The only time I have attended religious services in recent years is funerals and weddings. It has not always been that way. I was an altar boy in early elementary school. My family moved around a lot but I spent most of my time through 7th grade in Catholic schools.

The United States has had one Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. In 2011 his religion is not the first topic when his name is mentioned. It certainly was a hot topic when he was running for president and when he got elected.

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) ran an ad in Austrailia a couple of years ago where a white man hands out fried chicken to some black fans at a cricket match. The commercial was used by KFC to try and take advantage of a big match coming up with a team from West India.

The ad did not raise any eye brows until it made it to the United States via the internet. The backlash in the US caused the ad to be pulled.

Medicare and Social Security are heading for financial failure. It is not question of if, it is a question of when.

The problem is less acute for Social Security. Still, the program is now paying out more than it is collecting. The descent has begun. Theoretically, it will be able to fund itself at 100% through 2036. That is one year sooner than was projected last year.

My grandfather graduated medical school in 1947. He served as a surgeon in the United States Navy during the Korean War. There were a lot of stories told at his funeral about World War II and Korea by friends and family.

My father turned to the US Navy when he had to come up with a way to pay for medical school. He barely missed the Vietnam War finishing his residency in Internal Medicine in 1977.

I started college in the midst of the federal law that caused all states to move their drinking age to 21. As a young member of my class I was one of the few not grandfathered in the next door state of Vermont. Establishments in Vermont regularly checked identification.

When I eventually did turn 21 I was not carded in New Hampshire. It is likely I could have been buying alcohol for years and would have never had my identification checked.

The Palin Posse was out in full force in 2008 when the Denali project was started. The claim was that it was proof that the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) had forced the evil oil companies to finally take action.

Conoco Phillips and BP knew well before Denali was formed that the gasline across Canada was not economically feasible. They also knew that Alaska politicians were in a delusional rage led by The Palin and her socialist ways.

One of the problems back during the health care debate was irresponsible use of statistics. A commonly quoted statistic was life expectancy which it was argued was lower in the United States.

It turns out that if you correct for homicides, accidents and suicides a legitimate argument can be made that the US has the highest life expectancy in the world.

When I was a junior in high school a travelling band of politically correct psychobabblers came visiting. They were given an hour of time to push their ideas upon the student body.

Most of it was based on your typical feel good "be nice to each other" vibe. There is nothing wrong with the message but it is not one that most people truly take to heart. That is especially true in the world of teenagers where almost nobody has learned the social skills to appropriately deal out and deal with criticism.

The Alaska Senate has produced a $2.9B capital budget as the end of the legislative session nears. The House is upset saying they have not had time to look at it. They are also lamenting that it is too big already and does not allow them to put in more pet projects.

I started my third year of medical school at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA. I was fortunate enough to weekly meet with Dr. Robert Ficalora. He ran the third year rotation and to this day my approach to patients is heavily influenced by his approach.

Bob was a character. He often would hand you an article to review. The copies would often be off center and the pages not lined up before stapled. It was an era of medicine that has long since passed. I read almost everything on-line in the modern world.

If the state of Alaska passed a law tomorrow that raised the taxes on medical practice to a marginal rate of 90% you can bet there would be an exodus of medical professionals to the south. The ripple effect would adversely effect hospitals, labs, surgery centers, medical supply contractors and radiology facilities.

Oil production is a far different beast than running a medical practice. For one thing, the profits are measured in billions of dollars instead of thousands. However, if you make the cost of doing business they too will look at closing up shop.

It will April soon and it will be time for the Anchorage municipal elections. Most residents are not paying attention. In 2010, less than 20% of voters bothered to make their way to the polls.

My father was an avid coin collector when he was a kid. It was always a window into history to look at his collection. It was not just the pressings that told the story. The steel pennies from 1943 offered a window into a country that needed copper for the war effort for example.

He spent a lot of time collecting silver coins around the time they stopped using silver in the 1960s. He now has rolls of the old coins. They definitely have a different feel than coins today.

There have been calls to take federal funding away from Planned Parenthood (PP) recently. The movement gained steam after hidden videos showed PP employees giving advice on how to navigate around the law. The law had to be navigated because it was a pimp trying to get help for his underage prostitutes in the country illegally.

A good piece of advice for organizations that tilt to the left might be to not talk to any pimps or prostitutes. That goes double if they are in the country illegally.

Charles Barkley is widely known for saying, "I am not a role model." The best part of his commercial that followed that statement was, "Just because I dunk a basketball does not mean I should raise your kids."

I remember driving through the rough neighborhoods of San Antonio one night at 2AM when Brook Army Medical Center had to shuttle their traffic during construction. It was remarkable to me that I saw young children walking the streets unsupervised at that time of day.

Wisconsin is one of the few states I have never visited. Friends tell me that the stench around the dairy farms there can be overwhelming. I have always imagined that it must be similar to the odor that takes over when you drive around Amarillo on I-40.

There was a funny smell that began to percolate in Madison recently. It all started Thursday when Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate left the capital rather than do their job and debate a bill.

I used to occasionally play some one on one basketball with a fellow freshman from Maine when I was at Dartmouth. We will call him Bob. The two of us were far off from each other politically and remain so to this day.

I was a chemistry major and went straight through to medical school and did the Air Force thing. Bob was a music major and ended up in Texas as a music graduate student.

It turns out that job opportunities can be limited for music majors so Bob ended up back in Maine in law school. After graduating he went back to Texas and now practices in a large firm in Austin.

My pathology from endoscopy was read by a USAF officer of Egyptian ancestry when I was on base. He was the nicest man you could possibly meet. His demeanor would change significantly however if the subject of Israel was injected into a conversation.

Egypt and Israel singed a peace treaty in 1979. Since that time it is hard to think of another Arab state that has been more tolerant of Israel.

Households look for places to save money when the need arises. Restaurants historically suffer during recessions as they rely on discretionary spending. That did not change with this recent recession.

What did change? People are not coming back to restaurants as quickly as they have in the past. People have grown wise to the money that can be saved.

REM wrote a song based on the assault of Dan Rather in 1986 where the assailants kept asking, "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" Michael Stipe looks at the song as someone trying to figure out what motivates the younger generation unsuccessfully.

The way people think can take odd turns. There are people in this world who just go crazy. You meet some of them when you pass through the psychiatry wards at points in your medical career.