The sleestak have released me from my summer-long imprisonment. Say what you will, they make a mean fettuccine alfredo!

Ahhh, Autumn is here. Halloween calls from the far side of October.

Life is good. I may yet blog again.

I'm not blogginating all summer.










That is all.

In the most recent Skeptic magazine there's a most enjoyable article titled "Journalist Bites Reality! How Broadcast Journalism Is flawed in Such a Fundamental Way that Its Utility as a Tool for Informing Viewers Is Almost Nil" by Steve Salerno.

It's something you may already know, but the article provides some good examples.

So, in covering (gastric bypass surgery) that helps (or at least doesn't kill) roughly 99.5% of patients, Dateline elects to tell the story in terms of the 0.5% with tragic outcomes.

On June 9, 2005, as part of its ongoing series on "Security Updates," CNN aired a special report titled "Keeping Milk Safe." Over shots of adorable tykes sipping from their pint cartons, CNN told viewers that the farm-to-shelf supply chain is vulnerable at every point, beginning with the cow; with great drama, the report emphasizes the terrifying consequences such tampering could have. Nowhere did the network mention that in the history of the milk industry, no incident of supply-chain tampering has ever been confirmed, due to terrorism or anything else.

Not only was that fear-mongering, it probably gave some terrorist a nice wet-dream.

And then there's this, just in time for the election season:

The best contemporary example is the Red State/Blue State dichotomy, invoked as an easy metaphor to express the philosophical schism that supposedly divides "the two Americas." Watching CNN's Bill Schneider hover over his maps on Election Night 2004, drawing stark lines between colors, one would've thought there were no Republicans in California, or that a Democrat arriving at the Texas border would be turned back at gunpoint. Well, guess what: the dichotomy doesn't exist--certainly not in the way journalists use the term. It's just a handy, sexy media fiction. Although California did wind up in the Kerry column in 2004, some 5.5 million Californians voted for George W. Bush. They represented about 45% of the state's total electorate and a much larger constituency in raw numbers than Bush enjoyed in any state he won, including Texas. Speaking of Texas: that unreconstituted Yankee, John Kerry, collected 2.8 million votes there. Two point eight million. Yet to hear the media tell it, California is deep, cool Blue, while Texas is a glaring, monolithic Red. Such fabrications aren't just silly. They become institutionalized in the culture, and the color--in this case literally--the way Americans view the nation in which they live.

Maybe people have some sense that the Red/Blue colors assigned during an election are only about majorities, but that last point is important.
That's why pie charts would be better to help give props to those who voted the other way.
However, imagine a network news election board full of pie charts that seem to be half red and half blue with only a small percentage pushing the state into one color or another. That definitely wouldn't be dramatic enough.


I think I've pointed out this old SNL skit with Jerry Seinfeld before:

Announcer: It's the 11 o'clock Action 8 Newswatch, with Connor Stands and Taffy Davenport, and the entire Action 8 News Team.

Connor Stands: Our top stories tonight: the president has been assassinated. But president of what? We'll tell you in the next half-hour. Taffy?

Taffy Davenport: Connor, it's no bark and all bite for golden retrievers and other so-called family dogs. What's causing these sweet and furry creatures to viciously attack sleeping toddlers? Stay, and we'll tell you in a minute.

Connor Stands: Also tonight: a common household item - something we all have in our homes and are probably using right now - is found to be full of lethal poison. We'll tell you what it is at the end of the hour.

Taffy Davenport: Also: a psychopathic sex criminal makes a prison break, threatening to kill the person he meets in a large public area. Coming up, we'll tell you where, and Hale Breezy's gonna guide us through this evening's approaching monsoon.

Hale Breezy: Taffy, Hurricane Paula is here. The deadly storm is moving fast and taking no prisoners! On my Weather Roundup, I'll give you tips on how to keep the fatalities in your family to a minimum!

Connor Stands: And more on that deadly household object. Hint: you won't find it in your refrigerator. Taffy?

Now here it is, your url of the day:
Anatomical Theatre

Five Tips On How To Be A Today Show Host:

1) Practice changing your somber look instantly into a cheerful one as you segue from a story about starvation in Africa to a story about an American who just ate 100 hot dogs in 30 minutes.

2) Learn to ramp up your voice and yell questions at people you're interviewing even though they're sitting only 3 feet away. AKA "The Lauer Loudness"

3) When you have to endure going outside to be with the plaza crowd, just go ahead and be a dick. AKA "The Roker Rube"

4) You have all the info on your card. That 'expert' guest you have on to explain the new thing-a-ma-jigs is only there as ornamentation, so go ahead and just talk over them or feel free to push them to the side and take over.

5) In fact, any guest you have on really doesn't need to talk. You've got it all on your card. Just talk for them.











Now here it is, your url of the day:
Al Jaffee's Fold-Ins

My little daughter watches Hannah Montana so the phenom has been a little on my radar, but now Hannah (Miley Cyrus) did some awesome Anne Leibovitz Vanity Fair pictures which are making Soccer Moms all across America gasp and say inane shit like, "After seeing those photos, I don't think I can allow my children to watch her show or listen to her music anymore!"

Most anything that pisses off a Soccer Mom is A-OK with me.

Don't be a tool, Miley. Grow some juevos and flip them all the bird!











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://isbndb.com/ or http://www.peoplesarchive.com/home.jsp

I'll toot my own horn here and say I kick ass on the med/surg floor.

Yeah, it's deplorable that there's a nursing shortage and staffing levels are constantly dangerous, and sometimes the shit is so scary you want to jump out the 9th floor window screaming. I work a job that is not only revolving-door exasperating, it is downright guaranteed to take you on a ride through Dante's Inferno at least once per shift. Picture a nurse beside a bed held fast by the occupant's near-dead claws as the nurse cries out to the gods in some Sisyphean wail as her free hand tries to reach out to another dying patient far away across the echoing abyss where a simple IV-push would save them...

OK, that's the situation. It sucks and it doesn't look like it's going to get better any time soon.
But it's my career. The modern American med/surg floor is fast and furious. I am relatively young, fit, and can think fast on my feet. I hit the floor, rarin' to go. In 20 minutes I have memorized and/or written down 6 or 7 patients' diagnoses, symptoms, lab values, medications, treatments, test preps, etc... I run around pushing drugs, hanging IV's, changing dressings, fixing vents, starting IV's, admitting patients, re-directing detoxers, re-directing dementeds, tying down detoxers, tying down dementeds, entering orders and data on an unwieldy and ancient computer beast, promising my body I'll drink some water or stop by the restroom at some point in the next 10 or 12 hours, yadda yadda yadda... On top of all that I'm usually the charge nurse and have to do all the staffing crap!

And then there's the old....... fat....... lazy...... nurse.

First, not all old nurses are fat and lazy. (And not all fat, lazy nurses are old either.) There are quite a few who are healthy, sharp, and can keep up or even pass me. What I'm saying is every med/surg floor has at least one of the old, fat, lazy ones.

Why these waddling, ancient nurses come to work on the med/surg floor I have no idea. They may be nice, they may mean well, but they are in the way!! They sit there at their stations while all IV's beep and they stare at that strange contraption the young people call a "computer". They mosey down the hallway to see one patient while in the same period of time I've seen three. They whine and complain when a patient puts on their call light twice in one shift. Some smell of urine and yeast, some of butt crack and mold. (Some achieve the full Malodor Quadfecta!) Very few are wise, because most of the wise ones have realized they shouldn't be there and have left. They doze off if they sit in a chair longer than 20 minutes (which works out to be a lot of dozing because they sit in chairs quite a bit). They chew their cud and stare blankly at the aide who is telling them about a low pulse ox. They spend countless minutes trying to get others to do their work. They never offer help. They rarely help when asked.

They are giant slugs. I want to yell at them, "Get out of my way, Giant Slug! I must make haste and thy bulk and movement impedeth me!"


Aw Hell, hit it Mick!

Some nurses take my patience
Some nurses wrinkle my nose
Some nurses give me twitches
That I'd never thought I'd own

Some nurses give me headaches
Some nurses, heart attacks
Some nurses I give all my props to
I don't ever want it back

So give me all your IV's
Give me all your pills
I'll buy you a house back in Zuma Beach
And give you half of what I own









Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.wordplayer.com/

The news media on Tuesday: *yawn* "It doesn't matter if Hillary wins Pennsylvania or not, Barack still has the majority of popular and super-delegate votes. Nobody cares." *ho-hum*

The news media on Wednesday: *squeal* "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!! HILLARY'S BACK IN THE GAME!!" *pant pant*







Give me a break.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.metaglossary.com/

George Lucas is a bitter man. Why? Because he went for style over substance with his Star Wars prequels and ended up with soulless pieces of crap. Now he blames his monumental fuck-up on fans!

Here he is in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, along with Steven Spielberg (who wisely backs away):

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So why resurrect Indy after all these years?
GEORGE LUCAS: We're doing it to have fun. We're not doing it to say, Oh, we're gonna get an Academy Award, everybody's gonna love us.... We don't need the money. We're only going to get aggravation. The fans think it's gonna be the Second Coming. And it's not the Second Coming. They've already written the story [in their heads], and lemme tell ya, it's not that story. So they're going to be very disappointed. I went through this with Phantom Menace. Believe me, I've been there, I've done it, I know exactly the way they react. And they're very vocal about these things. We're not gonna have adoring fans sending us e-mails saying how much they loved the movie. We're gonna have a bunch of angry people saying, ''You're a bunch of a--holes, you should never have done this. You've ruined my life forever. I loved Indiana Jones so much and now it's ruined.'' And all that kind of stuff.
STEVEN SPIELBERG: Uh, he needs to speak for himself here. [Laughter all around] You need to put in parentheses ''George Lucas is totally speaking for himself.'' And I absolve myself of any connection with that last statement about fans not liking it.
LUCAS: All I'm saying is, I have been there, and I have walked through the valley of death on highly anticipated sequels.

Lucas, you're a dick.











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.observatoire.veolia.com/en/

It's a high point of hospital life when you have to call the House Supervisor. They are always chock full of inspiration, charisma, and pep! In fact, if they'd only wear a cheerleader outfit then they'd be complete.

Here are some examples of the exciting things they say:


Floor Nurse: We've had a DNR death in Room 908.
House Super: So I guess you've got a room open now. Is it male or female?

Floor Nurse: An oxygen tank just got dropped and blew like a missile all over the unit destroying everything!
House Super: I have an admission for you.

Floor Nurse: One of our nurses just had a heart attack and died in the hallway!!
House Super: There's nobody to replace her. Divide up her patient load.

Floor Nurse: A dimensional portal into Hell just opened up in the north hallway!!
House Super: How many beds does that leave you?



The House Super is always there to warm the cockles of your heart.




Next week: Hot, New Idea: Tipping Your Nurse!










Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://zombieurl.com/

The Texas polygamy drama going on right now is a car wreck everyone is slowing down to see.

There are issues on both sides: the group is obviously a suspicious and creepy cult and the state obviously went overboard with removing all the children (or maybe not).

What fascinates me about it is the cult women and their voices. They all speak and sound like tiny anemic mice! What's that about? Do the men (or the man) beat them if they raise their voices a little?

Sweet Zombie Jesus, ladies! The state just took all your kids away from you and you stand there with your Stepford hairdos whimpering like little girls who simply lost a balloon?
I know there's not much you can do about it right now, but where's the fire in your eyes? Where's the noise? At least bring a rug outside and beat it to show your dials go above "lethargy".

And where are the men (or man)? Why aren't they speaking out? I guess when you father 50 kids or more you get a little detached, eh?

And changing subjects: just where does this freak show get all their money?


Ooops, people behind me are honking. Better move on.











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

That's it. This blog officially endorses Barack Obama for President.

(It's a pitiful blog, I know, but *sniff* it's all I got.)

http://www.ontheissues.org/Barack_Obama.htm











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://cool-mo-dee.blogspot.com/
(which features some awesome Halloween linkage!)

The awesome folks at Improv Everywhere invaded an afternoon little league game and blew their minds by providing a NBC jumbotron and play calls by Jim Gray, a Goodyear blimp, mascots, and tons of fans to create a big league atmosphere.




Absolute fun!!












Now here it is, your url of the day:
Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

I'm supposed to be taking time off here, but I couldn't resist this shot taken at Soccer Moms by my hero, E.O. Wilson:

In what he calls the ”soccer mom syndrome” Wilson said the worst thing a parent can do for a child is to take him or her to a botanical garden where all the trees are marked and labeled. Instead, “Go to the seashore and give them a pale and bucket. Let them experience nature…and then come back and ask questions,” Wilson said, admittedly paraphrasing Rachel Carson’s advice. Carson famously wrote the book “Silent Spring.”

Wilson filled more than an hour of questions and answers with witty remarks and barbs. And to be sure, his tone was playful. Yet, there was a seriousness behind his “soccer mom” remarks that struck a cord with many people in the audience: Have children been largely cut off from nature because of technology?

Many people agreed that they have, with video games, the Internet and structured play times replacing — as comedian George Carlin commented in a recent skit–sitting outside in a yard with a stick wondering how to entertain themselves.

Awesome.

(via 3quarksdaily)

I wonder if anyone has named the phenomenon in which a patient pushing their call light frequently will have it answered less and less promptly?

If not, then I will call it "The Call-Light Conundrum".


Anyhoo, it's Spring Break and I'm outta here for a few weeks.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com (hilarious!)

Arthur C. Clarke.




See you in the stars.





.

At some point along the chain of making, putting energy in, storing, and delivering the hydrogen, we will have used more energy than we can get back, and this doesn’t count the energy used to make fuel cells, storage tanks, delivery systems, and vehicles. When fusion can make cheap hydrogen, when reliable long-lasting nanotube fuel cells exist, and when light-weight leak-proof carbon-fiber polymer-lined storage tanks and pipelines can be made inexpensively, then we can consider building the hydrogen economy infrastructure. Until then, it’s vaporware. All of these technical obstacles must be overcome for any of this to happen. Meanwhile, the United States government should stop funding the Freedom CAR program, which gives millions of tax dollars to the big three automakers to work on hydrogen fuel cells. Instead, automakers ought to be required to raise the average overall mileage their vehicles get — the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard.

"The Hydrogen Economy
Savior of Humanity or an Economic Black Hole?"
by Alice Friedemann

In eSkeptic


I know biofuel and hydrogen fans mean well, but the laws of thermodynamics simply cannot be circumvented.

Laws of Thermodynamics in simple form:

(1) you cannot win (you can’t get something for nothing because matter and energy are conserved.)
(2) You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state because entropy always increases.)
(3) you cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is not attainable.)

from Physics Planet

Hey kids, guess who said this:

When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs.

I'll give you a few clues. It's a woman who once spread her legs to seduce her current husband away from his previous wife. It's also a woman who has a doctorate in physiology but wants you to think it's in psychiatry.

Yep, it's Dr. Laura!

She appeared on the Today show yesterday, proud foot in mouth, and essentially blamed Eliot Spitzer's wife for his wanderings.

During the later hour of the show she came on again to say the same thing while Ann Curry absolutely glowered at her stupidity.

It was fascinating. Here's Curry, who over the past year has been doing foreign assignments in hell holes like Darfur and has seen shit that Dr. Laura can't possibly imagine while hunkered down in her little radio studio and writing hackneyed self-help books, and Curry has to sit there and listen to this bitch spew her victorian world view into our new century.

Don't be afraid Curry, you have America's permission to slap the Betty Crocker shit out of her.









Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://liferemix.net/

As usual, while watching a commercial last night I suddenly realized all of society's ills can be summarized by, yep, toilet cleaning.

The toilet must be thought of as a thing of terror, lurking there in your bathroom, its hidden bacteria monsters ready to leap out from deep below and grab your innocent child, dragging her down into its dark, dark abyss.

You must act! You must buy an expensive, special gelatinous toilet bowl cleaner that clings! Also, you must use a disposable toilet bowl brush that won't let those monsters linger anywhere near your children. Screw the environment, people! We're talking life and death here!

You may ask: won't a cup of bleach and a little elbow grease do the job? Won't the bleach sterilize the toilet brush too?

Ha! If you think that kind of nonsense, your household has already been infiltrated.
Your mind is now controlled by sinister toilet bowl denizens. There's no hope for you. You and your children are dead to America.

Those in the know have got their curved-neck bottles of toilet bowl cleaner and disposable toilet brushes close at hand. They sit outside the bathroom door waiting for the flush and quickly rush in to attack, attack, attack!

Later, they walk away, smiling, with fresh gel sanitizer evaporating from their hands and that special warmth filling their hearts...

Little Susie was saved yet again.










Now here it is, your url of the day:
Rejected Star Wars Toys

For the longest time I thought my hospital nursing job was hell because of a nursing shortage combined with reckless short-staffing by the hospital in order to save money. Then I realized it is intentional. Yes, that's right, intentional!

You see, it's all a game. There are hidden cameras and people, somewhere, are watching us for their own amusement! It all makes sense now.

My unseen audience places bets on things like how fast can the nurse get from the bronchospasmic blue patient in room 2 to room 30 where the bed alarm is going off and the demented old patient is halfway over the side rails? Or, how many call lights can go off before the nurse throws a thrombo?

They laugh with glee as the staff emergency buzzer goes off right after I've put on all the isolation gear and have entered an isolation room.

They roll on the floor as I get called to take two admissions right in the middle of a code blue.

It's must-see reality!


But let's ramp it up, shall we? This is to whoever produces my hospital show. Here are some suggestions to make it even more fun:

----Have booby traps hidden along the halls that randomly shoot the nurses with slime or high-velocity tennis balls.

----Secretly switch patients whenever their nurse leaves the floor to get blood.

----Have every patient whose call light goes off ask for the exact same thing (new theme every night!)

----Two words: exploding vials!

----Provide obstacle rooms with insane numbers of IV poles, cords, and tubes to navigate through.

----Every show have all the nurses play Find The Beeping IV Pump (with Benny Hill music!)

----Give the House Supervisor an air horn and have them demand insane, random challenges.

----Hire several nurses and nursing aides straight out of the Jerry Springer crazy, drama-queen pool (and without ex-cop security guard protection).

----Have the doctors get American Gladiator names and let the pummeling ensue.







These suggestions are no more ridiculous than real-life hospital nursing, believe me.











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.embalming.net/

New research by a University of New Hampshire domestic abuse expert says spanking children affects their sex lives as adults. Professor Murray Straus concludes that children who are spanked are more likely as adults to coerce partners to have sex, to have unprotected sex and to have masochistic sex.

-from physorg.com


I guess my kids' wedding gifts will have to be whips and chains.


Let's balance that fun-with-correlating research with this from the Washington Post:

Narcissism and entitlement among college students have increased steadily since 1979, according to a study to be published this year in the Journal of Personality. Between that year and 2006, 16,000 college students were asked to pick between such paired statements as "I expect a great deal from other people" and "I like to do things for other people," and "I will never be satisfied until I get all that I deserve" and "I will take my satisfactions as they come."

The data are clear: The ascent of narcissism and entitlement is dramatic.

If you can't sleep at 3am and turn on Adult Swim you'll see an ad for their website flash game Amateur Surgeon.

And then you will stay up the rest of the night playing it.

And then you'll groggily post a link to it on your lame blog.