Month: April 2007

If surgery was like Wikipedia

I like reading The Register. Sometimes, the humor stuff is as worth reading as the real stuff.

If surgery was like Wikipedia: Surgipedia.

Several surgipedians have gathered in an operation theater. On the table lies an unconscious man whos left leg looks dark. Surgipedian #1 grabs a sheet prepared by the patient’s doctor that details the problem.

Surgipedian #1: “Whoa, he’s been lying here for 26 hours, we sure got a backlog again. It also says on this that he has a ‘claudication’ and a ‘chronic venous insufficiency’ in the left leg”, looks at right leg, “and we are asked to do a ‘leg segmental arterial doppler ultrasound exam’. Whatever that is. His leg looks pretty good to me”.

Surgipedian #2: “You looked at the wrong leg. It says the left one”.

Surgipedian #1: “I looked at the left and it’s looking totally normal!”

Surgipedian #2: “The left from his point of view! Do you know where your left leg is?”

And more, as it goes on for a little while. I love Wikipedia, but this made me chuckle anyway.

[tags]If surgery was like Wikipedia[/tags]

More blog-talk on impeachment

I still believe that the damage George Bush has done to Americans’ rights and freedoms far exceeds any good he’s done in protection Americans from further attacks. In part, that’s because I don’t believe there was a great chance of additional attacks on Americans in America – at least not for a long time after the 9/11 attacks and not many attacks nor much likelihood of success. In part I believe it’s because President Bush has caused harm to many more Americans by creating this war in Iraq and sending insufficient troops in with insufficient planning based on questionable intelligence (and that particular sentence is something that needs its own space for further discussion). Because I believe President Bush has harmed America more than served and protected America, I’ve been calling for impeachment for a long time, on this site and in my regular life when talking with others.

The whole federal prosecutors fiasco is causing more folks to talk about this, and some even have even written up why they believe this latest executive abuse will lead to impeachment in the near future. I’m not convinced it will happen – things still look to me like President Bush will complete his term in office – but I do like seeing more talk about this. Of course, the linked article is from a very liberal viewpoint, and a bit of the glee and edge could be removed to make the write-up better for me to point to, but I still think the view of this writer is at least worth reading, even if you disagree that President Bush should be impeached. I’m not sure I agree with everything said, but I think it does cover some important abuses, and I do believe more moderate or conservative politicians are going to start thinking about these same things.

About a year from now, pundits and instant historians will point back at the firing of the federal prosecutors and say, “That’s where the impeachment began.”

. . .

The attorney general takes an oath to uphold the constitution and execute the law. When controversial matters come up, his role, traditionally, is often to be the guy who says, “We can’t do that, it’s against the law.”

Gonzales took a different approach. He brought the ethics of a corporate lawyer to his office. He took it to be his job to find, or invent, a theory that would allow the administration to go forward. If the theory wouldn’t hold up in court, or made little sense, that didn’t matter. They could still maintain, with straight faces, that they believed what they were doing, on the advice of the attorney general, was legal and constitutional. If worst came to worst, they’d back off and move on, so long as the profit outweighed the penalty.

The most flagrant example is when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld decided they wanted to torture people.

The article is a bit long, but if you’ve spent much time reading my stuff, you should have no issues getting through the article’s length.

[tags]Blog talk on impeachment, Why impeachment will finally happen[/tags]

The 9/11 conspiracy theorists are still spewing their nonsense

I’m 911lie.jpggenerally not a big believer in conspiracy theories. I actually believe JFK was assassinated by a non-governmental wacko without prompting from government representatives who wanted the President gone. I believe that we Americans were actually surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor, and that it wasn’t some Presidential plot to get the US into war. I don’t think President Clinton had all those folks assassinated to cover up crimes committed by him and Hillary. And I most certainly don’t believe that President Bush knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks, nor that the government or some all-powerful private entities somehow planned, orchestrated, or covered up facets of the attack and let the attack proceed in order to (among other ridiculous claims) destroy the World Trade Center. However, there are plenty of people who believe those conspiracy theories, and a lot of them especially believe that last one.

Rosie used to just be funny, in my opinion. I remember watching her stand-up stuff around 20 years ago and enjoying it. Now, she’s gotten too wacky for me to listen to her. She’s free to spout her views. I’m free to look elsewhere for something to occupy my time. The above link ties back to a boycott-The-View-because-of-Rosie’s-nonsense bit, which is where the Rosie tie-in comes from in my posting here.


[tags]More 9/11 conspiracy theorists show their silliness, Calls to boycott The View because of Rosie’s zany political spews[/tags]

Note to self – always paint Yes and No on body parts before surgery

Medical mistakes happen. It is an unfortunate facet of reality. It is especially unfortunate when you are the one who suffers because of an error. Just ask this veteran about how unfortunate those errors can be.

An Air Force veteran has filed a federal claim after an operation at a Veterans Administration hospital in which a healthy testicle was removed instead of a potentially cancerous one.

Benjamin Houghton, 47, was to have had his left testicle removed June 14 at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center because there was a chance it could harbor cancer cells. It also was atrophied and painful.

But doctors mistakenly removed the right testicle, according to medical records and the claim, which seeks $200,000 for future care and unspecified damages. He still hasn’t had the other testicle removed.

“At first I thought it was a joke,” Houghton told the Los Angeles Times. “Then I was shocked. I told them, ‘What do I do now?'”

My recommendation for what to do now is get the other one taken off. But use a sharpie, a magic marker, or some durable paint to avoid wrong site surgery the second time around.

[tags]Surgeon removes wrong testicle, Hey Doc – can you just swap those out down there?[/tags]

Today in History – Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated – April 4, 1968

On the eve of this day 39 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while standing on his balcony outside room 306 of lorraine_motel.jpgthe Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN. King was shot at 6:01 PM and pronounced dead at 7:05 PM at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951.

And information from the Wikipedia article:

Friends lorraine_marker.jpginside the motel room heard the shots and ran to the balcony to find King shot in the throat. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 p.m. The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities.[18] Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey attended on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was meeting with several advisors and cabinet officers on the Vietnam War in Camp David (there were fears Johnson might be hit with protests and abuses over the war if he attended). At his widow’s request, King eulogized himself: at the funeral his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a recording of his famous ‘Drum Major’ sermon, given on February 4, 1968, was played. In that sermon he makes a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to “feed the hungry”, “clothe the naked”, “be right on the [Vietnam] war question”, and “love and serve humanity”.


[tags]Today in History – Martin Luther King assassinated, MLK assassination[/tags]

Steve Jobs figures out how to charge more for music and music lovers everywhere thank him

What the hell is going on here? Steve Jobs comes up with a way to make Apple even more profitable via a major music label DRM-free offering, announces it to the world, and consumers thank him for higher prices? I know, I know – there’s a bitrate bump, too. I still don’t see the value. To me, the higher quality, DRM free tracks need to get the current price (typically $0.99 per track, I believe) and the DRM, hate-the-consumer protection covered tracks should get a price discount. Or if there’s just no chance of dropping the price on the current bitrate stuff, at least offer it at the same price but without hate-the-consumer protection on it. But I supposed that’s why I’m sitting here criticizing others instead of running a multi-billion dollar computer corporation – I lack vision.

I’ve been buying DRM-free music for years. My current preferred provider is Audio Lunchbox, but there are many others. While they don’t offer the breadth of music Apple has, they offer enough that I like that I don’t care to give my money to less consumer friendly companies that assume I am a thief.

Continue reading “Steve Jobs figures out how to charge more for music and music lovers everywhere thank him”

Happy Birthday Telnet, may you rest in peace

Well, today is the 35th birthday of telnet. It’s also a day to commemorate the passing away of telnet, in a way.

Although original development on telnet took place back in 1969, the protocol was not formalized until RFC 318, released April 3rd, 1972. The passing away of telnet is being called out as a result of Microsoft leaving telnet out of Vista. Of course, if you have to have telnet, you can install it manually if you’d like.

Thanks to Wired security blog 27B Stroke 6 for the telnet birthday reminder.

[tags]Happy birthday telnet, RIP telnet[/tags]