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‘The Face of Testicular Pain’

October 28, 2011, 1:07 pm

When the image of Jesus appears on a Wal-Mart receipt or the Virgin Mary shows up on a slice of toast, the secular world howls with derision at the faithful who line up to witness these Rorschach “miracles.”

But when the scrotal ultrasound of a 45-year-old patient with severe testicular pain and a possible mass revealed the surprising image of a man in distress, urologists at Queen’s University, in Ontario, followed proper scholarly procedure: They submitted it to Urology, the official journal of the International Society of Urology.

“The residents and staff alike were amazed to see the outline of a man’s face staring up out of the image, his mouth agape as if the face seen on the ultrasound scan itself was also experiencing severe epididymo-orchitis,” wrote the authors, G. Gregory Roberts and Naji J. Touma, in an article that appeared in the journal’s September issue. “A brief debate ensued on whether the image could have been a sign from a deity (perhaps ‘Min,’ the Egyptian god of male virility); however, the consensus deemed it a mere coincidental occurrence rather than a divine proclamation.”

The patient underwent an orchiectomy, or testicular removal, and the mass proved benign, but evidently not divine.

—Don Troop (via Reddit)

(Image copyright Elsevier Inc.)

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  • df1995

    I’m surprised that elite institutions have as many Pell Grant students as they considering how competitive admissions is. It’s not doing poor students any favors to admit them to colleges where they cannot survive academically. Whether this vast difference in skill levels is the result of innate ability, different socialization, or unequal educational opportunities, or some combination, certainly college is not the level at which to address it.

    Elite colleges have a vital role in America, educating an elite. They can’t both educate this elite and provide opportunities for students whose skills are below high school level.

  • bcpubaff

    A great article. It is a pleasure seeing a book by a biographer of poets being made into a movie by a serious-minded actor. A good day for academe and a great tribute to Paul Mariani.

  • prhelm1

    Add whatever savings are realized to the endowment – or to long-term contingency funds.  New hires will become senior faculty eventually, so using short-term savings to create long-term obligations is not a good strategy.  If you absolutely must spend the savings in the short-term, spend it on faculty development to incentivize faculty to try new forms of pedagogy or new curricular initiatives.

  • david_r_evans

    Prhelm, these are not short-term savings.  They are permanent, long-term savings–it’s money that’s already in the budget attached to tenured faculty lines that are going empty.  New faculty members hired at entry-level salaries will inflate the budget at precisely the same rate as the current tenured, senior faculty members, with one exception, which is the two salary increases they’d get for promotions.  Chickenfeed in the overall budget picture.

    We have millions of dollars in long-term contingency funds already, in quasi-endowment funds, various reserves, and other places.  We also already have substantially over $150k in budgeted funds for faculty development, so that’s not a pressing need either.  While out endowment could certainly be larger (which institution’s couldn’t?), it’s big enough that adding a couple hundred thousand in salary savings to it is basically immaterial.

    Any of these options is an investment in the institution’s future.  Raising salaries increases faculty satisfaction and makes it easier to recruit new faculty.  Adding faculty lines in pressing areas or in new curricular areas is likely to improve the institution’s academic quality.  Both of these outcomes are more valuable than increasing our endowment earnings by $5,000 or $10,000 per year, which is what a deposit of $200k into the endowment would do.

  • sanjoaquin

    The right anthropologist or sociologist might know a great deal about sustainability practices around the globe, and you could achieve a couple of your goals thereby.  What a nice opportunity you have in these interesting times! 

  • david_r_evans

    Sanjoaquin, my thoughts exactly.  Thanks.

  • dxg197

    I like your logic but you stopped short of saying one thing, “full-time faculty add value to the university”.  That is why hiring more faculty or giving pay equity to existing faculty is important.  By depending more on adjunct faculty we are lowering quality, making teaching less consistent and cheating our students.  Hiring full-time faculty adds value through increased enrollment, increased quality and all the faculty-lead initiatives that never get mentioned (like new and improved programs, student advising, mentoring, etc…).  Cost increases in higher education have very little to do with faculty salaries but the solution seems to be reducing the number of full-time faculty.  The result is lower quality and higher costs.  That is why people question the value of higher education.

  • http://twitter.com/notknott Bill Knott

    and if money is the problem, why don’t they just move to a POD model, which would cost them practically nothing?  they could still publish and promote those avanthick tomes (and offer free pdf downloads of the books)—there’s no law says they have to stick to ye old archaic deadtree traditional “trade publishing”

  • 72trombones

    How much money does the UC Press want to revive the series and keep it going? Does it want to make it a purely donor-supported series?

  • jamesgpete

    Recall, if you will, the plaintive refrain regarding every young person’s choosing of a major in college. The rather obvious linking between school and job drowned interest in the humanities.

    I would submit that the reverse is now true. In this time of readily available content, via computer, not schools, what rules, what governs a person’s attention? Attention is the scarce resource, not information. How is this decision made? Answer: the humanities gives you the operating structure for the process.

    Imagine the opposite of this familiar: “Oh, poetry’s great, I suppose, but what kind of work would you do?” It’s difficult, but the antidote to the lost feeling of being adrift in a sea of information. “Water, water everywhere./But where to stop and drink?”

  • chguk

    Hmm, except, of course, that most D-I *football* programs are profitable. The problem for the athletic department is they have to spend a bunch of money on scholarships for non-revenue sports (which, of course, enroll higher proportions of kids who could afford to pay tuition anyway).

  • chguk

    I see what you did with part (2) there, but honestly, we could just allow colleges to pay players whatever they liked, rather than imposing an arbitrary cap on their income. 

    Quite why it’s OK to regulate the pay of college football and basketball players is beyond me. Are there any other examples of professions where collusion to limit worker compensation is acceptable?

  • counselorfred

    Goodness.  Everyone seems to have read Jbarman’s post and assumed he is an out of touch parent with a child who is not ready for college.  Can we not allow these poor youngsters to just act their ages?  We are talking about teenagers here, people.  Proximity of food is important.  His child sounds very much like my two teenagers, who, by the way, are excellent, and very happy, students.  Some kids are driven and focused about everything at a young age, like apparently ruthgree’s daughter.  Others are like my senior–they take their time, and they procrastinate.  We were a little worried early on and mentioned a gap year.  She looked at us like we had just suggested a sex change operation.  Let’s be honest–college searching is on top of all the other stuff they have on their hyperactive plates and I don’t blame my daughter for thinking of it as a bit of an albatross. I felt the same way at her age, i.e. overwhelmed by the possibilities.  She was almost brought to tears by the size and density of
    the Fiske Guide.  But this is where parents come in.  Knowing our daughter, and remembering how we felt at the same age,
    we helped her focus on colleges that we thought would suit her basic
    criteria and our basic criteria for a fit.  Then we toured some of
    them. We have now toured 7 and lifestyle
    issues were as important to her, and possibly more so, than the student teacher
    ratio. And why not?  They are going to spend four crucial years living at this place and they might as well pick one that makes them feel happy and has amenities that please them.  The rest will fall into place if the list is drawn up properly.  Student teacher ratios and graduation rates?  That is the kind of thing that should be taken into account in coming up with your initial list, and then used as a differentiating factor when making a final choice.  It is not something that means much to a teenager and/or is what they are most interested in while reading the college bios or touring.  They want to know if it has their potential majors and how it feels.  Think of it as similar to your search for an apartment/house or a life partner.  It’s feel and fit.  As for communications from the schools, I think Ms. Supiano’s conclusions are just right.  These kids are growing up in the information overload age and they don’t need more and more environmentally objectionable snail mail or more emails.  They may or may not be interested in your school, but an initial contact with a follow up is really enough, with further follow ups dictated by their responses if they provide any.  If they like you, they will contact you.  This generation is amazing about doing their own research.  I agree with ruthgree that barraging them with stuff is ridiculous.  It just makes them roll their eyes and go deaf.  I’m guessing that’s not the response you’re looking for.  By the way, our tours were enjoyable but mostly ended with daughter ambivalent.  She thought several were quite nice and could see herself at them but she wasn’t jumping up and down.  On the last tour, daughter turned to us as soon as it was over and said, “I want to apply ED here!”  So many parents told me, and I didn’t really believe them, it’s practically immediate–they know it when they see it.   

  • 22026266

    Getting old … what is ED?

  • taraw

    Early decision  :)

  • 22026266

    thanks for your time.  As the days go by I can barely read these things anymore.  getting really old.  is there a place to look these things up?

  • 11333651

    At last, the real inspiration for Edvard Munch is revealed!

  • bevfreeman

    This is not news nor is it very interesting.

  • 11223140

    That’s why it’s in “Tweed.”

  • bfrank1

    It may not be news, but it is VERY interesting if you have ever had epididymo-orchitis, severe or otherwise.

  • tlgriffith18

    Did you see the subtitle for section? It’s called “Taking academe a little less seriously.” It took maybe 30 seconds to read this – not a huge waste of time by any means. Just take it as it is meant: a lightweight comment on something interesting in the world.

  • landrumkelly

    11333651 said:
    “At last, the real inspiration for Edvard Munch is revealed!”Now that is really funny–there are screams and then there are screams!  Thank you, 11333651.

  • dopefein

    I knew there was a little, angry man inside me who comes out when I feel pain in this or that region of the body.  My mom didn’t believe me, but oh, she will now…she will now.  I just have to figure out how to appease him.

  • minnesotan

    It’s always helpful to put a face on these types of illness, lest people suspect we make them up.

  • 11182967

    Seen from the right angle, this could be the man in the moon.

  • http://theladyexpounds.wordpress.com Liz Alexander

    That thing is incredibly creepy, whatever it is..

  • http://www.facebook.com/dan.l.warren Dan Warren

    The face is quite clearly that of the OMG Rage Face:

    http://cdn2.knowyourmeme.com/i/000/075/873/original/Raisins_Face.jpg

    He is widely known to be a worshiper of Inglip:

    http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/inglip#.TrDHj0Oa9tk

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523676190 Nathalia Daliz Clark

    The divine Face of Testicular Pain’

  • donquijote

    A recent university President and former President of ABET (a national and international accreditation organization for engineering) stated in a public address that for the first time a great deal of research is being published in languages other than English (he was referring to Chinese).  His point was simple: if we don’t learn other languages, we will miss out on that research, putting us behind. Moreover, I work a great deal with botanists and geneticists in Spain, most of whom were trained in the U.S., and even their research is not always written in English. How can learning another language be a detriment?  Hundreds of surveys have shown over and over again that if US companies had employees that were better versed in other languages and cultures, their profits would increase and they would be more competitive. Then, they state that finding these employees is difficult. Seems pretty obvious to me that learning another language makes you more competitive and better suited for the best jobs.

    And one remark to Laurence Summers’ article: for a so-called academic and former university president (not to mention a former cabinet member), he provided NO RESEARCH in his article!  Pure fiction and opinion backed by no investigation, no supporting facts, and a very poor understanding of the world and how it operates.

  • donquijote

    I wholly agree with this article and I appreciate how it talks about the hard and soft skills language learners have. But, what is unfortunate is that articles such as these do not simply state what really matters to all of those who do not speak another language or care to: if you know a second (or third) language, you make more money; your company makes more money; both are more competitive. Unfortunately, until we talk in terms of monetary gains (salaries and profits) most people could care less.  It is not until you tell a student that knowing another language and studying in another country could increase your pay by 30% or more (according to some surveys) that s/he stands up and takes note. Unfortunately again, the discussion has to center on that, or politicians, leaders, university professors, students, and others will not take note. I wish the debate could center more about how learning a language and knowing a culture enriches one’s life, but, quite simply, most people do not care.

  • jmonroe3

    Memo from L. Wittgenstein to L. Summers: “The limits of our world[s] are the limits of our language[s].” 

  • arrive2__net

    Thanks for your reply.

    In the research I cited ( again: http://www.cccco.edu/Portals/4/TRIS/research/Abstracts/Workforce%20Development/bilingual.pdf ) the effect of educational attainment was statistically controlled.

    The researchers tried to limit the affects of ethnic discrimination in the findings by including only Hispanics in the sample.  However it seems to me that many of the bilinguals may have had Spanish as their first language, and therefore would be more likely to experience discrimination based on an accent.  Since educational attainment itself was statistically controlled it should not be a factor. 

    Correlation does not prove causation, no doubt, but the main point I was making does not  require an attribution of “causation”. I’m saying that to the extent that learning the second language took time and effort, which might have been directed to other learning, the apparent absence of this “other learning” did not correlate with less income. Or, you could say it the other way around, in that population, spending time learning a second language (and thus becoming bilingual) correlated moderately with more income (outside the public sector). 

    Bart Schuster
    OnlineGraduateSchool.tripod.com/All.htm
    Twitter.com/arrive2_net
     
     

  • hsstr8

    In the U.S., Spanish is the clear first choice for K-5 most communities (though French might work better in the far Northeast and some Louisiana parishes, Cantonese or Mandarin in various Chinatowns, etc.). As for 6-12 and beyond, when we’re talking about the achievement of full literacy, many other choices emerge–and are made more manageable by virtue of students’ already knowing two languages. (See http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/05/05/straight for a full-blown pipe dream along these lines.)

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