From: "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Sampling M*A*S*H
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 08:19:32 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

	Steve makes some important qualifying points.  Blowing off steam on
one's off hours is necessary, human, and quite O.K. with me.  However, what
I saw in all the _M*A*S*H_ episodes that I saw was horseplay and
breezeshooting with the serious business of combat medicine treated as a
setup for humor.  One scene burned in my memory showed the TV doctors
skylarking in the operating theater with a patient's chest open.  If that
was "strictly business when the casualities come in", then I hope that
everyone involved with the TV series all have doctors just like those they
depicted.
	When 100% of a sample shows X with no incidences of not-X, the
researcher may reasonably conclude that the universe being studied is
uniformly X.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Smith [mailto:sgs at aginc.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 6:35 PM
To: WSFA members
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Grit and Punk

"Strong, Lee" wrote:
>
>         I didn't see the 30th Reunion Show but know what my Dad said.  He
> was on the south side of Hamburger Hill when the Communist Chinese were on
> the north side with a line of GI's in the middle.  Not a lot of fun.  Not
> much time for practical jokes in the operating theater, chasing the
nurses,
> or cross dressing during off hours.  Not much time for off hours.
Doctors,
> especially surgeons, are under a lot of stress in peacetime.  "Controlled
> craziness" under those circumstances is a recipe for disaster.

Humans cannot run on "full overload" 100% of the time.  The higher the
pressure, the harder the steam has to blow off at some point.  The
medical professions have probably the highest pressure possible, and the
stories I've heard about medical students get pretty weird.

The book version of MASH makes it clear that the craziness happens only
during slack times -- it's strictly business when the casualties come
in.  Thry tried to maintain this in the movie, with, IMHO, less than
total success.  I didn't watch the series enough to notice more than all
the craziness and bickering end instantly when Radar says "choppers".

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
"Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense."