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It’s 2am, and I just watched four episodes of “House.” I’m making my way through season 1, after getting hooked in January on season 2. A couple realizations after watching 4 episodes in the middle of the night:

1. This is the completely wrong show to watch when you need to sleep. For the same reasons I can never fall asleep after a fire call- adrenaline. The medical side of this show gets my heart pumping so to speak and now I can’t sleep.

2. This show almost makes me want to become a doctor- remember I said almost. I always wanted to be a doctor when I was young, to follow in the foot steps of my Grandpa, but at some point I lost the passion for that. Emergency Medicine definitely fills the need, and perhaps even greater than being a doctor would. I enjoy the immediacy of saving a person’s life. I think I would grow tired and frustrated with the politics and red tape involved inside the hospital side.

3. Last thought- I’ve been trying to figure out why I like Dr. House so much. If you don’t know the show, he’s very eccentric in his diagnosing skills and relations to his patients. The show is based on his amazing ability to diagnosis any problem. Therein lies my fascination with him.
Perhaps my favorite political science class was “Intro to Politics 200.” Taught by an experienced professor who had never taught an intro class, it was more of a political theory class than anything else.
One of our first classes the professor spent 45 minutes on the definition of a problem. In part, “a problem is a discrepancy with an attached causal attribute.” Or in other words, when the is doesn’t equal the ought and we’ve got a reason. If that makes any sense. A quick example and then some sleep for me. The park has trash all over. Sounds like a problem, something you might see in the paper if its a chronic ‘problem,’ but according to Professor Hess it’s only a discrepancy. There’s trash in the park and there shouldn’t be. Why? This is the question that Hess and House both ask.

- because there are not enough trash cans
- because the city has skimped out on the park’s budget
- because the trash truck only comes on friday
- and so on and so forth

Now we have a discrepancy with an attached causal attribute. And, solutions. Anything else Hess and House might argue, is just bickering. Stick to the point, what’s the problem. Don’t just tell me what’s wrong, tell me why. Apparently political science can make good tv shows…