telling jokes. So what does all that have to do with The Hudson Theater in New York? I was staying at the Millennium Broadway hotel next door recently and I just happened to come across the write up below about the history of The Hudson Theater. It brought back a wonderful memory. Sort of my "fifteen minutes of fame" kind of thing. Here's the story. In the 1950's I once attended a live airing of The Tonight Show (when Steve Allen was host) at The Hudson Theater. I don't remember that much about the show but there was one funny line from the guest comedian George Gobble that has stuck wit...

So as a joke, I asked the WolframAlpha search engine the question "when did life on Earth begin and when will it end." The answer was "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure how to compute an answer from your input." But the "answer" can sort of be derived from numerous other places on the web (which WolframAlpha apparently hasn't indexed yet or doesn't agree with) such as Wikipedia and it goes like this: The earth is apparently 4.54 billion years old. That's relatively young in relationship to the universe which is figured to be ~13.7 billion years according to Wikipedia... Current interpretations of astronomical observations indicate that the age of the Universe is 13.73 ( ± 0.12) billion years, [ 1 ] and that the diameter of the observable Universe is at least 93 billion light years , or 8.80 × 10 26 metres . The Earth's age calculation by WolframAlpha is apparently derived by Wolfram from one or more of the same sources which are also refe...

We got to see our new grandson Wyatt this weekend. He looks like his father.

I read this rather sad article today about the Reader's Digest declaring bankruptcy and it made me think of my father. He was born and raised in rural Kentucky and was a bit dyslectic. As a result I don't think they taught him how to read properly. Consequently, reading was difficult for him his whole life and in his youth he was not well read at all. Reader's Digest was a godsend for my Dad because it was short, to the point, easy to read in larger type, and with content that was interesting, timely, educational, often inspiring, and nearly always wholesome. The Reader's Digest became an indispensable part of his life and practically the only thing he ever read besides the Bible. He read every issue cover to cover and sometimes more than once. He was so attached to it that he just could not bring himself to throw out the old issues he had read. Our house was always littered with stacks and stacks of past Reader's Digest issues. I have to admit that although I'...

From Douglas L Ross' Weblog My youngest son Jason and his wife Christy just had their first child. His name is Jason Wyatt Ross and he was born Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at about 2:00pm at the Emory John's Creek hospital in John's Creek, Georgia. Little Wyatt was a healthy 7 lbs 9 oz and 20 inches long. He's just about the cutiest newborn you've ever seen. Mother and son are doing just great and so is my son, the new daddy. We're very proud of them all and we wish Jason and Christy the very best as they embark on the life adventure of parenthood with little Wyatt.

My youngest son Jason and his wife Christy are at the hospital as we speak waiting for our newest grandson to arrive. We're on our way. Say a prayer that everything goes well.

Health Spottr may not be "the" source of all wisdom on who the leading thinkers are in Health Care, but they aren't that bad either. What made me think about this is that of the 100 names on this "Future of Health 100" list, I had only ever heard of about six of them. I'm getting a little older and starting to become very sensitive to the health care subject, so I resolved today that I'm going to figure out who these people are and what they think about health care that might affect my life.