Public Biography
Gerald Pappas, 61, is a retired train scheduler for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and a resident of Berkeley, California. He spent thirty-one years at BART’s operations control center in Oakland, where he was responsible for the weekday timetable on the Richmond line and for what colleagues described as an unusually calm response to delays, which he attributed to “having already assumed them.”
On Oct. 13, 2026, Mr. Pappas underwent a laparoscopic cholecystectomy at Codornices Medical Center, during which the operating surgeon, Dr. Everett Lindqvist, dismissed the hospital’s robotic surgical system forty-seven minutes in and completed the procedure by unassisted reasoning. Mr. Pappas, who was under general anesthesia, was informed the next morning. He recovered without complication and was discharged the following day with an incision somewhat longer than the one in the brochure, which his surgeon told him had character.
Articles
- Surgeon Dismisses Robot Midway Through Operation, Vowing to Finish With ‘Pure Artisanal Thinking’ — the patient; asked, on being told his gallbladder was removed by hand, “as opposed to what?”
Articles
- Surgeon Dismisses Robot Midway Through Operation, Vowing to Finish With 'Pure Artisanal Thinking' — The remaining 112 minutes were narrated aloud by Dr. Lindqvist, including several decisions he described as 'not strictly necessary, but mine.'