A friend back East used to work for an eminent plastic surgeon.

[KamaAina]

No, not the kind you're thinking of ; he specialized in reconstructive surgery after accidents, etc.

Oh, man, the tales she used to tell me over lunch about this guy! To hear her tell it, the guy couldn't tie his shoes without her help!

You can see where I'm going with this. That guy should not be President. Neither should TaliBen.

[COLGATE4]

1. At the risk of being cynical, I've heard lot of nurses and

other surgical assistants opine as to how 'the surgeon couldn't tie his/her shoes without their help'. You don't get that far in a demanding profession with specializations and sub-sub specialization without knowing what you're doing.

[KamaAina]

2. Oh, he knew what he was doing, all right

once he got in the operating room. Outside it, his life was a total mess. Remind you of anyone?

[COLGATE4]

7. Yes - lots of MD's. Especially 'Gentle Ben'.

[randys1]

3. Geniuses often cant find the door to get out of a room.

I worked with one once a very long time ago.

He couldnt tell you who anybody in pop culture was, he couldnt tie a simple knot, but he was working on shit that we would have no concept of.

Carson is what this nation deserves if we let him get within 5% of the vote (remember, the GOP candidate only needs to get within 5% of the vote, the rest is stolen by Karl Rove's machines and the millions of Black people who will not be allowed to vote).

[KamaAina]

4. So you're saying Dumbya was a genius?!

[randys1]

5. no, see, he FOUND the door! LOL

[zipplewrath]

6. Surgery is a talent

I've often read that surgery is a talent, in the sense that one is born with it.

There was a bit of tongue in cheek many years back in an aerospace engineering journal about who was smarter, a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon. They found a guy that was both. He said probably the rocket scientist was because a brain surgeon had to be good at a certain physical skill and that most of that was innate in some sense. And mostly it involved doing something that someone else had figured out and then taught other people with that innate skill how to do. The rocket scientist on the other hand had to be able to figure out how to do things that had never been done before.