Perhaps Justice Thomas has never seen even a picture of an operating room theater, where students and fellow surgeons come to learn during the course of an actual operation?

You wouldn't have an big audience for a procedure that is well-known and common, like (presumably) a gall-bladder operation. It's when you're pushing the limits of technique that observation and (post-op) discussion become important.

Routine cases are resolved before reaching the Supreme Court. It is precisely at the level of the cases before the court when the links between legal practice and philosophy become most apparent and important. A seminar on law seems exactly what is needed.

Judge Thomas seems to me to be some sort of self-entitled ego-maniac. He feels no responsibility whatever to the citizenry of this country, is angry beyond reason about issues which seem to touch upon his vanity(Anita Hill, how DARE they question anything about my personal life to determine my fitness to serve on Supreme Court!), and does seem to harbor quite a grudge against people that my Christian faith tells me he should have forgiven or at least forgotten about long ago. Life isn't fair, but for narsissistic personalities any slight is remembered and worried over forever. It really disturbs me that this slight, angry intellect is one of the nine on the Supreme Court of this land. We could do so much better....