{"id":487,"date":"2007-06-11T18:57:46","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T09:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-06-11\/487"},"modified":"2007-06-11T18:57:46","modified_gmt":"2007-06-11T09:57:46","slug":"medical-science-confirms-i-am-full-of-hot-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2007-06-11\/487","title":{"rendered":"Medical Science Confirms: I am Full of Hot Air<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

Fumie and I had a ningen dokku<\/i> (\u4eba\u9593<\/span>\u30c9\u30c3\u30af) medical checkup\ntoday. It's like an<\/span> elaborate physical, including X-rays,\nelectrocardiographs, etc. The low point<\/span> for me was a camera<\/span> down the throat to\ncheck the lining of the stomach (high-resolution video coming soon! :-)).\nFumie had an MRI as well, which she also didn't care for.<\/p>\n\n

The “ningen<\/i>” in the title means “human,”\nbut I couldn't<\/span> find anyone who knew the stand-alone meaning or origin of\n“dokku<\/i>.” Looking it up now, I\nsee<\/span><\/a> that it's from the English “dock,” and thus the imagery\nof a full<\/span> checkup like this is comparable to bringing a ship<\/span> into\ndrydock.<\/p>\n\n

Most salaried workers get one form or another of this kind of checkup\nevery few years at their company's expense, but we decided to get them on\nour own ($1,200 for the pair) because it seems like a good<\/span> idea to have a\ncheckup<\/span> from time to time.<\/p>\n\n

One test was related to the lungs' capacity to hold air<\/a>: how much\nair you can breath out. I don't<\/span> know that I'd ever done one of these tests,\nbut I recall<\/span> my dad talking about having done them when he taught\nelementary education at Kent<\/a>. He used a<\/span> simple version of the test (blowing air\ninto an overturned, underwater beaker) as something that could be used to\ndemonstrate various scientific principles to elementary kids.<\/p>\n\n

Having grown up on a farm as a child and having been a runner<\/span> as an\nadult, my barrel-chested dad has a fairly<\/span> substantial lung capacity. I\ndon't<\/span> know that he ever told his students the results of his personal test,\nbut he always had them try it themselves (because, after all, in college\njust as in primary school, interactive classes are more fun). Football\nplayers and marathon runners alike could never eclipse his volume. If I recall<\/span> one story properly, a petite<\/span> woman did eclipse his volume once, such\nthat Dad thought she must have made a mistake<\/span> in doing the test. Doing it\nagain confirmed that she simply had amazing lung capacity. I think<\/span> she was\na volleyball<\/span> player, for what that's worth.<\/p>\n\n

In any case, today after I did the test, the doctor looking at the\nreadouts started chuckling and shaking his head in a “well, whaddya\nknow!” kind of way. I asked<\/span> him what my lung capacity<\/a> was,\nand he said “7.43 liters.” Well, despite my having heard my\nDad's lung capacity stories, I didn't<\/span> recall any numbers so I don't<\/span> know\nwhether 7.43 liters is large or small, but when he asked “do you\nreally do that much sports?” I got<\/span> an idea. As he looked<\/span> back to\ncheck more readings, he sort of muttered half to himself and half to me\n“I've never even seen 7 liters....”.<\/p>\n\n

So, clearly, I have another<\/span> bullet point for my resume. Somewhere\nbetween “wrote Mastering\nRegular Expressions<\/a>” and “8-year software architect for the\nYahoo! Finance<\/a> web\nsite,” I'll have to add “Has a commanding<\/span> 7.43-liter lung\ncapacity.”<\/p>\n\n

\ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fumie and I had a ningen dokku (\u4eba\u9593\u30c9\u30c3\u30af) medical checkup today. It's like an elaborate physical, including X-rays, electrocardiographs, etc. The low point for me was a camera down the throat to check the lining of the stomach (high-resolution video coming soon! :-)). Fumie had an MRI as well, which she also didn't care for.<\/p>

The \"ningen\" in the title means \"human,\" but I couldn't find anyone who knew the stand-alone meaning or origin of \"dokku.\" Looking it up now, I see that it's from the English \"dock,\" and thus the imagery of a full checkup like this is comparable [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}