Moira rarely shares space, which may account for her pickled expression. PorkPie rarely doesn't.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Cheek to Cheek
Moira rarely shares space, which may account for her pickled expression. PorkPie rarely doesn't.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
La Deploration Sur la Mort de Ockeghem
Hat tip to AndyG. Story in the StarTribune here.
"Fireworks called Run Hadji Run were pulled off the shelves of a Wisconsin store after Minnesota Muslims complained that they were racist.
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) said that both the name and the packaging are demeaning. One side of the package has a drawing of Uncle Sam yanking the long beard of a man in traditional Muslim attire, while the other shows a Stealth bomber flying over a group of Arabs riding camels."
It's some little girl's birthday today.
Be safe, people, and stay the fuck out of the hospital.
A Party of Jays
Psychoanalysis takes a long time. Truth is elusive. The self is a chimera. People need to make a living.
We can only really speak meaningfully of things that exist. Perhaps we should put aside all discussion of promises.
We can devise a word or words for each thing that is discovered in our reality. Unfortunately, we can also devise words for things that have never existed and never will exist. This creates problems in language. These problems spread and evolve virally, becoming pandemic.
Once I knew a man named Lou. He'd had a stroke that destroyed his ability to speak, meaning that the Broca's area of his brain had suffered while the Wernicke's area was relatively intact. He could sing though. Bye bye blackbird.
I become deeply agitated upon seeing homes or buildings with complex roof lines. I absolutely could not live in such a place. No dormers nor gables for me, please. Please.
There are about five thousand breeds of dogs. Their innate ability and desire to interact with people subjected dogs to selective pressures to evolve in many different ways. Not so for cats. They only have about a dozen genes that are selectively manipulated by cat breeders for color, body style, etc. Cuteness, maybe.
Headphones on. Lights off. Feet up.
We can only really speak meaningfully of things that exist. Perhaps we should put aside all discussion of promises.
We can devise a word or words for each thing that is discovered in our reality. Unfortunately, we can also devise words for things that have never existed and never will exist. This creates problems in language. These problems spread and evolve virally, becoming pandemic.
Once I knew a man named Lou. He'd had a stroke that destroyed his ability to speak, meaning that the Broca's area of his brain had suffered while the Wernicke's area was relatively intact. He could sing though. Bye bye blackbird.
I become deeply agitated upon seeing homes or buildings with complex roof lines. I absolutely could not live in such a place. No dormers nor gables for me, please. Please.
There are about five thousand breeds of dogs. Their innate ability and desire to interact with people subjected dogs to selective pressures to evolve in many different ways. Not so for cats. They only have about a dozen genes that are selectively manipulated by cat breeders for color, body style, etc. Cuteness, maybe.
Headphones on. Lights off. Feet up.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
A Knob of Widgeons
The poor old guy had been using an empty plastic cleaner bottle, for dish detergent or something, as an impromptu urinal. He was weak, suffering from congestive heart failure and a cardiac arrhythmia.
Anyway, he "got it stuck." He had been home for days with his penis stuck in a plastic bottle before he decided it was time to get into the system so he could get things fixed up. Maybe the bottle just got full.
At first the ED team couldn't effectively remove the bottle; they tried cutting it but this just left ragged edges in the plastic which tore into his sensitive member. Finally a talented urologist was able to remove the object without causing harm to the poor old guy.
Then his real treatment began. A diltiazem drip for atrial fibrillation and aggressive diuresis for his heart failure. A few ultrasounds showed that his anatomy was intact.
He had a daughter who lived away in another city. When she called to find out what had happened to her dad (she had been told there was a foreign object involved,) they handed the phone to me. They always do. Fuckers.
Religions are so anthropocentric. Science and evolution are not.
I think that if you practice enough introspection you will eventually come to realize that not everybody is like you. The more you explore the singularity that is yourself, the more you will be open to the diversity of all humankind.
Before you get so sick that you have to go to the local emergency department, you first have to build a hospital and train and hire the staff.
Music as we know it to be is not capable of self-replicating independently. It's more akin to a virus, which must enter something, a cell, before it can reproduce.
It now appears that the disequilibrium of protons around deep-sea alkaline vents may be the kind of energy source that enabled the first living things to occur. Disequilibrium is essential to life. Well, that explains a lot in my life, anyways.
We gave them paint and what did they do with it? They painted targets on things; everything, in fact. So let us not give them bullets.
Anyway, he "got it stuck." He had been home for days with his penis stuck in a plastic bottle before he decided it was time to get into the system so he could get things fixed up. Maybe the bottle just got full.
At first the ED team couldn't effectively remove the bottle; they tried cutting it but this just left ragged edges in the plastic which tore into his sensitive member. Finally a talented urologist was able to remove the object without causing harm to the poor old guy.
Then his real treatment began. A diltiazem drip for atrial fibrillation and aggressive diuresis for his heart failure. A few ultrasounds showed that his anatomy was intact.
He had a daughter who lived away in another city. When she called to find out what had happened to her dad (she had been told there was a foreign object involved,) they handed the phone to me. They always do. Fuckers.
Religions are so anthropocentric. Science and evolution are not.
I think that if you practice enough introspection you will eventually come to realize that not everybody is like you. The more you explore the singularity that is yourself, the more you will be open to the diversity of all humankind.
Before you get so sick that you have to go to the local emergency department, you first have to build a hospital and train and hire the staff.
Music as we know it to be is not capable of self-replicating independently. It's more akin to a virus, which must enter something, a cell, before it can reproduce.
It now appears that the disequilibrium of protons around deep-sea alkaline vents may be the kind of energy source that enabled the first living things to occur. Disequilibrium is essential to life. Well, that explains a lot in my life, anyways.
We gave them paint and what did they do with it? They painted targets on things; everything, in fact. So let us not give them bullets.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Once Upon Below
Hydrothermal Life Maker
From the February article:
Lost City is exceptional, Kelley says, because chemical reactions in the seafloor produce acetate, formate, hydrogen and alkaline fluids. All these substances may have been key to the emergence of life, according to work published recently by Michael Russell and A.J. Hall of Glasgow and William Martin of Germany. In addition, acetate and formate found in Lost City fluids may have been an important energy source for the ancestors of methanogens, microorganisms that live off the methane at places like Lost City. It's perhaps one more bit of evidence about where life may have originated, Kelley says.
This could very well be the sort of place whereupon, hundreds of millions of years ago, geochemistry evolved into biochemistry.
From the February article:
Lost City is exceptional, Kelley says, because chemical reactions in the seafloor produce acetate, formate, hydrogen and alkaline fluids. All these substances may have been key to the emergence of life, according to work published recently by Michael Russell and A.J. Hall of Glasgow and William Martin of Germany. In addition, acetate and formate found in Lost City fluids may have been an important energy source for the ancestors of methanogens, microorganisms that live off the methane at places like Lost City. It's perhaps one more bit of evidence about where life may have originated, Kelley says.
This could very well be the sort of place whereupon, hundreds of millions of years ago, geochemistry evolved into biochemistry.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Jogging Blood Products
I could hear the whirring sounds of the pedals going 'round.
I knocked and entered the patient's room to check their vital signs again. They were sitting on the arm of the couch that each room has. For exercise we had provided them with one of those bicycle-pedal things, and the patient was spinning away.
They were also using the little hand-held barbells to work out their arms.
They paused for a moment so I could get new readings of their temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, pulse oximetry, etc. I checked the IV line to ensure that their transfusion was proceeding well. It was.
The patient was doing their work-out while they were also getting a fucking blood transfusion!
I will never again complain that I do not have time to sneak in a little exercise.
This particular patient has a chronic condition that requires relatively frequent hospital treatment. Needless to say, all of us nurses really admire their spunk. You have to respect a person who puts that much effort into their own care.
I knocked and entered the patient's room to check their vital signs again. They were sitting on the arm of the couch that each room has. For exercise we had provided them with one of those bicycle-pedal things, and the patient was spinning away.
They were also using the little hand-held barbells to work out their arms.
They paused for a moment so I could get new readings of their temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, pulse oximetry, etc. I checked the IV line to ensure that their transfusion was proceeding well. It was.
The patient was doing their work-out while they were also getting a fucking blood transfusion!
I will never again complain that I do not have time to sneak in a little exercise.
This particular patient has a chronic condition that requires relatively frequent hospital treatment. Needless to say, all of us nurses really admire their spunk. You have to respect a person who puts that much effort into their own care.
Friday, June 19, 2009
No, Thank You
"I don't believe it."
That's what the doctor said over the phone when Lori called him about Mrs. K. As if one of us would wake him up in the middle of the night just to fuck with his head a little.
"The other doctor is right here and I could have him read it to you," Lori told him. No, the doctor replied, adding that she shouldn't have bothered him about this, the patient had been having this pain all along, he had been adjusting her medications for it, and he already knew all about it so why was she calling him again. That sort of thing.
Mrs. K. had been in for an illness unrelated to chest pain and she didn't have a cardiac history. Her lungs were crap and we all know that can cause pain, but this was different.
"She says her pain is like a heaviness, she's guarding her chest, and I've never seen her do this before," Lori told the doc. Lori had ordered an electrocardiogram and had pulled labs off of Mrs. K.'s PICC-line. X-ray was coming up to do a quick portable chest.
"Who ordered all that?" the doctor asked Lori.
"It's a Telemetry floor, Doctor Phlegm. It's what we do."
Since he had declined to have the other doctor, a younger guy on his first hospitalist job, read the EKG to him over the phone, Lori suggested that they just fax a copy of it to Dr. Phlegm. He acquiesced to that, but still insisted it was no big deal.
Two minutes later he called back and ran off a breathless list of orders including labs, an EKG, oxygen, morphine, nitroglycerin, the chest X-ray, (all of which Lori had already initiated) as well as a drip and transfer to intensive care.
I got the story at seven in the morning when I got in for my shift and Lori was reporting off. She speaks with the tiniest bit of the most elegant accent. I don't think Dr. Phlegm likes accents.
They still had a copy of the EKG and it showed definite T-wave elevations in leads II and V6. Mrs. K.'s Troponin levels were twenty times higher than normal range, too. That's pretty much how you define and diagnose myocardial infarction these days.
Lori had nailed it. She did what all of us nurses live for, what we dream of doing; that is to say, she did her job. And all she got for it from the doctor was shit.
That's what the doctor said over the phone when Lori called him about Mrs. K. As if one of us would wake him up in the middle of the night just to fuck with his head a little.
"The other doctor is right here and I could have him read it to you," Lori told him. No, the doctor replied, adding that she shouldn't have bothered him about this, the patient had been having this pain all along, he had been adjusting her medications for it, and he already knew all about it so why was she calling him again. That sort of thing.
Mrs. K. had been in for an illness unrelated to chest pain and she didn't have a cardiac history. Her lungs were crap and we all know that can cause pain, but this was different.
"She says her pain is like a heaviness, she's guarding her chest, and I've never seen her do this before," Lori told the doc. Lori had ordered an electrocardiogram and had pulled labs off of Mrs. K.'s PICC-line. X-ray was coming up to do a quick portable chest.
"Who ordered all that?" the doctor asked Lori.
"It's a Telemetry floor, Doctor Phlegm. It's what we do."
Since he had declined to have the other doctor, a younger guy on his first hospitalist job, read the EKG to him over the phone, Lori suggested that they just fax a copy of it to Dr. Phlegm. He acquiesced to that, but still insisted it was no big deal.
Two minutes later he called back and ran off a breathless list of orders including labs, an EKG, oxygen, morphine, nitroglycerin, the chest X-ray, (all of which Lori had already initiated) as well as a drip and transfer to intensive care.
I got the story at seven in the morning when I got in for my shift and Lori was reporting off. She speaks with the tiniest bit of the most elegant accent. I don't think Dr. Phlegm likes accents.
They still had a copy of the EKG and it showed definite T-wave elevations in leads II and V6. Mrs. K.'s Troponin levels were twenty times higher than normal range, too. That's pretty much how you define and diagnose myocardial infarction these days.
Lori had nailed it. She did what all of us nurses live for, what we dream of doing; that is to say, she did her job. And all she got for it from the doctor was shit.
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