The World is Round

Another difference between the work of an editor and Sisyphus is that the editor should not be alone on the ascent and that is the main point that I wish to make in this column. TR is a publication both for and by the membership of the ACR. It will succeed best as a team effort. TR needs ideas for articles that will stir interest because they engage the heart and soul of today’s rheumatology practice.

TR is the voice of the members of ACR and ARHP and, as described by Peggy Crow in her thoughtful and eloquent presidential speech, an essential venue for communication for our organization. Given the diversity of the ACR and its division, the ARHP, there will be a multitude of voices. I urge everyone to contribute your ideas and join what should be an entertaining and absorbing conversation about the state of rheumatology as well as its future.

Over-Wired Lives

While I was in Washington, I was struck by both the power and paradoxes of modern communication. Like many of my colleagues, each morning I strapped onto my belt my Blackberry and cell phone, making sure that my cell phone was on the vibrate mode. (To the person whose cell phone blasted “Moonlit Haze” during a session in Ballroom B/C, please learn to use the controls of your miraculous little gizmo. I am no techie but I have mastered the buttons. If I can do it, so can you.)

So armed electronically, I was ready to receive calls and missives from the deep reaches of cyberspace. In the midst of a crowded lecture room bathed in the radiant glow of PowerPoint, the buzz from one of these electronic contraptions is actually kind of nice. There is excitement as the email is opened and I look expectantly at the little screen for some piece of good news, like a paper accepted or an invitation to a chic new bistro.

More than 13,000 rheumatologists, health professionals, and other guests from around the globe attended the 2006 ACR Annual Meeting in the Washington Convention Center.

Alas, the content of most of the 240 emails I received in Washington was trivial. As I learn with grim regularity, Olga in Russia is still looking for a man to rescue her from the loneliness of the frozen steppes and a host of companies want me to buy “cheap men’s pills!!!” I am suspicious about such advertisements, but if someone was offering me a product to enhance my grant funding instead of my anatomy, I might be tempted to log on and lay out the big bucks.