Polite Dissent

What’s your UDQ (Über-Doctor Quotient)? Do you have what it takes to be an über-doctor, the classic comic book doctor who can do everything? Take this simple quiz and find out: Several common family situations are described below. How would you, the nascent über-doctor, respond?

1. Your spouse complains that you spend too much time in the lab, and not enough time with them.
A. Buy your spouse flowers and take them out for a night on the town.
B. I have a spouse?
C. Remind them in no uncertain terms that science is your life.
D. Clone yourself, so that you can keep your spouse happy, but still keep up wour work in the lab.

2. Your daughter thinks that Britney Spears is the greatest musician ever, and plays her music loud enough to rattle the windows.
A. Confiscate her stereo.
B. Invent a special radio that substitutes a Patsy Cline song whenever your daughter tries to play a Britney Spears song.
C. Take her to the symphony, repeatedly, until she learns what real music is.
D. Build a time machine, go back in time, and prevent Britney’s parents from ever meeting.

3. Another driver cuts you off in traffic.
A. Ignore him. He is insignificant compared to your genius,
B. Three words: Alien death ray.
C. Tailgate him, honk, and give him the finger.
D. Using spare components found in the glove compartment, build a remote control device that will let you take control of his car. Have him pass a nearby squad car doing 80, in the wrong lane, backwards. That’ll teach him.

4. Your young child’s pet goldfish has unexpectedly died.
A. Flush!
B. Breed a species of long-lived goldfish that will outlive your child, and quite possibly, the human race.
C. Calmly explain the concept of death to them and buy them another goldfish.
D. Secretly replace the dead goldfish with a robot goldfish you built. Not only will this robo-fish never die, but it can teach them the ABCs and math up through trigonometry.

5. You find yourself trapped in a broken elevator with the very pregnant Mrs. Belding, who (of course) goes into labor.
A. Use the elevator’s phone to call 911.
B. Luckily, the credit-card sized first aid kit you keep in your wallet is equipped for any emergency, from childbirth through major surgery.
C. Try to fix the elevator.
D. Deliver the child, circumcise him, baptise him, toilet train him, and have him reading at a thrird third-grade level by the time the elevator is repaired twenty-minutes later.

Part 2 of the UDQ Quiz (including questions #6-10 and scoring) are coming soon, so keep your answers handy.