Causes of death

[davidn]

When I have to write something to spit out reams of dummy patient data and the schema includes fields like "cause of death", you can bet that I'm going to write a generator that lightens its mood a bit. Although I imagine they might want to hand it to someone less mad before such a tool gets released to anyone else.

As they seem to be the leading cause of death among my surrealist population - watch out for refrigerators, particularly the ones that hide up trees.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

And for the love of god, have the sense not to pick a fight with one! No matter how many times it looks at you funny.... (http://www.curiosite.com/scripts/product/enproduct.php?idproducto=100000013#)

[premchaia_pre4]

You have two “Bitten by fridge” there. Is that intentional?

[davidn]

Is it so inconceivable that two people might have died by being bitten by a fridge ;) The generator just picks a random "action" (swallowed, eaten/squashed/spiked by) and a random object from two lists, each time a new cause of death is needed.

[premchaia_pre4]

Oho. I thought the listing was supposed to be of distinct causes. I couldn't immediately divine the meaning of the other two columns; I thought the one on the left might have been some kind of frequency despite its name. :-)

[davidn]

The way it works with the real data is that... according to this medical data storage standard, each cause of death or medicine or condition has a unique ID that they're classified into (a bit like the Dewey classification system), and that first column holds the category while the text column has the actual original entered value. For my test data, I just threw in some random numbers - matching the IDs doesn't matter to me here.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

"Freak accident with kettle."

[premchaia_pre4]

Actually that's quite realistic if it's a poorly-made electric kettle. Could cause a housefire!

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, let's just say my mind went...elsewhere.

[davidn]

Who sees "kettle" and immediately goes to there as the source of the accident...!

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Given some of the stuff this group's been exposed to/come up with, I'd say that's quite low on the list of things to raise a fuss over!

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I had a friend who plugged in an electric kettle, then set it on the stove and turned on the stove, because, well, it was shaped like the old-style stove kettles...

[davidn]

I cannot adequately convey how worried I am by the use of the tense "had" there.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Thankfully my friend is still in the present tense! However, the electric kettle (and stove) are now in the past.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I misread that second-to-last one as "swallowed by bicycle." That...would actually be rather impressive.

[kjorteo]

"Lost fight with partridge"

[xaq.livejournal.com]

"Squashed flat by pudding"

[kjorteo]

"Turned into avatar of True Pudding"

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I don't know if that would really count as "dying"...

Perhaps "turned into parfait by Lord Pudi?"

[kjorteo]

And the world (and this unfortunate victim) was engulfed in pudding.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

"Drowned in vat of half-dead fried rice."

[kjorteo]

"Massacred [by] ramen."

[xaq.livejournal.com]

"Swallowed Okosan's pudding." (A death wish if ever there was one!)

[dr-dos.livejournal.com]

I find myself using Ron Paul as my default placeholder person.

Today I had to fill in some data for "types of pets", and Ron Paul had an Owlbear and a Gorgon.