Surgery Is Controlled Trauma

The title of this post is a quote from this very enjoyable and easy to read book, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside, written by Katrina Firlik. I've already loaned the book to my daughter, so I can't go into too much detail in this review.

Suffice it to say that Katrina is a neurosurgeon, which is a rather exclusive profession. Furthermore, she's a female neurosurgeon, which makes her even more rare. And, an excellent writer. Yikes. She is a talented one!

I'm not a doctor.

I don't even play one on TV.

Closest I ever came was getting my Wilderness EMT certificate.

I'm not a writer.

I don't even play one in the blogosphere.

Closest I ever came was, well, writing this blog!

Katrina does a nice job introducing the life of a neurosurgeon and mixing in patient stories, medical school stories, politics of the job, and tools of the trade.

OK, but this is a blog about Venture Capital, right? So why the review of a surgeon's book?

First, I like all things medical. Second, the neurosurgeon profession appears to be a very exclusive one, much like that of a VC. And, it turns out that Katrina is married to Andrew Firlik who just so happens to be a Venture Capitalist with Foundation Medical Partners. There. I tied it all together for you.

Just go read the book.

Tags: Frontal Lobe, Neurosurgery, Neurosurgeon, Books, Reviews, VC, Venture Capital, Katrina Firlik, Brian Berliner, brianberliner

Comments

Bill Coleman Joins 3tera Advisory Board

I think this move surprised a number of people, since Bill recently wrapped up Cassatt Corproation, getting the technology and people acquired by Computer Associates . However, I was not surprised at all. The announcement, via 3tera Welcomes Bill Coleman : You may or may not have seen the recent press realease. Bill Coleman, IT/Silicon Valley luminary, Founder and CEO of BEA Systems, has joined 3Tera’s Advisory Board. Yes, this alone is a great testimonial to what we have accomplished in our field. Getting dignitaries such as Bill does not come easy. But here’s the best part - this has a lot more than just marquee value and I doubt that Bill would have joined us if that was the case. Bill, especially since his most recent stint as Founder and CEO of Cassatt Systems, is an extremely knowledgeable visionary in the area of utility and Cloud Computing; and, data center automation. So, Bill will be extremely valuable, reviewing and tweaking both our business plans and techno

Kernel-based Virtual Machine hits Linux

Many congratulations to my good friend Moshe Bar and his team over at (stealth-mode startup) Qumranet . Techworld reports that the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) project has been accepted into the 2.6.20 version of the Linux kernel distribution. KVM is an Open Source kernel driver that basically allows a Linux kernel to host virtual machines, as plain old Linux processes, that can run Linux or Windows (or other x86-based operating systems). It runs only on hardware that support Intel's VT instruction set (which is fine) and will soon support the AMD-V instruction set as well. This is cool for a number of reasons. It's Open Source, released under the GPL. It basically turns the Linux that we all know and love into a "hypervisor". Linux-as-hypervisor makes sense because Linux already knows how to manage devices, memory, processes, multi-cores, etc. VMware ESX is, essentially, a "hypervisor" - a small kernel, built on Linux as it turns out, that

Big In Japan Open Sources Their Ruby On Rails Tools

The kind folks over at Big In Japan have graciously decided to Open Source the code they used to build their demo web sites . It's all Ruby on Rails code, and it's being released with a GPL license. The code trees being made available include: elfURL ~ URL Shortner FeedVault ~ OPML file storage FrankenFeed ~ RSS feed merger InstantFeed ~ RSS feeds via email QwikPing ~ Ping Server SocialMail ~ RSS via email Very cool. I just love the Open Source community . I have actually been writing some code of late, and it's great to have some reference code to check out. Not sure if I'm going to go with Ruby on Rails yet, however. And, for the record. I have no idea if this is big in Japan. Tags: Open Source , GPL , Ruby On Rails , Big In Japan , Brian Berliner , brianberliner

Brian Berliner's Brain

Search This Blog