Once again, I am in receipt of a letter from a specialist (a surgical subspecialty, of course) that has me alternately shaking my head in disbelief and trembling with fury.

The letter was clearly crafted with electronic medical record software to support billing as high a level office visit as possible. In addition to a complete specialty-specific organ system examination, a “Multi-System Physical Examination” was also documented:

• Constitutional: well-nourished, no physical deformities, normally developed, good grooming
• Neck: neck symmetrical, not swollen, normal tracheal position
• Respiratory: no labored breathing, no use of accessory muscles
• Cardiovascular: normal temperature, normal extremity pulses, no swelling, no varicosities
• Lymphatic: no enlargement of neck, axillae, groin
• Skin: no paleness, no jaundice, no cyanosis, no lesion, no ulcer, no rash
• Neurologic/Psychiatric: oriented to time, oriented to place, oriented to person, no depression, no anxiety, no agitation
• Gastrointestinal: no mass, no tenderness, no rigidity, non-obese abdomen
• Eyes: Normal…

I’ve been sitting here in shock and reflection for about five minutes from this video by Gary Turk called Look Up. I’ve never wanted as many people to watch a video as I’ve wanted everyone I know to watch this one.

We can all relate to this and we are ALL guilty of walking around, looking at our phones, sitting at home watching a screen and missing every day opportunities and sights.

“When you’re too busy looking down, you don’t see the chances you miss
So look up from your phones, shut down those displays
We have a finite existence, a set number of days
Don’t waste your life getting caught in the net
because when the end comes, nothing’s worse than regret”

Watch and listen:

I never actually did that TIME study of how much time I’ve wasted on Facebook, because I don’t want to know. I’m sure the…

Studying how a vertical circulation spine and the interaction that it can introduce to the building organization was an enlivening and creatively infusive exercise. Each scheme that was developed seemed as strong and powerful as the previous one and yet each one very distinctive with its own strong character statement.

Note: I owe both the concept for this measurement of income segregation and much of the actual data – all of it, except for 2012 – to Sean Reardon and Kendra Bischoff, who wrote a series of wonderful papers on the subject and then were kind enough to send me a spreadsheet of their data from Chicago a while ago. The maps, however, are mine, as is all the data from 2012, and any mistakes in them or in the interpretation of the data is entirely my responsibility.

I think one reason I’ve felt less than compelled by Chicagoland, CNN’s reasonably well-made documentary series, is that its tale-of-two-cities narrative is so worn, so often repeated, that it’s become a little dull. Not the actual fact of inequality – which only seems to cut deeper over time – but its retelling.

In fact, I think the point has long passed…